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questioning. Not married? No girlfriend, to your knowledge? Boyfriend, then? No? Any idea who would want him dead? The Carlyles professed mystification.
    Chrebet said, “You heard we found the car?”
    “Saw it on the news,” said Lemaster.
    “In an industrial park on Route 48. Near as we can tell, he was shot in the car—two bullets in the head—and dumped on the road, and then the shooter drove to the industrial park and left it.”
    “And no suspects?”
    “Not yet.” Julia was impressed at how her husband had taken charge of the conversation; but he always did. Just weeks after their move to the Landing, he had wandered into a packed meeting of the zoning board, grabbed a seat at the back of the auditorium, lone representative of what his fraternity called the darker nation, and, within an hour, was all but giving the orders.
    “Was anything taken?” he asked now.
    “His wallet. Keys. Maybe other things.”
    “Robbery?”
    “Could have been a robbery. Could have been meant to look like a robbery.”
    Again Julia was on edge. She expected, from what she saw on television, that this was the moment when the detectives would ask where each of them had been between eight and ten last night. Instead, the photographs came out. Chrebet slid two from a folder. He slipped the first to Lemaster, who gave it a quick glance and passed it on to his wife, waiting for the next. Julia looked, and looked away. The gold Audi TT in which Kellen had taken such pride, for he used to say he had all the luxury of the fools who bought more expensive sports cars, except that his cost less, got better mileage, and was more reliable. The seats were of a cream-colored leather, but in the photo the passenger’s seat was black with blood.
    “He was shot somewhere else and driven to Four Mile,” Chrebet said, turning a page. “He bled for a while.”
    Two bullets, Julia was thinking. Surely only one was needed.
    Lemaster spent longer on the second photo as the detectives asked if they had any idea, however faint, about who would do such a terrible thing.
    Then the second photograph was upon her, and she understood still less the motive for sharing, unless they intended only to shock. A close-up of Kellen’s face, taken presumably at the morgue. Yes, it was he, as best she could tell from what little was left unmarked. Kellen’s eyes, usually laughing and dark brown, were tightly closed. There was no such reflex, she remembered from a seminar back in college. When one died slowly, yes, the eyes would close, as in sleep. But in the case of a sudden, violent trauma, they should have remained open. She frowned. Did coroners close eyes? Maybe the killer did it to be nice. Or maybe she remembered wrong.
    No, Lemaster was saying, and Julia noticed that the photographs were back in the folder. Neither my wife nor myself would have any idea who would do such a thing, he said, lightly mocking their cadences.
    Julia waited again for them to ask where the Carlyles were last night at whatever hour the thing occurred.
    Instead, Chrebet asked about what the economist had been working on. Lemaster said that if they meant his scholarship, they should ask his colleagues in the department. The detectives waited. He said that he himself had no idea, and glanced at his wife, who echoed the theme. They asked what Professor Zant might have been working on besides his scholarship, and, again, the Carlyles could offer no assistance: thus pronounced Lemaster, speaking for both.
    A signal passed between the detectives. Oh, yes, we almost forgot, one more thing. Would you, Mrs. Carlyle, be able to characterize for us your relationship with the decedent?
    Relationship?
    Weren’t you once close and personal friends?
    A speechless moment, only the detectives able to make eye contact with anybody else in the room. History piled up behind her, thick and strong. She recalled a face of quite seductive jolliness, a sparkling delight focused on her alone.
    Yes, we were,