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evaluated. She came out a couple months later. As far as the death of her son goes, the police believe this is a done deal. That whoever did it is long gone and there’s no way to find them. Mrs. Christopher obviously doesn’t believe the police know what they’re talking about. She believes it wasn’t what it appears to be.”
    “Do you think she’s wrong?” I said.
    “I’m open to another view if there’s evidence to suggest it,” Marvin said.
    “This Cason Statler,” Leonard said. “He seems to believe her.”
    “Yeah,” Marvin said. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”
    “He seems solid enough,” Leonard said.
    “You just liked the way he looked,” I said.
    “If he’s that pretty, he’s honest, and noble, loyal, and trustworthy,” Leonard said.
    “That’s a lot of the Boy Scout oath,” I said.
    “He wears tight pants and has broad shoulders and is really nice-looking,” Leonard said, “so, I thought I’d give him some good attributes.”
    “I can show you some things in this,” Marvin said, tapping his folder, “that are definitely true. So let’s pretend this is our first day at school, and we’ve got our supplies in front of us, and one of those is a nice folder like this one, and I’m gonna be the teacher, and I’m gonna say, Shut up, and open ’em up.”
    We each opened our folder. There was a photo on top.
    “Damn,” Leonard said.
    The photo had been snapped near a run of water, and at first I couldn’t decide what water it was, and then I realized it was the creek that ran by the university at Camp Rapture, wound its way through a very nice park of pecan trees and oaks, and twisted on through the poorer part of town and went on to somewhere beyond my knowledge.
    Brett and I had actually gone over to Camp Rapture once to look at a used car. We ended up buying it. I drove our old car, and she drove the one we bought to that park to have a picnic. Brett knew the place and told me about it. I remembered it well. I even remembered that we had tuna sandwiches with bananas cut up in them, along with crushed potato chips. Something Brett came up with. I thought it was a terrible idea until I ate one.
    The park was along the edge of a hiking and jogging trail. The trail was wooded on both sides, and beautiful. There were wide spots with picnic tables, and there were big hickory and pecan trees there. We took a walk along the trail. There was a large Hoss apple tree near the edge of the creek. Its thick limbs twisted in unusual ways. We stopped next to it and kissed. The tree was in the photo.
    Near the tree, there was woman lying facedown by the side of the trail, not far from the creek. Her hair was dark as sin and her body was pale as bone and she was amazingly thin. Her ribs stuck against her flesh like the framework of a canoe. Her clothes, what looked like shorts, underwear, a bra, and T-shirt, were heaped nearby. All of her clothes were black. Including the underwear.
    “Shot in the back of the head,” Marvin said. “Name’s Mini Marchland. She was on her last outing with Ted Christopher, Mrs. Christopher’s son. Turn your page, class.”
    I lifted up the photo and placed it aside. There was another. A man lying dead on the trail with his face turned to the side. The creek was not visible. He was wearing black jogging shoes, jogging pants, and a dark green T-shirt.
    “When did this happen?” I asked.
    “Two years ago,” Marvin said. “The couple had gone jogging, and when their car was found in the park driveway, and no one came to claim it, people went looking. The bodies lay there for half a day maybe.”
    “On a jogging trail?” I said.
    “That day, the only two people feeling like they needed to be physically fit were these two. They would have ended up better had they sat on the couch in front of the TV at home and ate cheese doodles and sniffed glue.”
    I looked at some of the other photos. They were more of the same at closer and different angles. There