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Then I did the events at her house. The fact that Lamar and Bud were serving a paper which she and Herman should have known was coming. That Herman had shot both the officers. Making it very clear that she, as far as we could tell, had not shot anybody. Not yet. I also threw in the fact that Lamar wanted to ask Herman some questions, as the DCI team had missed him the first time around. All matter-of-fact. All low-key.

Then I did the shooting of Rumsford, and saw her eyes flicker. I said that the angles hadn’t been fully described as yet but we believed that the first shot had come from the second floor and the second shot from the ground floor. Where she was.

At that point, she started to speak and I held up my hand before her attorney did. ‘‘Personally, I don’t think that was you.’’ I looked directly into her eyes. ‘‘But I don’t know for sure, so we won’t talk any more about that aspect of this.

‘‘But now,’’ I said, ‘‘I want to let you know some things you probably think we don’t know. Just to let you be aware . . .’’

I reached behind me and grabbed the handle of the old square-cornered attaché case my grandmother had given me when I went off to college. It looked pretty well worn, but it was still going. It was my favorite. I opened it and got out a couple of sheets of paper, as well as a small case containing my reading glasses. And a small pack of tissue.

‘‘Just a sec here,’’ I said, doing my little nervous act, ‘‘want to be able to read this.’’ I smiled apologetically. You have to be careful with this sort of tactic, because if you let it go a second too long, you lose their attention, and may never get it back.

I put the glasses on. ‘‘There!’’ I looked over them at Nola. Still had her.

‘‘Okay,’’ I said, looking at the paper in my hand. ‘‘We know your son Billy was with the ambush team, as an observer. But, hey, you knew that. What we also know is all about Borcherding.’’ I paused, looking over my glasses at her again. ‘‘You also know him as ‘Bravo6’, I believe.’’ That hit home.

I looked back down at the paper for an instant. You do that to make sure you’re the one initiating the eye contact. It’s a control thing.

‘‘That brings us,’’ I said slowly, ‘‘to Colonel Gabriel.’’

Nola’s anxiety became audible at that point. Just a little gasp, but it was there.

‘‘Well,’’ said Miller loudly, to break the spell, ‘‘I think we’ve heard about enough at this point . . . and we seem to be getting well on toward ‘menacing’ here . . .’’

Perfect. ‘‘Sure,’’ I said, removing my glasses. He’d just saved me. I really wasn’t sure of where I was headed after Colonel Gabriel. ‘‘If Nola has any questions . . .’’

She did. Now, you have to understand, she didn’t particularly like me, but I appeared to have my shit together, as they say. She didn’t like Miller, didn’t trust him for a whole bunch of reasons, none of which were true anywhere but in her own mind. She also thought he was in my pocket, which was very, very wide of the mark. But she had some pretty solid concerns. She was a very bright woman, but once the paranoid mind-set gets going, it’s virtually impossible to turn it around. A shame, in a way.

‘‘My Bill didn’t shoot anybody. Not in the woods. Not at the house. Nobody.’’

‘‘All right,’’ I said.

‘‘I didn’t either.’’

‘‘Okay,’’ I said. I believed her, especially since she’d placed Bill Stritch first on the list.

‘‘What Herman does is his business, but he never shot anybody in the woods.’’

‘‘Okay.’’

Miller started to speak, but she held up her hand. ‘‘Just a minute. He knows Herman shot Lamar and Bud. Nobody else could have.’’ She knew them by name. Well, so much for community policing. But she was right. There was nobody else who could have.

‘‘But we never shot the newspaperman.’’

‘‘I’ll buy that, Nola,’’ I said. ‘‘Herman’s carbine didn’t pack the punch, for one thing. But after you got that message, Gabriel sure had to.’’

She was quiet.

‘‘At least, one shot. I know he fired once. But he couldn’t be on both floors at the same