The Husband

himself had spoken to her the previous afternoon.
    "Do you know Ms. Farasand, Mitch?"
    "Yes."
    "She strikes me as a very efficient person. She likes your wife very much, thinks very highly of her."
    "Holly likes Nancy, too."
    "And Ms. Farasand says it's not at all like your wife to fail to report in when she's going to miss work."
    This morning Mitch should have called in sick for Holly. He had forgotten.
    He'd also forgotten to phone Iggy to cancel the day's schedule.
    Having triumphed over two professional killers, he had been tripped up by inattention to a mundane task or two.
    "Yesterday," Detective Taggart said, "you told me that when you saw Jason Osteen shot, you were on the phone with your wife."
    The car had gotten stuffy. Mitch wanted to open the window to the wind.
    Lieutenant Taggart was approximately Mitch's size, but now he seemed to be larger than Anson. Mitch felt crowded, in a corner.
    "Is that still what you remember, Mitch, that you were on the phone with your wife?"
    In fact, he had been on the phone with the kidnapper. What had seemed a safe and easy lie at the time might now be a noose into which he was being invited to place his neck, but he could see no way to abandon this falsehood without having a better one to use in its place.
    "Yeah. I was on the phone with Holly."
    "You said she called to tell you that she was leaving work early because of a migraine."
    "That's right."
    "So you were on the phone with her when Osteen was shot."
    "Yes."
    "That was at eleven forty-three a.m. You said it was eleven forty-three."
    "I checked my watch right after the shot."
    "But Nancy Farasand tells me that Mrs. Rafferty called in sick early yesterday, that she wasn't in the office at all."
    Mitch did not reply. He could feel the hammer coming down.
    "And Ms. Farasand says that you called her between twelve-fifteen and twelve-thirty yesterday afternoon."
    The interior of the Honda felt like a tighter space than the trunk of the Chrysler Windsor.
    Taggart said, "You were still at the crime scene at that time, waiting for me to ask a series of follow-up questions. Your helper, Mr. Barnes, continued planting flowers. Do you remember?"
    When the detective waited, Mitch said, "Do I remember what?"
    "Being at the crime scene," Taggart said drily.
    "Sure. Of course."
    "Ms. Farasand says that when you called her between twelve-fifteen and twelve-thirty, you asked to speak to your wife."
    "She's very efficient."
    "What I can't understand," Taggart said, "is why you would call the Realtor's office and ask to speak to your wife as much as forty-five minutes after, according to your own testimony, your wife had already called you to say that she was leaving there with a terrible migraine."
    Great clear turbulent tides of air drowned the alleyway.
    As Mitch lowered his gaze to the dashboard clock, a helpless sinking of the heart overcame him.
    "Mitch?"
    "Yeah."
    "Look at me."
    Reluctantly, he met the detective's gaze.
    Those hawkshaw eyes didn't pierce Mitch now, didn't drill at him as they had before. Instead, worse, they were sympathetic and invited confidence, encouraged trust.
    Taggart said, "Mitch...where is your wife?"

Chapter 54

     
    Mitch remembered the alley as it had been the previous evening, flooded with the crimson light of sunset, and the ginger cat stalking shadow to shadow behind radium-green eyes, and how the cat had seemed to morph into a bird.
    He had allowed himself hope then. The hope had been Anson, and the hope had been a lie.
    Now the sky was hard and wind-polished and a frigid blue, as if it were a dome of ice that borrowed its color by reflection from the ocean not far to the west of here.
    The ginger cat was gone, and the bird, and nothing living moved. The sharp light was a flensing knife that stripped the shadows to the lean.
    "Where is your wife?" Taggart asked again.
    The money was in the car trunk. The time and place of the swap were set. The clock was ticking down to the moment. He had come so far, endured so much, gotten so close.
    He had discovered Evil with an uppercase E, but he had also come to see something better in the world than he had seen
    before, something pure and true. He perceived mysterious meaning where he had previously seen only the green machine.
    If things happened for a purpose, then perhaps there was a purpose he must not ignore in this encounter with the persistent detective.
    For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. To love, honor, and cherish. Until