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had an easy life, that was plain, but one thing it had taught her was something I lacked: patience. All she said when I walked into the agency and Tamara came out and introduced us was, “Thank you for seeing me. I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.” Diffident and deferential, too. Oh, yeah, she had me hooked already.
    We went into my office. She walked stiffly, as if her feet or maybe her back hurt. The connecting door to Tamara’s office was closed, but my partner is an inquisitive and sometimes rash young woman; I would not be surprised to find out later that she had an eavesdropping ear to the panel on her side.
    I said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Fentress,” when she and I were seated. The words had a hollow, awkward ring, as they always do when you say them to a stranger.
    â€œThank you. It was … a terrible shock. Ray was only home a week. Seven days, that was all we had after eighteen months apart. You know he was in prison?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œFor a foolish crime he committed while he was drunk, God knows why. There’s no doubt he was guilty of that. But what happened up north, what they claim he did there … no. No.”
    I didn’t say anything. Family members often staunchly believe their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, are innocent, no matter how serious the crimes or how much evidence there might be to the contrary.
    â€œHe didn’t do it,” she said again. “He didn’t kill that man Mears. Or shoot that poor dog, either. He loved dogs … we have one of our own.”
    â€œThe crime scene evidence says otherwise.”
    Vehement headshake: disbelief, denial. “It’s wrong, that’s all; it couldn’t have happened the way it looked. Ray never owned a handgun. A hunting rifle, yes, he used to go deer hunting sometimes, but not a handgun. He wouldn’t have one in the house.”
    Maybe that was because he’d never had need of one before. I could have said as much. I could also have told her how easily almost anybody, and particularly a man who’d just been released from prison, could buy a Saturday night special on the streets on short notice. Or reminded her of the fact that the forensic tests proved he’d fired the one found in his hand. But none of that would have swayed her, so I said nothing at all.
    She said, “Whatever Ray’s reason for going to see Floyd Mears, he didn’t bring a gun with him and it couldn’t have had anything to do with marijuana. Please believe me.”
    I said carefully, “Mrs. Fentress, it makes no difference whether I believe you or not. It’s strictly a police matter—”
    â€œHe had asthma,” she said.
    â€œâ€¦ How’s that again?”
    â€œRay. He had severe asthma. He didn’t smoke; he couldn’t stand to be in a room with anyone who did.”
    â€œWell … some asthmatics claim that marijuana doesn’t affect—”
    â€œRay wasn’t one of them.”
    â€œYou do know the investigating officers found a Baggie of it in his coat pocket? Three hundred dollars’ worth.”
    â€œSomebody put it there, the same person who put the gun in his hand.” When I made no comment, she said, “You think he might have picked up the habit in prison,” which was exactly what I was thinking. Cons in lockups like Mule Creek have more ways than you might think of obtaining drugs. “But you’re wrong. He never smoked a joint in his life—he couldn’t, I tell you. His asthma was so bad he had to carry an extrapowerful prescription inhaler to prevent severe attacks. That’s one of the reasons, the main one, we were planning to move.”
    â€œMove?”
    â€œTo Arizona or New Mexico, we hadn’t decided which. Someplace where the air is dry. Someplace where nobody knew he’d been in prison.”
    â€œWhen were you planning to