He asked how bank records could establish a pattern.

He asked what kind of evidence a court needed to void a fraudulent conveyance.

At the time I had thought he was an anxious old man protecting himself against imagined threats, and I had answered gently, thoroughly, the way you reassure someone you love.

I understood now, too late to tell him I understood, that he had not been anxious and the threats had not been imagined.

He had been conducting an interview.

He had been assembling a weapon, and he had been teaching the one person he trusted how to fire it.