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vandals tore his store apart.”
    “Are you looking for him?”
    “Oh, yeah. There’s no way they’ll hold the hearing till we find him.”
    “Hearing?”
    “On DuPree’s status. Whether or not to free him.”
    “That won’t happen, will it?”
    “Freeing him?” Clay shook his head.
    Rain started falling, light at first. The lizard had vanished. Nell and Clay headed for home. The rain fell harder. They sped up, and soon were running, no longer holding hands. They’d been surprised by sudden squalls and ended up running like this before, but all the other times had led to lots of laughter, and feeling younger than they were. Thunder boomed in the north, and the full torrent, icy cold, caught them just as they reached the driveway. They hurried to the side door, sheltered from the rain under the breezeway roof. Clay unlocked the door, turned to her, water streaming down his face.
    “One other thing,” he said. “That locker belonged to Bobby Rice.”
    “Bobby?” she said. Bobby Rice had been Clay’s partner, back in his detective days, back when Johnny got murdered. “What does that mean?”
    30
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    “Don’t ask me,” Clay said. “But the envelope the tape came in is postmarked a month before the trial.” He went inside.
    A month before the trial? Meaning it had sat, undisclosed, in Bobby Rice’s file cabinet for twenty years? How was that possible? Or, if it was all a conspiracy, someone had made it look like the tape had been there all that time. These new facts, if they were facts, refused to line up in her mind, form a narrative. And there’d be no explanation from Bobby: he’d drowned in the flood, rescuing a baby from a rooftop in Lower Town, and lay in the Old Cemetery, integrated at last, not far from the town’s Confederate heroes.
    Nell stood in the breezeway, rain pouring down on both sides, splashing on the stone walkways. One of the first things she’d noticed about Clay, in those days after the murder when she began noticing things again, was how well he got along with Bobby. With Belle Ville’s racial history the way it was, that nice, easy, respectful way they had with each other caught her attention. A full year had passed before she spent even a moment with Clay that didn’t relate to the case, but what had come later, what they had now, had probably started then.
    The detective introduced himself and his partner, but Nellie, sitting in the family room at her parents’ house, didn’t catch the names. She couldn’t stop shaking and all the colors in the room were wrong, every tone darkened down.
    “Ma’am?” said the detective, turning to Nellie’s mother. “Maybe she’d like a cup of tea.”
    “Oh, yes,” said Nellie’s mom, and she hurried away.
    “I want this animal caught,” said Nellie’s father, his voice much too loud, loud and ragged. “Caught and lethally injected.”
    In dinner-table conversations, he’d always been an opponent of capital punishment. Nellie started crying.
    “Perhaps, sir,” said the detective, “we could have just a few moments alone with your daughter.”
    “Get us out of here much quicker,” said the partner.
    D E LU S I O N
    31
    “I’m her father. I’m also a physician. Can’t you see she’s in a state of—”
    “It’s all right, Dad.” She pulled herself together, at least to the extent of stopping the tears.
    Her father left the room, half closing the door. She could hear him pacing in the hall.
    “Mind if we sit down?” the detective said. Nellie noticed his voice—maybe because of the contrast to the way her father had been talking—deep but gentle.
    “Please,” Nellie said.
    The detective pulled up her father’s brass-studded leather footstool; the partner sat on the couch beside her, leaving plenty of space.
    They didn’t speak, just sat there, almost like churchgoers waiting for the service to begin.
    “I was so slow,” Nellie said.
    “Not sure I’m following,” said the detective.
    “If