And what about Ben? In a remarkably short time, the boy sleeping beside him had put all his trust and faith in Chris. Ben looked to him for answers, for friendship, for support and security. Not financial security-Thora could provide that on her own-but for the feeling that there was a man twice his size ready to stand between him and any danger that might come his way. And though some of the boy's admiration would fade during his teenage years, right now he looked up to Chris as though he were invincible. It was hard to believe that Thora would put that bond at risk to have an affair with a guy like Shane Lansing. Almost impossible, really. And yet…he had seen friends and patients cast off everything of value in a desperate grasp for something they believed they needed.

A vertical crack of yellow light appeared in the darkness. Then a shadow darkened the crack. Thora was at the door, looking in at them. Chris closed his eyes and lay still.

"Chris?" she whispered.

He didn't answer.

"Chris? Are you sleeping?"

No reply.

After several moments, Thora tiptoed in and kissed each of them on the forehead. "Good-bye, boys," she whispered. "I love you."

Then she slipped out and closed the door behind her.

Alex blinked and stirred at a groan of pain. She had been hovering in some purgatory between sleep and wakefulness. Her butt was numb from sitting in the hospital chair, which she'd pushed up to the side of her mother's bed. Her back ached because she had been lying for hours with only her head on the mattress, beside her mother's shoulder. Now faint blue light was leaking around the window blinds.

Margaret Morse really belonged in intensive care, but one week ago she had signed a DNR form, which meant that no extraordinary measures would be taken to save her life, should she crash. The cancer that had begun in her ovaries and grown undetected for years had now, despite three surgeries, spread unchecked to her liver and kidneys and had also disseminated into various parts of her abdomen. Her liver was swollen to twice normal size, and severe jaundice had set in. She also was skirting the edge of renal failure, which was unusual in ovarian cancer. Yet still she clung to life, well past the time that Dr. Clarke had told Alex to prepare for the worst. Alex could have told the oncologist a thing or two about her mother's resilience, but she'd kept silent and let events teach the doctor about his patient.

Alex had almost run off the road twice during last night's drive up to Jackson. Jamie's "homework" had taken over an hour, and only images of Chris Shepard leaving the park with his wife at his side had brought Alex back to alertness. Yesterday afternoon at the creek, she'd felt sure that the incriminating photo and the shock of Thora's lie had convinced Chris of her guilt. Yet one of Alex's father's lessons had come back to her during the drive. If a cuckolded male did not actually catch his wife in bed with her lover-if all he heard was gossip and innuendo-then a period of denial was inevitable. Sometimes even obvious evidence would be ignored, and IQ had nothing to do with it. Just as with initial reactions to death or terrible disease, the survival instinct enforced a period of emotional resistance to the dawning truth, so that adaptation to the new reality could take place without radical-and possibly fatal-reactions. Chris Shepard was obviously living through that period right now. The question was, how long would it take him to progress to anger?

Margaret groaned again. Alex squeezed her hand. Her mother was now taking so much morphine that periods of consciousness were less frequent than periods of sleep, and lucidity was a forgotten state. Twice during the night, Margaret had begged Alex to bring her father and sister into the room, then railed at their callous absence during her illness. With death so close, Alex had not found it within her to remind her mother that both her husband and eldest daughter had died in the last seven months.

Alex jumped at the chirp of her cell phone, which was tucked in her purse on the floor. Without letting go of her mother's hand, she stretched out her other arm and retrieved the phone.

"Hello?" she said softly.

"It's Will, darlin'. How's she doing?" Will Kilmer had stayed with Margaret until Alex arrived from Natchez, a demonstration of true devotion to a partner's wife, who would never know the difference.

"No better, no worse."

"Did she keep sleeping after I left?"

"Not all night, but she slept more than I did."

The old detective sighed angrily. "Damn it, girl, I told you last week you need to take a break from this case. Take a horse pill and sleep for twenty hours straight. That damn Rusk isn't going anywhere. But you're too big to listen to me now."

Alex tried to chuckle for Will's sake, but she couldn't manage it.

"Anyhow, I've got some news that's going to wake you up," Kilmer said.

"What is it?"

"Remember William Braid?"

"Sure. The husband of victim number five."

"I told you last week that I'd gotten reports about him drinking heavily."

Margaret began to snore. "Uh-huh. And you said his mistress left him."

"Right."

"Well, what's he done now?"

"Looks like he tried to off himself."

A shiver of excitement brought Alex fully awake. "How? When?"

"Last night, at home in Vicksburg. That's what the Vicksburg police think, anyhow."

"Go on."

"Braid was diabetic. Last night, or sometime between last night and this morning when his maid found him, he shot himself full of enough insulin to put him into a coma. A permanent coma."

"Holy shit," Alex breathed. "Could it have been an accident?"

"Possible, but Braid's doctor said it's unlikely."

"Holy shit. This could be what we've been waiting for. This could be our break."

"Could be," Will said in the cautious tone of an old hunter who has watched a lot of game slip from his grasp.

"It was guilt," Alex thought aloud. "Braid couldn't handle the reality of what he'd done to his wife."

"She died hard. Worse than most of the others."

"We need to find out everything we can about Braid's last few days. Do you have any operatives in Vicksburg?"

"Know a guy over there who does matrimonial work. Owes me a couple of favors."

"Thanks, Uncle Will. I'd be dead in the water without you."

"One more thing," Kilmer said. "I've got a guy willing to spend two nights at the Alluvian Hotel for you. His wife has always wanted to go up there and see the place. If you'll pay the cost of their room, they'll pay the rest."

"How much is the room?"

"Four hundred."

"For two nights?"

Will chuckled softly. "One."

Alex summoned a mental image of her last surviving bank account, then shoved it out of her mind. She had to do whatever it took to get Chris Shepard on her side. "Do it. I'll pay."

"Are you going back to Natchez today?"

"I don't have a choice. Shepard's my only chance."

"You making any headway there?"

"He'll come around. Nobody likes to find out their whole life is a lie."

Will sighed in agreement. "Tell your mama I'll be by sometime today."

Alex looked at her mother's sagging face. Her mouth hung open, and drool ran steadily onto the pillow. Alex had the absurd impression that the fluid in the IV bag was being drooled out of her mother's mouth at exactly the same rate that gravity was pushing it into her veins. "I will."

"Hey, little girl…you okay?"

"Yeah. I just…I'm sitting here looking at Mom. And I can't believe someone would intentionally do this to another person. Much less a person they once loved."

She heard the raking sound of Will's emphysema. When he spoke again, it was in the voice of a cop who had put in twenty years with his eyes wide-open. "Believe it, darlin'. I've seen human beings do things God couldn't create a bad enough hell for. You look out for yourself, you hear? You're the last child your daddy left on this earth, and I don't want you throwing your life away trying to avenge the dead."