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as the department’s thundering herd. Fidge and I were more than friends. Over time our minds had culled out our case failures and hard times, while retaining the shared laughs and accomplishments. We were tight.
    I strode up beside Fidge just before we turned into his office. We used to share one. Now he had a single. “I didn’t get a chance to ask you at the scene, how’s your wife?”
    “Just fine, Brenda keeps asking when you’re coming by. You know, she comes from a big family so when she cooks there’s always plenty.”
    “Sure. New haunts. New habits. The kids?”
    “Brock’s good. Betty, well, if you’ve never had the opportunity to listen to a fifteen-year-old practicing trumpet every night, you haven’t really lived.” We laughed.
    “Hug them all for me, will you? Tell Brenda I’ll be there for Sunday breakfast. If that’s not okay, let me know.”
    “Sunday it is, let’s say nine-thirty?” I nodded. “Coffee Matthew?” he asked while approaching the pot to refill his cup.
    “No thanks.” Then I said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll take a cup, black.” Fidge smiled and brought it over to me.
    We stood sipping around stern looks over the rims of our cups. I sat first. Fidge spoke first. “Have you been by lockup to see your neighbor?”
    “I just left there. Grungy place.”
    “It’s a jail, Matthew. You’ve been there plenty of times. But then, lately you’ve mostly been hanging out in bookstores and attending black-tie dinners.”
    “Not to mention dining on cold leftovers alone at my computer.”
    A picture of Brenda, Betty, and Brock, their eleven-year-old son, in his Little League uniform, sat on a gray soft-top table under the window. For me, the Fidgerys personified the modern Ozzie and Harriet Nelson family. I told Fidge that once and he said the Adams Family seemed the better comparison.
    “How’re your daughters?” he asked.
    “The girls are doing great. Rose, the older one is getting married soon. You’ll get an invitation. Amy is trying to decide between an average-sized guy with a Bill Gates’ brain and a muscle-bound athlete with one earring and several tattoos, who rides a Harley.”
    Fidge smiled and shook his head. “You’ve got to be shitting bricks. I know that craziness is ahead for me and Brenda. Betty is already eyeing the men folk in her world. Last Sunday I asked God why he let hormones grow up ahead of brains. How do we get these youngsters to understand the only really important thing about high school is graduating? That the rest they think is so important won’t mean squat in the big picture of their lives?”
    “One of life’s easy questions, with no easy answer, at least I don’t have one for you.”
    “And Helen?”
    “Ah, my ex. No easy answer there either. Last year she came close to remarrying, but didn’t. The girls are her life right now, along with keeping track of my doings. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the woman was listening to my life on the upstairs extension.”
    “Sounds like she still cares.”
    “If she did, she would have stood with me during my trial.”
    “Your attorney should have gotten her there.”
    “I told him to leave her alone, that coming or not was her decision.”
    “She was hurt. Confused. Angry. For that matter, so was I, but I also understood why you sent that guy to hell; your ex didn’t. But she ended up writing while you were inside, didn’t she?”
    “For the first couple years, she did. Then she stopped. I couldn’t figure her then. I still can’t. Hey, I feel silly sitting in your office while you stand.”
    Fidge didn’t move. After taking another drink of his coffee, he said, “You know I can’t discuss this case with you.”
    “I understand, Fidge. I just came by so we could sit and look at each other, but you aren’t even sitting. Listen, I don’t believe Clarice did it. I got nothing except instinct working here, but, like I said, unless he died of an overdose of bed banging,