She would, by morning, and it would take a weight she had carried for eighteen months and set it down.

Chapter 15 — What the Investigation Found

The investigation moved with the speed that only a near-catastrophe commands.

Within the first day the broad shape of it was clear, and within two the shape had hardened into something a prosecutor could hold.

Maya was not a part of the official work and did not want to be; she gave her statement in a quiet room at the airport with Leo dozing against her side, and she answered what she was asked and offered nothing she had not been asked, because she had spent enough of her life around inquiries to know that the useful witness is the precise one.

But Davis told her the outline afterward, and the detectives confirmed it, and it was uglier and more ordinary than she had let herself imagine.