bring on something close to despair. How much easier—or so it probably seemed while drunk—to blow up her marriage and let the shrapnel fly where it will. A month ago she would never have done what she did tonight. Yeats is always right, I reflect. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. As sleep finally takes me, and the awful weight of this day begins to slip from my shoulders, a sense of foreboding awakens in my mind, too shapeless to define, yet real enough to prevent my descending into true oblivion.
My iPhone wakes me at 1:40 a.m.
Blinking in confusion, I see that it’s Ben Tate, calling from the paper. It’s been two hours since he and I finalized tomorrow’s stories. I can’t believe he’s still at the office. I press answer and lie back on my pillow.
“Ben? What’s going on?”
“Thirty minutes ago the police scanner went crazy. Something happened at Max Matheson’s house, in that ritzy neighborhood out in the county.”
“Like a break-in or something?”
“I don’t think so. Carl got word from a source in the sheriff’s department that Max’s wife had been shot.”
I sit up and turn on my bedside lamp. “That can’t be right.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But Carl’s guy said that when the responding deputy got there, Mrs. Matheson was dead in the bed with her husband, and Max was out of his mind. The gun was in the bed with them, and the sheets were covered in blood. Like a slaughterhouse, he said. She was shot through the heart.”
“Sally Matheson is dead?” I ask dully, seeing an image of Sally dressed to the nines on the Aurora rooftop earlier tonight. “Is this for real, Ben?”
“I know it sounds crazy. It’s like even the cops can’t believe it. But it’s real.”
I rub my eyes and shake my head, as if that could clear my mind. “Actually, the Mathesons had a very public argument at that party on top of the Aurora tonight. Everybody saw it happen. Sally called him a bastard and threw a drink in his face. I’ve never seen her do anything remotely like that.”
“Are you coming down here?” Ben asks.
Nadine rises in my mind. “I don’t know. I may wait and monitor—”
My burner phone is ringing. I don’t recognize the number, but I never do until I’ve had a burner for about a week. It’s got to be Jet. “I’ve got to run, Ben. I’ll work my own sources and call you back later. Keep me updated.”
I hang up before he can reply, then answer the burner. Despite what Ben said, the news I’m braced to hear is what I’ve feared for the past three months: Paul is headed to your house with a gun—
“I’m here,” I answer.
“I only have thirty seconds,” Jet says, panic crackling in every syllable. “Wake up and listen hard.”
“I’m up. Was Sally shot?”
“Yes. She’s dead, Marshall.”
“The news is already out. Did Max shoot her?”
“That’s what it looks like. The police are over there now. Sheriff’s deputies, actually. Paul went over. I have Kevin with me at home. My God, this is the last thing in the world I could have imagined.”
“Is Max going to be arrested?”
“I don’t know. I guess he might be. It’s all so unbelievable.”
“I saw their argument at the Aurora. Have they been doing that a lot recently?”
“No! Not that I’ve seen, anyway.”
“You told me Sally was acting weird today, that she wanted to talk to you.”
Jet is silent for about three seconds. “That’s right. You know . . . wait—”
She blocks the mic on her phone, and I hear her muffled voice speaking to her son.
“I’ve got to go,” she says with sudden clarity. “I’ll know more after Paul gets home, but I won’t be able to call you. And don’t call me. Not under any circumstances.”
The phone clicks, and she’s gone.
I sit naked on the edge of the bed for a minute or so, stunned beyond belief. The image of Sally Matheson, the archetypal steel magnolia if ever there was one, lying beside her husband on their bloody bedsheets is something my brain simply refuses to accept. It’s like hearing that Sally Field got her brains blown out. Of course, Sally Field never married a man like Max Matheson. Burt Reynolds and Max probably shared more than a few traits, but so far as I know Burt never killed anybody. Yet despite all I know about Max, I’ve never heard a whisper about him raising a hand against his wife. In his