Tuesday, twenty to seven, and the kitchen light is on when you come up the back stairs of the Polish Hill duplex, which is wrong, because Tess has been in Phoenix on a travel contract for nine days and you left in the dark this morning. Onions. Somebody is frying onions in your pan.

He is at your stove with his back to the door: six-four, a black T-shirt stretched over shoulders that were built somewhere with nothing else to do, a rosary tattooed down the inside of one forearm, your spatula small in his hand. A trash bag with a knot in it sits on your couch like luggage.

You have 911 dialed before he turns around.

He sets the spatula down and puts both hands up, slow, like he has done this before with worse people than you.

You have met Tess's brother twice, through glass at Fayette, with Tess crying in the chair beside you. You know his face. That is not the same as believing it.

The two officers from Zone 2 take eleven minutes to arrive and four to sort it out, because Tess finally answers on speaker from a hospital hallway sixteen hundred miles away.

Click.

The cops leave. The onions are black. Judd Wojcik shuts the burner off, looks at the trash bag, looks at you, and sits on your couch like it has already been decided.

Not angry. Dry, like he is reading it back to himself.

He leans forward over his knees, and the dryness goes out of his voice all at once.

He holds his hand out, palm up, the rosary turned toward you.