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albeit kitschy, style that stoked memories of a long-ago time when skaters wore fuzzy earmuffs and free-flowing scarves as they skimmed over the surface of a frozen pond.
    This Kinkade print on canvas was called Evening Glow . Besides its stone cottage, it featured an illuminated gas lamp that appeared to emit an orange red glow. In fact, such a feature was the hallmark of Kinkade’s paintings. He was, his aficionados insisted, “not an artist, but a painter of light.”
    None of the men and women from the Tacoma Police and the Pierce County Coroner’s offices at the crime scene paid the lush accoutrements of the Connelly household much mind as they went about tagging and bagging the victim and the assorted evidence they’d need to run through the lab.
    If they’d have looked closer, they would have noticed that Thomas Kinkade’s ability to trick the eye with illumination techniques was in better-than-average form. The light on the top of the lamp standard twinkled.
    As it did so, the discourse among the interlopers on the scene continued.
    â€œWhat do you make of the lady of the house?” a cop asked a forensics tech.
    â€œMeaning?” a woman’s voice answered.
    â€œA lot younger than the husband,” the man’s voice said. “Better looking, too.”
    The same woman’s voice responded. “I guess.”
    â€œI’ll tell you what I guess,” the man said. “I guess that when they do a GSR test on the missus they’ll find that she was the shooter. Honestly, the wound on her leg was a graze. Self-inflicted. Betcha a beer.”
    â€œI don’t know,” the woman said. “I don’t like beer.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    Kitsap County
    The Lord’s Grace Community Church was a converted metal Quonset hut in Kingston, Washington, that had once been used to store floral greens for a long-since-closed brush-cutting operation. The structure was so close to the edge of the road, it had been the frequent and unfortunate recipient of more than one car’s broadside. In fact, a makeshift memorial of a cross marked the location, adorned with faded photos kept mostly dry inside Ziploc bags, a red plastic lei, and stenciled letters that read C-A-N-D-Y. The tribute’s central feature—the cross—was so solid and substantial that a passerby unfamiliar with the events might assume that the cross belonged to the church. It had been seven years since Candy Turner slid on the pavement and crashed her cherry red ’69 El Camino pickup truck.
    Locals who didn’t attend there called it the Candy Church, the home of “My Sweet Lord.”
    Inside, Pastor Mike Walsh got on his knees and looked up at the big Douglas-fir cross. He’d been contacted weeks ago and the conversation stayed with him. Like a leaky pipe tucked away in the ceiling, quietly, steadily doing damage.
    It was a woman, a crying woman, who’d contacted him. She recalled a traffic accident that he’d happened upon a decade and a half ago.
    â€œYou could have told the truth,” she said. “But you didn’t.”
    â€œI was scared. I wasn’t the man that I am now.”
    â€œI’m sure the passage of time has made you a better person.”
    â€œA better person, but not a perfect one,” he said.
    There was a short pause before the woman made her point.
    â€œIt is never too late to do what’s right.”
    Pastor Mike couldn’t help but agree. “But I made a promise,” he said.
    â€œThat was a long time ago. Things change. The truth , Mikey. The truth is all that matters.”
    It was a troubling, haunting conversation, as if the woman on the other end of the line was merely testing his resolve. He wondered if she’d taken Jesus into her heart so that she’d be free of what had happened. Forgiveness was so powerful. He prayed for guidance and the strength to do what was right.
    He remembered what happened