Just before noon he ministered to a believer dying in a hospital. It wasn’t easy to watch a person die. It challenged his belief in an afterlife when the present life so conspicuously and finally departed a body. And after such a long and tenacious fight. Life was the strongest thing he’d ever seen, but it was really kind of brief. It was there, then not. Really, totally, absolutely not. The dying person was a mother of three. Metastasized lung cancer, though she’d never smoked a cigarette in her life. Her children were too young to endure the scene, and the overwrought father was a blur of tears. He looked at David as if David’s God-the one to whom he and his family had reported for duty every Sunday of their lives-had specifically chosen his wife for this unfair and painful end. Which David fully believed and was exactly what he’d said about Janelle Vonn in his sermon on her death. That God chose some people to endure so that others wouldn’t have to. That we should love and respect these people.

The father looked at David like he wanted to kill someone.

When the children were ushered out David asked the young father if he would like to pray.

I hate your fucking God, he hissed, tears hitting the linoleum floor around him.

Let’s pray, anyway.

That afternoon David sat in with the Grove Drive-In Church youth league. It was Barbara’s group, Tuesday and Thursdays. Social, spiritual, and philanthropic. They’d recently delivered another two thousand dollars’ worth of new clothes to children in Tijuana. David sat at a table in the back of the meeting room, his presence simply to encourage them. Watched Barbara handle the details of a car-wash fund-raiser. Thought back to an earlier voyage to Tijuana and the way Miss Tustin Janelle Vonn had been so beautiful and unself-conscious as she handed a new red sweater to a skinny wisp of a girl with dusty black hair and a smile bright as a lightbulb. The rain was pounding on a leaky sheet-metal roof and David clearly remembered what Janelle had said to the girl.

Quiere a Dios con tu corazón, preciosa hermana. Pero lava tu pelo con tus manos.

Love God with your heart, pretty sister. But wash your hair with your hands.

David looked down at the little stack of worship pamphlets on the table. Yellow this week. Leftovers from the Tuesday youth league meeting. Picked one up and read the title of his scheduled sermon, “Integrity in a Relative World.” Had some nice moments in it, but not his best. A moot point, he thought, now that the Reverend Darren Whitbrend was set to take the stage. An acid test for the young minister. If Darren couldn’t move the congregation, then there was no point in further discussion.

He thought again of Janelle and the towering foolishness he’d committed by bringing her an early copy of just such a worship pamphlet. On that of all nights. Night of nights. He closed his hands around the pamphlet and closed his eyes and thanked the Lord for the trust of a brother and the love of a wife and the loyalty of a friend. And prayed that the vile Hambly of the FBI had only been bluffing, trying to get something for nothing.

When David opened his eyes Nick was standing before him. He looked tired and unhappy. Exactly how he had looked every day since taking his first homicide case. But dark around the eyes now and heavier and somehow dangerous.

David set the curled worship program back on the table, stood, and led Nick outside.

“Terry Neemal wants to talk to you,” said Nick. “I think he’s going to confess.”

“He told me he didn’t do it.”

“He’s been changing his story. Better take your own car, David. If he’s good for this, I might be there late.”

DAVID FOLLOWED NICK and Lobdell into the interview room. He’d never been in one before. He assumed the big mirror was really a window from the back. Like Whitbrend’s chapel. And that it was wired for sound and maybe video, again like the chapel. A green metal table and four chairs were bolted to the floor. The tabletop was marked with scratches and what looked like cigarette burns. A black plastic ashtray. Bright light overhead. David wondered how many sins had been confessed in here. How many tears had fallen. How many hearts had finally cracked.

“I’m going to stand in that corner,” said Nick. “Lucky’s got the opposite. We might butt in. If things get hot, that’s part of the deal. Stay cool. I’m taking off his cuffs. If he gets too close to you in a way I don’t like, I’m going to move him away.”

“Usually the less you say the more you get,” said Lobdell.

David stood there awkwardly, unsure what to do. He watched Nick go to his corner, open a briefcase, and bring out a manila folder. Nick arranged three large black-and-white photographs from the packinghouse on the table. Two of Janelle’s body. One close-up of Janelle’s face. All visible from wherever you sat or stood.

David stared down at them. Astonishing. Indescribable. He’d never seen anything like them before. It wasn’t the death. It was the evil. The cruelty and obscenity. His throat tightened and his stomach dropped.

Then Nick set out three of the old SunBlesst orange crate labels with the girl who looked like Janelle. Also visible from anywhere in the room. He remembered them flying all around Tustin in the Santa Ana winds one fall. Where had he gotten those old things?

Then three childhood pictures of Janelle. Janelle sitting on a tree stump. Janelle holding a guitar. Petting a cat on a porch.

Then David watched Nick go again to his corner and come back with a child’s stick horse. Happy little pony with a red felt tongue sticking out. Nick considered his tableau, then set the horse down diagonally amid the pictures.

“The horse was named Bobby,” said Nick. “Used to be Janelle’s. I’m trying to pry open Neemal’s heart any way I can.”

“You never know what’ll set them off,” said Lobdell.

“I’ve never seen pictures like these,” said David. He felt light-headed and nauseous. “They’re the most hideous things I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe you should sit down, David,” said Nick.

“Where?”

“Put your back to the mirror,” said Nick.

“Yes. Of course.”

David worked his way into the unyielding metal chair. Took a deep breath against the sudden throbbing in his head. He folded his hands on his lap. Fixed his eyes on the doorknob across the room, well above the plain of horror and innocence laid out on the table in front of him.

Neemal seemed dwarflike in his baggy orange jumpsuit. The hair on his shaven head and face had grown back enough to cast shadows. The big mustache drooped. His tawny tan eyes settled on David as Nick took off the handcuffs. Neemal smiled at him. David saw the black mark on his hand and arm. Like a tract of burned land, he thought.

Rubbing one wrist, Neemal looked down and saw the photographs and labels and the stick horse. Stopped rubbing. Walked around the table, studying the pictures.

When he went behind David, David saw Nick ease in his direction. Heard the movement of Lobdell in the corner behind him.

Nick clicked on a tape recorder and spoke quickly. “This is Investigator Nick Becker and Sergeant Al Lobdell, and the jail chaplain, the Reverend David Becker. The suspect is Terry Neemal, who requested this interview and the presence of the Reverend David Becker. It’s Thursday, October seventeenth, nineteen sixty-eight.”

David turned to see Lobdell leaning back in the corner, arms crossed and necktie crooked and his gut snugged into a wrinkled white shirt.

Neemal got back to where he started. “I don’t understand the horse.”

“Its name is Bobby,” said Nick. “It was Janelle’s.”

Neemal nodded, looking down at David. “God forgives this?”

David had no idea whether God forgave this or not. Why should He?