“She knows about all of it.”

“Then what else can you tell me?”

“You’ve got my file. It’s all in there.”

“It’s never all in there.” Nolan closes his notebook. “Look, Mr. Reese, I want to help, but I can’t do much if you won’t talk to me.”

“That was another life,” I say. “I put those days behind me a long time ago. And if someone from those days is coming for me, why did they wait so long?”

“You tell me.”

I shake my head. “Isn’t that your job to figure out?”

Nolan stares at me for a moment, and then he stands and takes a card from his jacket pocket. He holds it out to me and says, “Call if you think of anything that might help.”

I don’t take the card.

He drops it on the coffee table. “Tell your wife I’m sorry for upsetting her.”

“I’ll do that.”

Nolan walks to the kitchen table where the lab tech is filling out forms. He leans in and says something I can’t hear. The tech nods, then packs his case and slides it over his shoulder.

I hold the door open for them as they leave. Once they’re outside I remember and ask about my ring.

“Your ring?”

“My wedding ring.” I point to the evidence bag the tech is carrying. “On my finger, in the jar.”

“What about it?”

“I want it back.”

– 5 -

“Evidence,” I say. “I can get the ring back when they send my finger off to medical disposal, whenever the hell that happens. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Diane doesn’t say anything.

She walked through the door about an hour after the cops left. Now she’s sitting at the kitchen table picking over a bowl of butter noodles with a fork.

I watch her for a while, then say, “You think this is my fault, don’t you? Something I did.”