“You would let him go to prison to satisfy some grudge you have carried since you were fifteen?”

“I already signed the statement,” I said.

Arthur stared at me through the iron bars, his face dark in the shadow of the gate post.

He did not speak for a long moment, his chest rising and falling under his canvas coat.

“You will regret this, Mara,” he said.

He turned and walked down the concrete steps toward the street, his heavy boots clicking against the pavement until the sound faded into the traffic.

By ten o’clock, the blue lights of a patrol car flickered against the brick walls of the corner drugstore.