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forehead, he leveled his gaze at the two inspectors. “This really pisses me off. You guys know she was going to a counselor, right? Tell me, is that what you usually see with happy couples?”
    “Lots of couples go to counseling,” Abby said.
    “But they didn’t go as a couple,” Daniel countered. “Katie went by herself. She was trying to save the marriage, and he didn’t want any part of it.”
    “How have we not heard about that yet?” JaMorris asked.
    “Because she didn’t talk about it. She was working on it. Katie was a fighter and wasn’t about to give up on something she’d put so much effort into.”
    “Let me ask you,” Abby said, “how do you know this when your mother and father and sisters don’t seem to?”
    Daniel spread his palms. “What can I say? She didn’t confide in them. She did in me. We’re close. We were close. We are close.” Taking a deep breath, he blinked a couple of times, then continued, “Look, she’s the big sister, she’s Mom’s firstborn. She was going to present a good front to them—Mom and Dad—until there was nothing else she could do. She was happily married, goddammit. That was the story. A good mom, a loving wife. As long as she and Hal were living together, making a go of it, the story was that they were happy. Because what if she fixed it all up and things really were good again? She didn’t want Mom and the girls to harbor bad feelings about Hal, about how he’d made things tough for her.”
    The two inspectors shared a look. “So what was the problem?” Abby asked.
    After a slight hesitation, Daniel came out with it. “Have you guys heard anything about Patti Orosco?”
    JaMorris answered, “No. Who is she?”
    “She was Katie’s best friend until a couple of years ago, when she started hitting on Hal.”
    “And?” Abby asked.
    “As I understand it,” Daniel said, “they’re now an item. I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s pretty damn likely. He still sees her all the time. Katie knew that. He’d stop by her place coming home from work. He’d disappear for a while on the weekends. Katie could smell her perfume on him, but she never got solid proof. Maybe she didn’t want it, I don’t know. I told her she ought to hire a private eye, follow the son of a bitch around, that I’d even pay for it, but she didn’t want to do it. Still, every time she talked to me, she brought it up.”
    “She didn’t call him on it?” JaMorris asked.
    “No.”
    Abby wanted to know, “Why not?”
    “Same thing as with my family,” he said. “If she didn’t tell them something was wrong, then when things got better, she would have saved everybody a lot of pain, and everything could go back to normal.” He ran a finger under an eye, clearly fighting his emotions. “She was just such a stupid believer that if you ignored certain things, even important things, they’d eventually go away. You didn’t need to have a confrontation about everything.”
    “Good luck with that,” JaMorris said.
    “Tell me about it.” Daniel scratched at a speck on the arm of his chair. Then, with apparent reluctance, he went on. “Besides, she felt she couldn’t accuse him without coming straight with him herself.”
    The inspectors waited.
    Daniel brought his hands together on the desk. “She had a thing with a guy a few months after Ellen was born. She was going through severe postpartum depression and made a mistake. At least that’s how she made it sound to me. But she decided she was going to end it and not mention it to Hal, and sure enough, it all worked out. So now, if he was screwing around, it wasn’t like she couldn’t understand what he might be going through. If she didn’t bring it up, maybe it would all go away, like hers did. Except, in this case, he wanted to get free, and he killed her.”
    “Over this Patti woman?” Abby asked. “Why would he kill her? Why not just get a divorce?”
    “Let me tell you about Katie. She