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“What time did you get home, Mr. Comstock?” Harry Cook asked.

“Uh, I guess around five,” Wendell said.

They were standing in the upstairs bedroom. Wendell’s wife’s clothes were on the bed.

“And you’d been where, again?”

“I’d driven over to Brattleboro. Got a friend there, he’s thinking of making an offer on a house, and he wanted me to have

a look at it.”

“You do house inspections?”

“No. But I have a background in construction. Not lately, and I’m not the world’s biggest expert, but I know a little.”

“What’s this friend’s name?”

“Ron. Ron Hess.”

“I’m going to need a number and address for him.”

“Yeah, sure, I understand. You have to check my story.”

Harry smiled wryly. “I’m not suggesting anything, Mr. Comstock. But I need it for the report. What time did you leave this

morning?”

“After nine. Nine thirty, I guess.”

“How long did it take you to get to Brattleboro?”

“About an hour. I stopped along the way and got a coffee. Nadine usually makes—Nadine usually made the coffee in the morning,

and she hadn’t yet and I was ready to go, so I said I’d get some along the way.” He shrugged. “And a donut.”

“Where was this?”

“At Dunkin’s. You want to know which one?”

Harry nodded, and Wendell told him.

“So you got to your friend’s around half-past ten?”

“Right. And then we went to look at the house, and we had some lunch and a couple of beers at his place, and then I left a

little after four.”

“Okay. And got home around five. Tell me about that.”

“The front door wasn’t locked. We don’t usually lock the doors except at night, or if we’re going out, like, shopping. When

Nadine’s here through the day, even if I’m not home, she wouldn’t lock up. I mean, this is a good neighborhood. We’ve never

had any kind of trouble.”

“Right.”

“So I parked the car and came in the front door and I called out for her, saying I was home, and she didn’t answer, so I thought

maybe she was downstairs or in the backyard. I was coming through the kitchen when I noticed the power was out.”

“How’d you discover that?”

“Well, the little digital clocks on the stove and the microwave were blank, and then I flipped on a switch and the lights

didn’t come on, so I figured we’d had a power failure. You know how, when that happens, you think, is it just my house or

the whole street.”

Harry glanced up at the ceiling fixture in the bedroom. The light was on.

“Did the power come back on at some point?”

“Much later, after we found out... what caused it. So, even before I went looking for Nadine, I got a flashlight out of the drawer and went down to the basement where the breaker box is. Opened it up, saw that the whole house had been tripped. I flipped it back, but it kicked out again. Came up, looked to see if Nadine was out back. And then I came up here.”

“Okay.”

“I kept calling for her, still not getting an answer, and I came in here, and saw her clothes on the bed, and that was when

I looked in there.” He nodded toward the bathroom.

Nadine was still there. Her dead body in a tub full of cold water.

“I got down, put my arm into the water, around her, asking her what happened, wake up—I don’t know what I said, exactly. But

I could tell... I could see...”

Wendell choked on his words. He lowered his head, ran his hand over his mouth, tried to regain his composure.

“Take your time,” Harry said, laying a hand on the man’s back.

“I could see she was... she wasn’t breathing, and her body was as cold as the water. But I called 911 anyway. I mean, I

knew she couldn’t be saved, but... The fire department and the paramedics came real fast, but they said that, you know,

there would have to be an investigation and that they couldn’t take her out of the bathtub.”

“We’re going to try to do what we have to do as quickly as possible, Mr. Comstock. I have to ask, had you and your wife been

having difficulties lately?”

He had to ask, although Harry did not believe, at this point, that Wendell Comstock had murdered his wife. The coroner, who

had made an initial assessment and was waiting downstairs, believed the woman had probably been dead since early afternoon.

“No. Things were fine.”

“Had your wife been depressed lately? Had she made previous attempts to take her own life?”

“She’d never tried anything before, at least not that I know of.”

“Do you know whether she was seeing someone?”

“You mean, like an affair?”

“No, sorry, I meant, was she seeing anyone like a psychiatrist, a therapist, to help her if she was feeling down?”

“No. I’d have known if she was doing that. But the truth is, we... we didn’t have what you’d call a real happy marriage,

at least not until lately.”

“Lately?”

The man nodded. “We just discovered, after all this time, kind of by accident, that we had something in common. Things were

looking... they were looking better. So I don’t understand why... oh God, I’m going to have to call her parents. Jesus.

This’ll kill them.” He bit his lower lip.

“I know,” Harry said. “I’m so sorry.” He paused, then asked, “Did she ever ask about, you know, questions about electrical

things? Short circuits? What would happen if you dropped a toaster in a tub filled with water?”

“It wasn’t a toaster.”

“I’m sorry?”

“It wasn’t a toaster.”

Harry hadn’t had a close look himself at what was in the bathtub with the dead woman. When he’d arrived, one of the firefighting

staff had said the woman had died from knocking a toaster into the tub.

“Give me a second,” Harry said, and excused himself. He went into the bathroom and looked at the black object down by the

dead woman’s foot. It definitely was not a toaster. It was slightly smaller than a toaster, and there were no slots in the

top, but instead a little handle and a couple of buttons and lights.

He thought he knew what it was but wasn’t certain.

He returned to the bedroom and asked Wendell what that device was.

“A transformer.”

“What kind of transformer?”

“For running trains.”

“Where would your wife get one of those?”

“Follow me,” Wendell said.

He led the chief down to the first floor, then to a door off the kitchen, and finally down a flight of stairs to the basement.

He pointed to the train setup on the Ping-Pong table.

“It powered this,” he said. “She had to have unplugged it, disconnected the wires from the track, and taken it upstairs. I

can’t... I can’t imagine what got into her head.” He looked at the trains and the buildings on the table. “I’m getting

rid of all of this. I don’t ever want to see any of it again.”

As if struck by a sudden impulse, he crossed the room and grabbed a large cardboard detergent box that was in a far corner

of the room. He brought it back to the table, picked up a caboose, and threw it forcefully into the box.

“Goddamn fucking things!” he said. Before he could grab another car, Harry reached for his arm.

“Mr. Comstock, please leave everything as it is for now, okay?”

The man stared vacantly at Harry, almost as though he couldn’t see him standing there.

“Mr. Comstock?”

He blinked a few times. “Yeah, okay, okay. I’ll leave it for now.”

“These trains,” Harry said. “You’ve always had these?”

“No, I bought everything this week. A few days ago. Nadine... she was really taken by them. I thought she’d think they

were stupid but she liked them. She helped assemble the buildings and everything.”

“Where did you buy all this?”

“That store on the main street. Oh God, I don’t know what I’m going to tell her family.”

Harry thought about that barbecue accident. That birthday gift for young Auden.

And then it hit Harry for the first time. The conversation he’d had with Nabler at the sidewalk sale. Nabler had known his

son’s name was Dylan.

Harry was sure he hadn’t told him.