“Oh, it’s personal,” Sam told him. “Personal to the killer, but not to the victim. We know that he came totally prepared to kill that night, but he wouldn’t have known who would be coming out here. I think what mattered was that he was able to kill that night in the manner he’d prepared for. I don’t believe it mattered to him who his victim was.”

“You think he would have killed whoever came out back?” Bob frowned.

Sam nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“But why? You think this guy has an ax to grind with someone here?” Bob was clearly shaken and confused. “We do good things. We feed hungry people. That’s all we do here. Why would someone want to hurt someone-anyone-here?”

“I can’t answer that yet,” Sam said.

“Yet?” Coutinho raised an eyebrow. “You think you will find the answer?”

“If I look in the right place, chances are I will.”

“You sounded pretty sure of yourself back there,” the detective said after they’d said their good-byes and were back in the car.

“It’s all a matter of interpreting the evidence, of paying attention to what the killer is saying.” Sam rolled down his window and rested his right arm. “And no, right now, I don’t know what he’s saying. Right now, I don’t hear him at all.”

“Well, you be sure to let me know when you do.” Coutinho turned the key in the ignition. “What time is your appointment with Lynne Walker?”

Sam glanced at his watch. “In about ten minutes.”

“You’re going to be a little late.”

They rode in silence for several minutes. Finally, “You have any ideas on why Pilgrim’s Place?”

“No. It could be there’s a connection to the killer. Like maybe he ate there on a regular basis at one time. Maybe someone there pissed him off.” Sam sighed. “Or maybe this guy just got up that morning and said, ‘I think I’ll kill someone today’ and went off looking for a place where he could find a victim.”

Sam caught the sharp glance the detective gave him, so he added, “And no, I’m not being a smart-ass. I don’t know why he did what he did because I don’t know him.”

There was another period of silence, during which Coutinho pulled up in front of a pale yellow bungalow and turned off the engine.

“Maybe I’ll try looking at this from a different angle,” he told Sam. “We’ve been looking for a connection between the killer and the victim. Maybe the connection is to the facility. Maybe we’ll take another look at the regulars and the former regulars. Arnie can probably help me out there.”

Sam nodded. “Sometimes you just have to step back and look at things from a different viewpoint. The bottom line is to find out what happened.”

Sam got out of the car before the detective could respond. The front door of the house opened, and a woman in her midforties stood on the top step. As the two men approached, the woman extended her hand first to Coutinho.

“Chris, it’s good to see you again.”

To Sam, she said, “Detective DelVecchio. I’m happy to meet you.”

Sam took her hand and noticed that it trembled. He figured it had to be hard for her to be still dealing with the details of her husband’s death, all the questions and no answers. He hoped to make this as quick and painless as possible, but looking in her eyes, he realized that painless was a long shot. Quick was probably doable.

“The kids are all with their grandparents this week,” she explained as she showed them into the living room. “When they’re all here and they’re loud and fighting, you wish for just a little bit of peace. Then they all leave at the same time, and the silence rips you apart.”

She gestured for them to take seats on the sofa as she sat on a dark blue wing chair that looked as if it had survived several of those fights she’d mentioned.

“How many children do you have?” Sam asked, even though he knew there were four Walker offspring.

“Three boys and a girl. The youngest is eight. Ryan.” She turned to the detective and added, “He was the one who answered the door the day you came to…”

“I remember.”

“May I offer you anything…” she said. “Coffee?”

“Nothing, no thank you,” Sam replied. “I just wanted to stop in to meet you while I’m here in Lincoln.”

“Will you be going to Pilgrim’s Place?”

“We just came from there,” he told her.

“Ross and I used to look forward to our Tuesday nights there. Now I can’t even drive into that part of town without getting an anxiety attack.” Lynne Walker shook her head from side to side. “I don’t understand it. I will never understand it. My husband was a good man. A great father, a wonderful husband. How someone could hate him enough to do this terrible thing…”

“I am very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Walker.” Sam felt like a hypocrite uttering those clichéd words. After Carly’s death, he’d heard that same phrase repeated over and over until he thought he’d punch the next person who uttered it, and now here he was, uttering those same words to someone else.

“Do you know what it’s like to have someone you love murdered?” Lynne Walker’s question took him completely offguard, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly, until she repeated it. That she was looking directly at Sam made it clear she was addressing him.

“Ahhh, actually, yes. Yes, I do, Mrs. Walker.” He felt his skin flush red, and his throat began to close. He cleared it, then nodded slowly.

“May I ask…?” She appeared as flustered at his response as he’d felt at the question. It was obvious she’d anticipated a “No.”

“My wife.” Sam could feel Chris Coutinho’s eyes on him but couldn’t bring himself to turn to look at the detective. Talking about himself had always made Sam feel vulnerable. Talking about Carly made him want to walk away.

“I’m so sorry.” Lynne Walker reached out to him and squeezed his arm. “Do you have children?”

“No.”

“How long has it been?”

Days. Hours. A lifetime. How do you measure the time between the last time you said good-bye and now?

“Three years.” Three years, two months and four days.

“Ross has been gone almost half as long,” she murmured. “Did they ever find your wife’s killer?”

“Yes.” He sat more stiffly than he’d like, but didn’t seem able to relax. In the past, Sam had been spared direct dealings with the grieving families. He had rarely had to deal with the heartache, and was finding he wasn’t very comfortable with this aspect of his new job. He had yet to become comfortable with his own heartache. “He’s in prison appealing his death sentence.”

“Then you understand completely,” she said softly. “What it’s like…”

“I do, yes.” Sam tried to cut her off, afraid she’d keep talking about it. He didn’t want to talk about his own loss. Right now, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to talk about hers, but he had a job to do.

“I think it’s even harder on the children. They really have no conception of good and evil, of life and death.” She paused, as if reflecting. “I suppose that’s no longer true. They understand now how quickly things can change.”

“It’s a tough lesson for anyone to learn,” Sam told her.

“Indeed it is.” Lynne Walker cleared her throat. “If I could think of anything that could help you, believe me, I’d do it. I lay awake at night, trying to think back on anyone who Ross might have had words with, or anyone who might have a reason to dislike him, but I swear, I can’t think of a soul. He wasn’t confrontational and he disliked conflict. Went out of his way to compromise and to avoid hurting anyone else’s feelings. So I can’t think of anyone.”

Her eyes began to fill. “I’ve thought back to every single person I remember seeing at the mission, going as far back as the first week we were there. I can’t think of one single instance where there was any kind of adversarial conversation that involved my husband, or one time when he had something negative to say about anyone.” She looked at Sam and shrugged. “People liked Ross. They gravitated to him. I can’t think of one single reason why someone would want to kill him.”