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‘‘Come on in.’’

The apartment was worse than the hallway. And more crowded, as it contained the young woman who had answered the door, Beth, and one two-year-old and one three-year-old. The two kids were wearing plastic pants, but otherwise were naked. Just plastic pants. No diapers underneath. Dirty, bright-eyed, they were very near their mother. Beth sat at a Formica-topped kitchen table that had rusting chrome legs and three matching chairs with cracked vinyl seats. I could barely see the tabletop for the dirty dishes. I’d guess it was supposed to look like marble.

‘‘Hi, Beth.’’

‘‘Mr. Houseman,’’ she said, and took a long drag off a cigarette. She exhaled, blowing the smoke up into her bangs, but cooling her forehead a bit. ‘‘What did you guys do to Howie? I hear he’s dead.’’ She was doing cool well, but her hand was shaking.

‘‘How’d you hear that?’’ I asked.

Beth nodded toward the other young woman. ‘‘Her mom works at the doc’s office.’’

Enough for now. Pursue that part later.

‘‘That’s right. He’s dead, Beth.’’

She almost lost it, but didn’t quite. Another drag, and she was in control.

Beth has long, dark hair, and very large brown eyes. She looked up at me, steadily. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘He was shot, up near his patch.’’

‘‘Why’d you do it?’’

‘‘We think he shot first,’’ I said. I turned toward the other young woman. ‘‘Why don’t you take the kids out on the back porch, or someplace. Just for a few minutes.’’ She looked at Beth, who nodded in assent.

‘‘You go with Nan, guys . . . That’s okay, Mommy will be right here . . .’’

Between the two of them, they got the kids onto the porch in a minute or so. Beth came back, ran a hand through her hair, and finally asked us to sit. We did, careful not to lean on the table.

‘‘What do you mean, he shot first? That’s easy to say, now that he’s dead.’’

‘‘We have reason to believe that he did. The evidence,’’ said Hester, ‘‘points to it.’’

‘‘Who’s she?’’

‘‘Agent Hester Gorse, DCI.’’

‘‘You here because of this, right?’’

‘‘That’s right,’’ said Hester.

‘‘She’s okay, isn’t she?’’ Beth asked me.

‘‘You bet.’’

‘‘So, what happened?’’

‘‘Well,’’ I said, ‘‘he apparently was on his way to tend his patch, and he got surprised by one of our people. Shot at him. Our man shot back. Just like that.’’

‘‘Well, he saw you guys up there yesterday . . . God, are you telling me the truth that he shot at you guys? For sure?’’

‘‘Looks like it, kid. It really does.’’

‘‘But he saw you guys yesterday! Why didn’t you bust him then?’’

‘‘I don’t think our people recognized him. In fact, I know they didn’t, or they would have been here pretty quickly.’’

‘‘That’s right,’’ said Hester. ‘‘And they saw him at a distance, and couldn’t keep with him. Lost him.’’

‘‘Well,’’ said Beth. ‘‘Well, then, why did you have to go and kill him?’’

‘‘He shot at a cop, they returned fire.’’

She stood up, fast. ‘‘Oh, yeah, and I’m supposed to believe that!’’

‘‘You’re gonna have to,’’ I said, as evenly as I could.

‘‘Oh, sure!’’ She stabbed her cigarette out in a dirty paper plate. ‘‘You have any proof?’’

‘‘A cop was killed, too.’’

She sat back down.

Silence. ‘‘Not by Howie?’’

‘‘Maybe so.’’ I looked at Hester. Howie had a shotgun. Bill seemed to have been shot by a rifle. But could it have been a really close-range shotgun wound, with just enough spread to make it look like an auto rifle? Twelve-gauge double-ought buckshot contained nine balls of approximately .30 caliber. Or 7.62 mm. That would make something smaller, like #1 shot, about 5.56 mm. Maybe. I tried to think back, but wasn’t sure I could tell from the wounds. I still didn’t think that shotgun pellets would trim through a vest like that . . . and besides, it looked like jacketing material had been peeled off, and shotgun pellets weren’t jacketed.

‘‘It was either Howie or somebody with him.’’

But it wasn’t Howie. Maybe. Goddamn. It looked to me like Howie had shot at Bill and missed. Bill returned fire, Howie is gone. All right. Then, a different