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"So there’s Garret, then Billy, then Brooke and... what’s the surviving twin’s name?"
    "Tess."
    "Garret, Billy, Brooke, and Tess."
    "Right."
    "Was anybody else in the house the night before they found Brooke dead?" I asked.
    "A nanny.  Claire Buckley.  She summers on the island with the family.  Takes care of the kids, gets a place to stay, half her nights and weekends free — that type of thing."
    "Young and pretty," I said.  "Sticks close to the wife."
    "You got it."
    "Any guests that evening?"
    "No," Anderson said.
    I looked out over the water, its surface speckled with white, electric jewels of light.  "So why do you figure Mr. Bishop flung the door wide open for you?"
    "I don’t know.  Like I said, that’s what bothers me."
    "It was before the autopsy results," I said.
    "Still..." Anderson said.
    "Maybe he’s burnt out," I said.  "He’s gone to bat for Billy over his firesetting, his cruelty to animals — now this.  Maybe he finally gets the picture that Billy’s a dangerous kid."
    "Could be."
    "Or it could be something else."
    "Like..." he said.
    "Like maybe he’d rather have Billy take the fall than somebody else," I said.  "Like his golden boy.  Or his wife.  Or himself."
    "Also possible," Anderson said.  He paused.  "If I had a psychiatrist working with me, I might actually be able to find out which answer is the right one."
    I took a deep breath, let it out.
    "I really need you on this," Anderson said.  "My gut tells me Billy Bishop isn’t guilty.  And if I’m right, that’s only half the problem.  Because then I’ve got to figure out who is.  There’s another baby girl in that house."
    Anderson was right to worry about Tess.  In the dozen or so recorded cases of infanticide in families with twins, the surviving baby eventually dies mysteriously over seventy percent of the time, usually due to sudden heart or respiratory failure.  Some researchers have theorized that the jarring loss of one twin spawns a toxic grief reaction in the other that mysteriously shuts down cardiac conduction or short-circuits the respiratory drive.  An immeasurable connection of souls has been abruptly severed, sapping the will to live.  But the most convincing explanation is that the killer has simply been given time and opportunity to claim another victim — probably by suffocation — either because the wrong person was arrested or because lack of evidence precluded any arrest.
    I looked up at the sky.  For some reason I pictured my father in a drunken rage, ready to mete out one of the beatings that were my childhood.  I thought how nice it would be to keep myself safe, for a change.  I thought how no one could blame me if I did.  Because I already had wounds crisscrossing my psyche like a map to hell.  And some of them had never stopped bleeding.
    " No one could blame you ," the voice whispered, " except yourself ."
     
    *            *            *
     
    Justine had breakfast nearly ready when I got back to the loft.  Omelets and bacon sizzled on the stove.  Still-warm bagels from Katz’s, a sixty-five-year-old shop just beyond the 7-Eleven, were sliced and spread with cream cheese.  A deep red, sparkly liquid filled the blender.
    "Strawberries, ice, and sugar," she said, without my asking.
    "Everything looks wonderful," I said.
    "So you will leave this minute or later today?"  She flipped an omelet.
    I wasn’t expecting the question and didn’t answer.
    She glanced at me.  "I know you have to go.  I could see it in your friend’s face."
    "I told him I’d meet him at the airport in four hours.  He’s got a tough case on Nantucket.  A little girl was murdered."
    "Oh, God," she said.  "How old?"
    "Five months."
    She looked at me in that searching way people sometimes do when confronted by man’s limitless capacity for cruelty.
    "They’re saying her adopted brother did it," was all I could think of to say.  "He’s not well."
    She shook her head.