“Were they getting along okay?”

“Depends on who you talk to,” Bracken says gloomily

“She says they were, but a couple of neighbors say different. They heard her yelling the night before he was killed. She says it was nothing.”

“I can’t remember the weapon,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to remember the article about the murder. It doesn’t do me any good to read: I can’t remember a word the next day, much less months later.

Distracted, Bracken nods as if he is on automatic pilot.

“Three slugs in his chest and heart with a twenty two-caliber pistol. Leigh claimed she didn’t know anything about a gun. The cops figure she could have done a lot of things with it from dumping it in the river to hiding it in her father’s church.”

“What about Wallace?” I ask, realizing Bracken doesn’t have much gas left in him for this conversation.

“Any enemies or unhappy friends?”

While Bracken reaches down to pull out a folder from his briefcase, I wonder what I’d do in his situation. Probably be on the phone to every quack in the country. He must have found an honest doctor who told him not to waste his time. Not a popular position in a society where you are supposed to fight on until the last blast of radiation. Hell, maybe I’d be going to church, too. But not Christian Life. All that right-wing stuff on abortion and men being the boss gives me the creeps, not to mention the nonsense about the world being created in seven days. I still can’t believe Rainey, who is as liberated as any woman I know, is involved out there.

It doesn’t make any sense to me, but neither does dying at the age of thirty-nine. Bracken reads for a moment, then says, “I’ve had an investigator check him out, but nothing has turned up so far. Wallace made his money by functioning as a middleman between wholesalers and manufacturers all over the country. He had an office in his home. Perfectly legitimate.”