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that anyone would hear me over the racket that emanated from that small domicile. For some reason my intelligence failed in the presence of such tumult. I didn’t know how I could make them hear me. Anyway, who would want such a ruckus to turn its attention to him?
    I was ready to walk away when the front door opened. The sentry was a slack-shouldered, bone-thin brown woman with half-straightened hair. She wore a dress that had faded to such a degree that the pattern on its bluish fabric had become indistinct. The repeated images might have been fleeing birds, dying flowers, or once solid and specific forms driven to madness by the dozen leaping, screaming, fighting, and very, very ugly children that inhabited the Tarr household.
    “Yes?” the poor woman whined. Her shoulders sagged so far down that she most resembled a building that was in the process of collapse.
    “Mrs. Tarr?”
    For some reason the sound of my voice brought complete silence to the war-torn household.
    The beady-eyed brood of unsightly children peered at me as if I was to be their next target, one war over and another about to begin.
    I felt the beginnings of panic in my diaphragm. There were at least two sets of unattractive twins in the litter. Not one was under two or over the age of eleven.
    “Yes,” the careworn medium-brown woman said. “I’m Meredith Tarr.”
    I felt sorry for her. A dozen children and a husband murdered. As low as I was, I couldn’t imagine being in Meredith’s place. Just the thought of that many hearts beating under my roof at night, looking to me for health and succor, love, was beyond my comprehension.
    The silence extended into a long moment, thirteen pairs of hungry eyes boring into me.
    “My name is Easy Rawlins,” I said. “I’m a private detective hired to find out what has become of your husband.”
    Too many syllables for her mottled brown brood. One child screamed and the rest followed her into chaos.
    “Who hired you?” she asked. Her voice was strained and tired, but still she had to yell if she wanted to be heard.
    “A woman named Ginny Tooms,” I said to keep my fabrications simple. “She’s one of Raymond Alexander’s cousins and is absolutely sure that he didn’t kill Pericles.”
    “No, Mr. Rawlins,” Meredith Tarr assured me. “Ray Alexander done killed Perry. I know that for a fact.”
    It was hard for me to plumb the depths of this haggard woman’s heart. Maybe she was exhibiting hatred for my friend. But she was so exhausted that there was little meat left on her bone of contention.
    From the chaos of children a small eight- or nine-year-old emerged. This girl, though as ugly as her brothers and sisters, had a different look about her. Her yellow dress was unsoiled and her hair was combed. She wore red shoes of cheap but shiny leather.
    The child moved close to her mother, watching her.
    There’s a bright spot in every shadow, my aunt Rinn used to say.
    “What’s your name?” I yelled at the girl.
    She took her mother’s hand and said, “Leafa.”
    Leafa was Meredith Tarr’s little islet of light.
    “I don’t know who did what,” I said to Meredith. “I don’t owe Alexander a thing. All I know is I got paid three hundred dollars to spend a week lookin’ to find your husband. If he’s dead like you say, I intend to prove it. If he’s alive —”
    “He ain’t,” Meredith said, interrupting my lie.
    “If he is, I will prove that too. All I need is to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”
    My certainty set up against Meredith’s conviction that her husband was dead brought the sagging woman to tears. At first no one but Leafa and I noticed. The child hugged her mother’s thigh and I put a hand on her shoulder.
    “It’s my fault,” she sobbed. “It’s my fault. I kept on complainin’ that there wasn’t enough money to feed and clothe all these kids we got. He had two jobs and got another one on weekends. He was hardly evah home, he worked so hard. And