Chapter 4: Number Three Slip

The cold was so hard it had a sound.

The ice out on the lake was cracking in the dark, long groans and sharp reports that rolled in from a long way off.

He stood at the end of the rock with his back to me, bareheaded, in the long coat.

I knew that coat.

I had seen it under a sodium lamp.

"Go back inside," he said, without turning around.

"It's three degrees."

"I know what the temperature is," I said.

I walked down the rock to where he stood and stopped an arm's length away.

The ice stretched out in front of us, gray under a thin moon.

"You come here every night," I said.

"Since the wedding?"

"Since the second," he said.

"Of December?"

"Yes."

"So you do look at the water," I said.

His shoulders moved.

He did not answer.

I took the pad out of my coat pocket, because my hands needed something to do, and held it at my side.

"I'm going to tell you what I saw," I said.

"I'm going to say it the way I'd read it back in court, and you can tell me where I'm wrong."

"Nadia," he said.

It was the first time he'd said my name, and I did not like how it sounded in his mouth.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm not asking for permission."

I said it into the wind.

"On the second of December, a Tuesday, I left the courthouse annex at eleven-sixteen.

"I took the ore dock lot because it is shorter to my car, and because nobody is ever there at night.

"At eleven-twenty-two I was at the head of the number-three slip.

"There was a sodium lamp, and under it two men.

"The one in the dock jacket was older, white mustache, heavy, standing on his own feet but badly.