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it to her mother to protect him.
    “You shot him from the doorway?” It was impossible, and they were getting nowhere. “Do you think someone else shot your father?” He wondered if that was where she was going with her story. An intruder. But that was even less believable than the story about the doorway.
    “No. I shot him. From the doorway.”
    The officer knew without a doubt that her father had been shot at close range, maybe no more than an inch or two, by a person right in front of him, obviously his daughter. But where were they?
    “Were you in bed with him?” he asked her pointedly, and she didn't answer. She stared straight ahead, as though he weren't even there, and gave a little sigh. “Were you in bed with him?” he asked again, and she hesitated for a long time before she answered.
    “I'm not sure. I don't think so.”
    “How's it going in here?” the senior officer inquired, as he poked his head in the door. It was three o'clock in the morning by then, and they had done everything they needed to do at the crime scene.
    The officer questioning Grace gave a hopeless shrug. It was not going well. She was not making a lot of sense, she was shaking violently, and she was so dazed that at times he really wondered if she even knew what had happened. “We're going to take you in, Grace. You're going to be in custody for a few days. We need to talk to you some more about what happened.” She nodded, and said nothing to him. She just sat there, with bloodstains all over her, in the blanket. “Maybe you'd like to clean up a little bit, and put your clothes on.” He nodded at the officer who'd been talking to her, but Grace didn't move, she just sat there. “We're taking you in, Grace. For questioning,” he explained again, wondering if she really was crazy. John had never mentioned it, but it wasn't the kind of thing one said to clients.
    “We're going to hold you for seventy-two hours,pending an investigation of the shooting.” Had it been premeditated? Had she meant to shoot him? Had it been an accident? What was the deal here? He wondered too if she was on drugs, and he wanted her tested.
    She didn't ask if they were arresting her. She didn't ask anything. And she didn't get dressed either. She seemed completely disoriented, which was what suggested to the officer in charge more and more clearly that she was crazy. In the end, they called for a female officer to come out and help them, and she dressed Grace like a small child, but not without noticing assorted marks and bruises on her body. She told her to wash the bloodstains off, and Grace was surprisingly obliging. She did whatever she was told, but she 6ffered no information.
    “Did you and your dad have a fight?” the woman officer inquired as Grace stepped into her old jeans and T-shirt. She was still shaking as though she were standing naked in the Arctic. But Grace never answered her question. “Were you mad at him?” Nothing. Silence. She wasn't hostile. She wasn't anything. She looked as though she were in a trance, as they walked her through the living room, and she never once asked about her father. She didn't want to know where he'd gone, where they'd taken him, or what had happened once he got there. She stopped only for an instant as they crossed the living room, and looked at a photograph of her mother. It was in a silver frame, and Grace was standing next to her in the picture. She had been two or three years old, and both of them were smiling. Grace looked at it for a long time, remembering what her mother had looked like, how pretty she had been, and how much she wanted of Grace. Too much. She wanted to tell her she was sorry now. She just couldn't do it. She had let her mother down. She hadn't taken care of him. She couldn't anymore. And now he was gone. She couldn't remember where he had gone. But he was gone. And she wasn't going to take care of him anymore.
    “She's really out of it,” the woman officer said right within