Summary

It’s autumn again, back in Virginia, and Bartle is living in an apartment in Richmond. His main companion is a stray cat that happens by every once in a while to curl up in a flower box outside his window. He keeps a picture of Murph on his wall. He’s still drinking.

Bartle takes a rifle to his building’s roof in the mornings and shoots garbage. He aims at birds, but doesn’t shoot at them.

In the midst of snow falling, a Criminal Investigations Division officer, Captain Anderson, knocks on Bartle’s door. Anderson has the letter Bartle sent Murph’s mother in Murph’s name and tells Bartle that he knows Bartle wrote the letter. The investigator says it looks as though Bartle has given up and that it isn’t different “out there,” but that Bartle is different...