Seventeen to seventeen. Same rule both ways. Tie goes to the runner - except it only went to the runner when it was theirs.

He asked her to show him the strike zone. She asked him to point at it. There is no photograph of the true zone. There is only a man in blue making a call, pitch after pitch, over a body that isn't standing still.

This book does not decide whether that man went home knowing what he did. It does not decide the opposite either. It stays on the tailgate after the last bank of lights and asks what you could see from the third-base box - and what you assumed from a score that felt like a pattern.

Two voices. No names. A plate. A chalk line. No last call. The last step is left with you.

Investigate.