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Olivia? Did the gun go off?”
    “I didn’t pull the trigger,” she insisted, her voice rising. “I didn’t.”
    Chris let his daughter sit in silence, her chest rising and falling. He scribbled notes on his yellow pad, but he was really thinking about Olivia on a witness stand and how her story would survive on cross-examination.
    Answer: Not well.
    “Okay,” he asked softly, “what did you do next?”
    “I dropped the gun. I left. I was really upset with myself. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I just left.”
    “You didn’t take the gun with you?”
    “No, I never wanted to touch a gun ever again. I mean, I almost did it, Dad. I was this close. That was too scary.”
    “What about Ashlynn? What did she do?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Did you talk to her?”
    “No, we didn’t talk to each other. I left her there. That was it.”
    Chris watched the darting motions of her eyes. She was lying to him again. There was something more going on, something that Olivia was determined to hide. If it came to that, a jury was likely to think she was hiding the fact that she had fired the revolver.
    “Okay,” he said.
    He deposited his yellow pad in his briefcase and closed it. Olivia stared at him with a nervous half-smile, and he knew what anyone in the world would think, studying her expression.
    She looked guilty.
    “So what now?” she asked.
    “There’s a detention hearing in the morning, and I expect you’ll be released. I’m going to talk to the county attorney about the investigation and the charges. They’re moving fast. We need to slow them down.”
    “I didn’t pull the trigger, Dad,” she repeated. “I didn’t kill her.”
    “You said that already. I know you didn’t.” He thought of a question he hadn’t asked. An important one. “Do you know who did kill Ashlynn? Do you know what happened to her?”
    “I left, Dad. When I left, she was alive.”
    “That’s not what I asked you.”
    His daughter met his eyes, and he wished he could believe whatever she said. “No, I don’t know what happened.”
    “Okay.” Chris got up and kissed her on the head. “Take care, and don’t be scared. I’ll be back in the morning.”
    He turned to flag the guard, but Olivia stopped him by grabbing his sleeve. “Have you seen Mom yet?”
    “Not yet. I’ll stop over there tonight.”
    “There’s something you should know,” she said.
    “What?”
    Olivia hesitated. “I told her she should tell you, but she didn’t.”
    “Tell me what?”
    “Mom’s got it.”
    He stared at her, and he didn’t understand. Or maybe the truth was that he simply didn’t want to understand. He stood in frozen silence, as if he could postpone forever the next words out of his daughter’s mouth. She felt it, too, and she kept his arm tightly in her grip.
    “Mom’s got cancer,” she said.

3
    “M R. H AWK?”
    Chris heard someone calling his name, but the voice wasn’t enough to rouse him. He sat on a wooden bench on the first floor of the courthouse near the outside door. The tapping of rain had a hypnotic quality, and it lulled him out of reality. He thought about his ex-wife. Hannah, the ferocious athlete, a runner, a tennis player. Hannah, obsessed with organics and gluten-free foods. Hannah, whisper-thin, all muscle, healthy, passionate.
    Hannah did not have cancer. That was not possible.
    “Mr. Hawk?” the voice repeated.
    He dragged himself back into the present. An older man in a black trench coat stood in front of the bench. Water dripped from the fringes of his coat onto the oak floor. The man wore a gray fedora, which he removed to smooth his thinning silver hair. He wore rain-speckled heavy black glasses. He had a beard trimmed so neatly that he must have used tweezers to keep the lines precise. He was short, no more than five feet seven.
    “I’m sorry,” Chris told him. “Yes, I’m Christopher Hawk.”
    “Michael Altman. I’m the attorney for Spirit County. I believe you wanted to speak to