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half.
    “Your father’s watch,” Douglas said, too long in this business to gloat over his own cleverness. “It was selfwinding. The jeweler tells me it will run for thirty-six hours after the person wearing it stops moving. We counted backward.”
    I thought back to my father’s watch, trying to remember if it had a date function.
    “Was he shot?” I asked.
    “In the head,” the DA told me. “Twice.”
    I remembered the candy striper shirt over my father’s head, the pale curve of exposed jawbone. Someone had covered his face after killing him, an unusual act for a murderer.
    Mills stopped in front of the wide windows that looked across Main Street at the local bank. A light rain fell and thin gray clouds covered the sky like lint, but the sun still shone through, and I remembered my mother and how she always told me that rain and sun together meant that the devil was beating his wife.
    Mills planted herself on the windowsill, arms crossed, the sky behind her darkening as the clouds thickened. The last sunlight disappeared, and I guessed that the devil’s wife was down and bleeding.
    “We’ll need to examine Ezra’s house,” Douglas continued, and I nodded, suddenly tired. Douglas paused, then went on. “We’ll also need to check his office. Go through his files and find out who might have reason to hold a grudge.”
    This brought my head up, and suddenly it all made sense. Ezra was dead. The practice was mine, which meant that Douglas and the cops needed me. Letting law enforcement paw through a defense attorney’s client files was . . . well, it was like letting a defense attorney enter the crime scene. If I refused, they’d need a warrant. There would be a hearing and I would probably win. Judges were loath to undermine the attorney-client privilege.
    I realized then that the DA had figured this out before calling me to his office the day before, and that made me ineffably sad. Quid pro quo is an ugly thing between friends.
    “Let me think on that for awhile,” I said, and Douglas nodded, tossing an enigmatic look at Detective Mills.
    “We found the slugs,” he said. “Both of them in the closet. One in the wall, one in the floor.”
    I knew what that meant, and doubted that Ezra had entered the closet voluntarily. He’d been ordered there at gunpoint. The first shot had caught him standing, passed through his skull, and embedded itself in the wall. The second shot had taken him lying down. The killer had wanted to make sure.
    “And?” I said.
    Douglas looked again at Mills and started tugging on his right eyebrow.
    “We don’t have full forensics yet, but they came from a three-fifty-seven,” Douglas said, leaning forward in his chair, looking as if the movement hurt his ass. “We checked the records. Your father had a three-fifty-seven revolver, a stainless Smith & Wesson.” I said nothing. “We need that gun, Work. Do you know where it is?”
    His right hand came up again, working at the eyebrow. I thought very carefully before I spoke.
    “I have no idea where that gun is.”
    He leaned back and put his hands in his lap.
    “Look for it, will you? Let us know if you find it.”
    “I will,” I said. “Is that it?”
    “Yeah,” Douglas said. “That’s it. Just get back to me on those files. We’ll need to get access, and I’d rather not bother the judge.”
    “I understand,” I said, and did. I stood up.
    “Just a second,” Mills said. “I need to talk to you about the night your father disappeared. There are a lot of unanswered questions. There may be something of value.”
    The night Ezra disappeared was the same night my mother died. It was not an easy subject for me. “Later,” I said. “Okay?”
    She looked at the district attorney, who said nothing.
    “Later today,” she responded.
    “Fine.” I nodded. “Today.”
    Douglas kept his seat as Mills opened the door.
    “Stay in touch,” Douglas said, and lifted his hand as Detective Mills closed the door in my