Tonight, when Arthur threatened me on that recording to keep me silent, he handed her the last piece she needed.” Outside, red and blue light began to pulse against the sheer curtains, and the sound of tires on the wet driveway came up through the rain.

Arthur sank back into his chair and put his hands over his face, and he wept — not, I knew, out of any remorse, but out of the pure animal terror of a man discovering, at sixty-some years old, that the untouchable thing he had always been was, after all, touchable.

I want to say something about those two weeks I spent with Detective Delgado before that night, because it is the part of the story that never makes the dramatic version, and it is the part that actually won.

There was no confrontation in it, no shouting, no cleverness.