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could have done this. He can’t accept the possibility. His dad might be a loud, boisterous man, and at times a bully, and yeah, he has a bad temper, but so do a lot of other men in the neighborhood. How many of them kill their wives? And yeah, his dad sometimes drinks too much, and many times throws away more money on the horses than they can afford, but he brings home a steady paycheck as a plumber and doesn’t seem to fight any more with his wife than what Bill observes with his friends’ parents, although he knows his mom always tried to keep them from fighting in front of him so maybe things were a lot worse when he wasn’t around. But still, he has to think his dad cared about his mom, even with how cruel he could act. Especially when drunk. The nasty cracks he made about his mom’s weight and how she was starting to look like an old hag, which wasn’t at all true. She was only thirty-eight and at most twenty pounds heavier than she should’ve been. Bill doesn’t tell any of this to the police.
    His mom’s family is from Minnesota, and his dad’s family had all died off or moved away years ago. The detectives finish with Bill well before finishing with his dad, and since Bill is an only child and there’s no other family around they end up leaving him with a neighbor who had been good friends with Bill’s mom. It turns out that they question Bill’s dad, Frank Conway, until late into the night, and Frank doesn’t pick Bill up when they release him.
    It isn’t until the next evening when Frank knocks on the neighbor’s door to retrieve his son. When the door opens, Frank nods to the neighbor, barely looking at her or Bill. Standing in the doorway, he appears unkempt, his hair greasy and his skin color not right, and he seems smaller and less substantial to Bill than he could ever remember. Frank’s lips barely move as he tells his son to gather up his things, that he’s taking him home.
    When they leave the neighbor’s apartments, Bill tells his dad that he doesn’t want to go back into their apartment again. Frank stays silent until they approach their door.
    “We can’t move until the lease is up,” he says. “And I don’t want to hear any more whining about it.”
    That was the last thing he says to Bill that night. Frank ends up spending the rest of the evening sitting morosely in front of a TV set that stays turned off. Around midnight he stumbles off to his bedroom .

Chapter 9

    Thomas Roberson looked like he hadn’t had any more sleep the past few nights than Bill had been getting. Thin and bony with a small amount of scraggly hair combed over to cover his exposed scalp, he reminded Bill of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Like the aforementioned Scarecrow, Roberson had a cheery demeanor, and showed Bill a cheery smile when he offered him some coffee. Bill gladly accepted, telling the lawyer the higher the octane the better. Roberson poured two cups from a coffee maker that he had set up in his small, cluttered office, and handed Bill a chipped but cheerfully bright yellow-colored mug. Both men took their seats then, Roberson behind his desk, Bill taking the leather-padded wooden chair opposite him.
    “I’ve been reading your articles dealing with my client with interest,” Roberson said, his voice just as cheery as the rest of him.
    “I would’ve guessed you would.”
    Roberson nodded, then scratched high along his forehead before turning tired bloodshot eyes back to Bill. “That was a good stroke of luck finding that woman,” he acknowledged. “Amazing, really, having a daughter named Jenny murdered at age eleven. In your story you said this woman, Janet Larson, and Gail look a lot alike. Is that true?”
    “Could be sisters.”
    “Did she by any chance say anything else that you might’ve left out of your story that could be, uhh, useful?”
    “No, sorry, everything was in there.”
    Roberson nodded, his cheery smile cracking a bit as he cleared his throat and said,