Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the seat, just for a moment, and listened to the wind moving over the surface of the reservoir. When Richard arrived back at the house an hour later, Anthony driving slowly through the open gate, the front of the property was already filled with quiet activity. Two unmarked cars sat near the steps. A pair of plainclothes officers stood by the front door. Detective Sandoval, a woman in her 50s with short gray hair and the patient watchful face of someone who had seen the worst of people and chosen not to be surprised by it anymore, was waiting for him on the front walk.
"She did not run," the detective said quietly as Richard stepped out of the car. "She did not call anyone. She was sitting in the garden room when we came in. She looked at us for a long moment, and then she said only one thing." "What did she say?" "She said, 'He told me he had done this before.' She said it twice as if she needed to hear herself say it. Then she stood up and put her hands behind her back without being asked."
Richard nodded slowly. He did not feel triumph. He did not feel vindication. He felt more than anything a deep and ordinary tiredness, the kind a person feels at the end of a long journey that should never have been necessary. They led Vivian out of the house a few minutes later. She walked between two officers, her head not bowed, but not raised. Her face neither defiant nor pleading. As she passed Richard on the front walk, she stopped for the briefest second.
She did not speak. She only looked at him. And in that look, he saw, for one strange and final moment, the woman she had been 26 years ago in a small chapel in Virginia holding his hand. Then she walked on, and the officers helped her into the car, and the car drove away. Richard stood on the front walk for a long time after it was gone. The case moved faster than any of them expected.