The young man took off his striped workman's cap and ran his fingers through wavy brown hair. "The last few years he couldn't leave the house. I used to visit him at first, but at last he didn't even recognize me. And when his attacks came on he'd holler with pain, and finally I couldn't stand to hear him anymore. That's what he died from—the tumor in his head—and not the wild boy killing him."
"The doctors said it shouldn't have killed him—yet," Derwin demurred.
"I know. But the doctors were wrong." The young man began shoveling dirt into the hole again.
The sun was directly overhead when Derwin climbed out of his car, pushing his game leg stiffly ahead of him. He went up the flight of steps at the front of a large, white house and pressed the button beside the door. He rang three times without an answer.
On the way back down the steps he heard the sound of iron on iron coming from the back of the house. He walked around and found an old man with stooped shoulders throwing horseshoes at a peg set in the ground.
"Good afternoon," Derwin said.
The old man paused in his throwing and nodded in reply.
"I'd like to talk to you again about your sister's death," Derwin said. "I presume you heard that we caught her killer?"
The old man sighted a shoe carefully and threw at a farther peg.