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“His wife’s dead.”

I sat numbly and in a while Hennessey read my silence.

“I take it you actually do know these people?”

“Sure I do. Jesus Christ, this is awful.”

Now came a second reaction, disbelief, and slowly by degrees I felt diminished by what Hennessey had said. He was still a homicide cop; I knew he wouldn’t be calling if her death had been a natural one.

“What happened?” I said again.

“Well, the boys are still trying to figure that out. The husband’s not in any kind of shape to be helpful. Apparently he hasn’t said ten words to anybody.”

“That’s because he’s in shock, Neal. Hell, I’m in shock, I can’t imagine how he feels.”

I heard Hennessey breathing on the other end. After a moment, he said, “You got any ideas who might do this?”

I thought of Denise, her smiling face, and my voice quivered. “No,” I said.

“If you’ve got anything you think might help, they’d like to see you downtown.”

I stared into the dark corners of the room.

“Tonight, if you think of anything. They’ll send a car for you. Otherwise they’d like you to come in tomorrow.”

“Who’s the primary?”

“Randy Whiteside. Your favorite guy.”

Wonderful, I thought. Mr. Personality.

I looked at my clock. “Where’s Mike now?”

“Who’s Mike?”

“Her husband, Neal. Who the hell have we been talking about?”

“Hey, don’t bite my head off. All I’m doing is making a phone call.”

I heard myself say, “Sorry,” and a moment later, “Damn, this hits hard.”

“You knew these people well?”

“No.”

I felt him waiting for some reason.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I said at last. “Denise was…” I gave up after a moment and said, “I just met them recently.”

“Well, to answer your question, I don’t know where the husband is. They’re probably still trying to talk to him out at the scene.”

I felt a wave of sudden anger. “Goddammit, Hennessey, I hope you boys aren’t treating this man as a suspect.”

I could feel him bristle. “Of course he’s a suspect. What would you think if you got to a scene and nobody’s there but the husband and he won’t talk?”

“I told you why.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you know that for a fact, but me, I never met the man. Maybe he is overcome with grief, and maybe the grief’s a hundred percent real and he still did it. Come on, Cliff, you’ve seen enough of these things to know that. I could tick ‘em off on my fingers, the number of times the grieving husband did it and you and me brought the bastard in and you got him in the box and ripped the confession out of his lying ass.”

I remembered those times: all the faces of the guilty and the damned came back in one shivery moment, and now I felt my skin crawl at the thought of someone like me, the cop I had once been, tearing at Ralston’s open wounds. I remembered another case: Harold Waters, who had signed a confession for me and had been on the brink of a life behind bars until the real killer made a mistake. Harold Waters had signed everything we put in front of him. Why? He simply didn’t care what happened to him after his wife was murdered.

Hennessey knew how that case had always haunted me. “Do me a favor, Cliff,” he said. “Don’t give me that Harold Waters shit. How many times has that ever happened?”

“It happens, though, doesn’t it?”

“It happened once.”