"No, I don't mind," I said.

"As long as you're careful, Lucy, that's what matters to me." Wesley and I boarded a prop plane that made too much noise for us to talk in the air. So he slept while I sat quietly with my eyes shut as sunlight filled the window and turned the inside of my eyelids red. I let my thoughts wander wherever they would, and many images came to me from corners I had forgotten. I saw my father and the white gold ring he wore on his left hand where a wedding band would have been, but he had lost his at the beach and could not afford another one. My father had never been to college, and I remembered his high school ring was set with a red stone that I wished were a ruby because we were so poor.

I thought we could sell it and have a better life, and I remembered my disappointment when my father finally told me that his ring wasn't worth the gasoline it would take to drive to South Miami. There was something about the way he said this that made me know he had never really lost his wedding ring. He had sold it when he did not know what else to do, but to tell Mother was to destroy her. It had been many years since I had thought about this, and I supposed my mother still had his ring somewhere, unless she had buried it with him, and maybe she had. I could not recall, since I was only twelve when he had died. As I drifted in and out of places, I saw silent scenes of people who simply appeared without invitation. It was very odd. I did not know why it mattered, for example, that Sister Martha, my third-grade teacher, was suddenly writing with chalk on the board or a girl named Jennifer was walking out a door as hail bounced on the churchyard like a million small white marbles. These people from my past slipped in and vanished as I almost slept, and a sorrow welled up that made me aware of Wesley's arm. We were touching slightly. When I focused on the exact point of contact between us, I could smell the wool of his jacket warming in the sun and imagine long fingers of elegant hands that brought to mind pianos and fountain pens and brandy snifters by the fire.

I think it was precisely then I knew I was in love with Benton Wesley. Because I had lost every man I had loved before him, I did not open my eyes until the flight attendant asked us to put our seats in the upright position because we were about to land.

"Is someone meeting us?" I asked him as if this were all that had been on my mind during our hour in the air.

He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were the color of bottled beer when light hit them a certain way. Then the shadow of deep preoccupations returned them to hazel flecked with gold, and when his thoughts were more than even he could bear, he simply looked away.

"I suppose we're returning to the Travel-Eze," I next asked as he collected his briefcase and unbuckled his seat belt before we had been signaled that we could. The flight attendant pretended not to notice, because Wesley sent out his own signals that made most people slightly afraid.

"You talked to Lucy a long time in Charlotte," he said.

"Yes." We rolled past a wind sock having a deflated day.

"Well?" His eyes filled with light again as he turned toward the sun.

"Well, she thinks she knows who's behind what's happened to her."

"What do you mean, who's behind it?" He frowned.

"I think the meaning's apparent," I said.

"It's not apparent only if you assume nobody is behind anything because Lucy is guilty."

"Her thumb was scanned at three in the morning, Kay."

"That much is clear."

"And what is also clear is that her thumb couldn't have been scanned without her thumb being physically present, without her hand, arm, and the rest of her being physically present at the time the computer says she was."

"I'm very aware of how it looks," I said. He put on sunglasses and we got up.

"And I'm reminding you of how it looks," he said in my ear as he followed me down the aisle. We could have moved out of the Travel-Eze for more luxurious quarters in Asheville. But where we stayed did not seem important to anyone by the time we met Marino at the Coach House restaurant, which was famous for reasons that were not exactly clear.

I got a peculiar feeling immediately when the Black Mountain officer who had collected us at the airport let us off in the restaurant parking lot and silently drove away. Marino's state-of-the-art Chevrolet was near the door, and he was inside alone at a corner table, facing the cash register, as everyone tries to do if he's ever been touched by the law. He did not get up when we walked in, but watched us dispassionately as he stirred a tall glass of iced tea. I had the uncanny sensation that he, the Marino I had worked with for years, the well-meaning, street-smart hater of potentates and protocol, was granting us an audience. Wesley's cool caution told me that he knew something was very off center, too. For one thing, Marino had on a dark suit that clearly was new.

"Pete," Wesley said, taking a chair.

"Hello," I said, taking another chair.

"They got really good chicken fried steak here," Marino said, not looking at either of us.

"They got chef salads, if you don't want nothing that heavy," he added, apparently for my benefit. The waitress was pouring water, handing out menus, and rattling off specials before anyone had a chance to say another word. By the time she went on her way with our apathetic orders, the tension at our table was almost unbearable.

"We have quite a lot of forensic information that I think you'll find interesting," Wesley began.

"But first, why don't you fill us in?" Marino, who looked the unhappiest I'd ever seen him, reached for his iced tea and then set it back down without taking a sip. He patted his pocket for his cigarettes before picking them up from the table. He did not talk until he was smoking, and it frightened me that he would not give us his eyes. He was so distant it was as if we had never known him, and whenever I had seen this in the past with someone I had worked with, I knew what it meant. Marino was in trouble. He had slammed shut the windows leading into his soul because he did not want us to see what was there.

"The big thing going down right now," Marino began as he exhaled smoke and nervously tapped an ash, "is the janitor at Emily Steiner's school. Uh, the subject's name is Creed Lindsey, white male, thirty-four, works as a janitor at the elementary school, has for the past two years.

"Prior to that he was a janitor at the Black Mountain public library, and before that did the same damn thing for an elementary school in Weaverville. And I might add that at the school in Weaverville during the time the subject was there, they had a hit-and-run of a ten-year-old boy. There was suspicion that Lindsey was involved…"

"Hold on," Wesley said.

"A hit-and-run?" I asked.

"What do you mean he was involved?"

"Wait," Wesley said.

"Wait, wait, wait. Have you talked to Creed Lindsey?" He looked at Marino, who met his gaze but fleetingly.

"That's what I'm leading to. The drone's disappeared. The minute he got the word we wanted to talk to him-and I'll be damned if I know who opened his fat mouth, but someone did-he split. He ain't showed up at work and he ain't been back to his crib." He lit another cigarette. When the waitress was suddenly at his elbow with more tea, he nodded her way as if he'd been here many times before and always tipped well.

"Tell me about the hit-and-run," I said.

"Four years ago this November, a ten-year-old kid's riding his bike and gets slammed by some asshole who's over the center line coming around a curve. The kid's DOA, and all the cops ever get is there's a white pickup truck driving at a high rate of speed in the area around the time the accident occurred. And they get white paint off the kid's jeans.