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I’d been quicker, maybe—” She began crying again.
    “One thing you can’t do right now,” the detective said, “now or ever, is blame yourself for anything.”
    “You survived,” said the partner. “Survive something like that, you’re a hero, plain and simple.”
    “But you don’t understand,” Nellie said. “We’re swimmers. We could have swum away. We could have swum all the way down the bayou.”
    “Swimmers?”
    And she began telling them about the swimming, how she’d been on the UNC team, how Johnny, as an undergraduate at Texas a few years before, had put up the third-fastest one hundred butterfly time in the nation, how they’d met in the pool. She went on and on, all this irrelevant stuff about Johnny and her, but suddenly there was nothing more important than getting it on the record. Nellie sat on the sofa in the old family room, blood on her T-shirt, and saw that everything about Johnny and her was made official. She probably would have even included the fact that she was pregnant, but she didn’t learn that until a few weeks later, and by then the case was solved.
    32
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    . . . .
    “What is it you want?” Johnny said, backing away, left arm around Nellie, turning slightly to shield her.
    Behind the bandanna, the man’s lips moved. “Money,” he said.
    “All right,” said Johnny. “You can have my money.” With his free hand, he reached into his right front pocket, where he kept his billfold.
    That left him with no free hands, and his chest exposed. The man stepped forward. Moonlight flashed on a long blade. Then came a horrible sound of steel on bone, in bone, through bone, and Johnny staggered.
    Nellie caught him. The knife slid free of Johnny’s body, still in the man’s hand; Nellie heard a faint hiss of air leaking from Johnny’s chest. But no blood, thank God. The man raised the knife. Nellie kicked out at him, an instinctive movement, but with all her strength.
    She hit him right on the knee. He grunted in pain. His leg buckled.
    He twisted around, and at that moment the bandanna slid partway down and she caught her glimpse of his face, at least the upper half: a white face, possibly round and fleshy, with pale blue eyes, almost colorless. Then headlights shone way down Sunshine Road, and the man raised the bandanna and ran, at first with a limp and then not, over to Parish Street and into the woods.
    “Johnny?” He was still leaning against her, but now started slipping down her body. She lowered him onto the path. “Are you all right?” she said, kneeling beside him, cradling his head.
    “I think so,” he said. That was when the blood came.
    C H A P T E R 5
    Pirate opened his Bible, read the following passage several times.
    His lips moved as he read and a whispery sound came from his mouth. He already knew these words by heart; this was more like harmonizing than reading.
    And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He also had seven sons and three daughters.
    Turned the captivity: Pirate had determined long ago that this was a way of saying God set Job free. He remembered a line from somewhere: A test. This is only a test. Was it from Job? He thought not, but couldn’t be sure. Pirate hadn’t been quite sure of things since that visit from the lawyer woman with the beautiful skin, her name 34
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    now forgotten. If it hadn’t been for her beautiful