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breaking news, have to be filed by six, no exception. I wanted to be considerate to Nancy’s grieving sister, but I had to find a way to gracefully exit this conversation.
    “I need to know if I can trust you, Mr. Ross,” Jeanne said.
    “And why is that?”
    “Because I have something I think you should investigate,” she said.
    “Okay.”
    Another pause. Then:
    “It wasn’t an accident.”
    “You mean Nancy’s death?”
    “Yes. It wasn’t an accident. I believe Nancy had reason to fear for her life. I believe someone killed her.”
    “What makes you think that?”
    “She’s my sister. Sometimes sisters just know things about each other.”
    “Yes, but do you have any proof?” I asked.
    “No,” she said. Then, after a pause, she added: “And yes.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “I was the last person to talk to my sister before she died. She called me at ten on Thursday night—that’s one in the morning, her time. Mr. Ross, my sister went to bed at seven-thirty and woke up at three-thirty. She never had trouble sleeping like that.”
    “So what was bothering her?”
    “She was having … problems at work.”
    “What kind of problems?”
    The line went quiet again, causing me to press my ear to the phone. From somewhere in the background, I heard a door open. Jeanne drew in her breath sharply.
    “Jeannie, whatchya doin’?” I could hear a male voice inquire.
    And at that, Jeanne promptly hung up.

 
     
    There had been a dent in his SUV, a roughly human-sized crease just to the right of the midpoint of the hood. That Friday morning, he spent an hour at one of those do-it-yourself car wash places making sure there were no traces of blood, skin, or muscle hanging stubbornly into one of the crevices.
    Then he took the car to a local body shop, to a place that would do the work quickly and without comment. He explained he hit a deer while driving through South Mountain Reservation. The only question he received in reply was whether he had gotten some fresh venison steaks out of the deal. No, he said, the deer got away.
    Then he started worrying about his own getaway. He knew all it would take was one citizen with quick eyes looking out the window at the wrong moment. For as fast as he was going, for as dark as it was, for as suddenly as it all happened, he still couldn’t rule out the possibility he had been spotted.
    So that afternoon, he set up down the street from his house, where he could see the traffic coming in and out. And he waited. He waited for an unmarked car with a grim-faced detective to roll past on the way to his house. He waited for someone from work to phone and say the cops were there and asking questions. He waited for his lawyer to call and say there was a warrant for his arrest.
    But none of it happened.
    He relaxed a little when the story appeared on the Eagle-Examiner’ s Web site later in the day on Friday. The Bloomfield police were already begging the public for information, which was a good sign. It meant they had canvassed the neighborhood, come up empty, and were now tossing up one last Hail Mary before they completely forgot about this case and moved on to one they could actually solve.
    He relaxed more when the same small, empty story appeared in the paper Saturday morning. He had worried the death of an employee might cause the paper to react more strongly, to run larger stories that would keep the news in the public’s eye—and therefore in the cops’ eyes. But the paper had treated it with yawning indifference. Ultimately, she was just another papergirl, nothing special after all.
    Two days later, he went to the wake. He went to keep up appearances, because people would expect to see him there. But he also wanted to monitor the conversations. If people were still buzzing about the accident, talking about it like it was a suspicious event, then he’d know he had to keep his guard up.
    He was momentarily concerned when he became aware there was a reporter at the