Margie, three years out of law school, was already boring. I couldn’t stand her, but I loved her for sitting in the visitation room in a pale green suit, her red hair in a sensible bob.

Before I even had my butt in my chair, she said, “He’s alive.”

“How alive?”

“He’s too weak to talk. You got the hoof knife between two ribs—”

“A hoof knife? My God—” Hoof knives didn’t have a point, though mine was sharp on the tip. How hard had I been at him to get that to even puncture?

“You missed his heart by an eighth of an inch and just scraped a lung....