“‘Maybe,’” Petrie repeats. “That’s all she said?”

You nod, watch his eyes, looking for any sign that he is not entirely familiar with the terrain into which you are leading him, has the slightest sense that here there be dragons.

“So you saw no real change in Diana’s behavior?” Petrie asks.

You realize that Petrie remains in his element, holds to the clipped, no- nonsense pace of movie script interrogations.

“But I saw a change in mine,” you tell him. “What kind of change?”

“A hint of fear.”

“What were you afraid of?”

“Delving any deeper.”

Petrie nods, and you know that you share this with him, this hesitance to look. You wonder how many shower curtains he has stood before, silent, frozen, not wanting to see what he knows must lay in bloody sprawl behind them.

“It’s a common failing in people like us,” you add. “People like us?”

“People who gather evidence, rely on evidence.”

You watch as he flips back a page and peers at his notes.

“But to be precise, it was your wife who first brought it up, isn’t that right?” he asks. “That something was going on in Diana’s mind.”

Abby’s voice sounds in your head. Like she didn’t believe it was an accident.

“Suspicion,” Petrie adds, as if to return to that same earlier moment in his notes. “About Jason’s death.”

You are suddenly standing by the pond. A little blond-haired boy pauses at the water’s edge. He is dressed in a white T-shirt and dark blue shorts, arms at his sides, unblinking eyes peering out over the water that laps at his toes, one tiny, shoeless foot rising to step in.

“That it might not have been an accident,” Petrie adds.

What is Petrie seeing now, you wonder, this neat, well-dressed detective. Which suspect in a lineup of faces is the object of his true suspicion? Which crime? Which death? What name will he mention next?

You wait for him to make his choice. You study his eyes and make a guess. But you are wrong.

“Cheddar Man,” he says.