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with Brooke, who began talking incoherently until she had exhausted herself and fallen asleep by five.
    Bruno managed two hours of sleep at that point, having been smart enough to unplug the phone and switch his cell phone off. The news vans were outside when he left to go to the mainland.
    His biggest fear was that Brooke would feel scared when he left, but she had told him that she was going to bed and would wear earplugs and maybe even take a pill to calm her nerves.

     
    7
     
    “And now, that’s what we’re coming back to,” he said. “I saw a report on the morning news about it. I was just waking up on the couch, and I flicked it on, and there we were. Well, there was the mention of it. It sounded almost interesting, the way they talked about it on the news. Seven in the morning, it already reached the Cape.”
    “What about the killer?” I asked.
    “No word.”
    “Brooke must be so upset. I’m glad you’ve been here.”
    “Yeah, I know,” Bruno said. “She’s really freaked. She walked around all last night, room to room, with a candle, like some kind of gothic heroine. She thinks that the killer’s waiting for her in the dark. We had men go through the house just to make sure no one was hiding. She’s paranoid.”
    “Can’t blame her.”
    “Maybe more than paranoid. She’s been doing funny things.”
    “How funny?”
    He breathed hard through his nose. It was a technique he’d had as a kid when he didn’t want to talk about something. Then, “I found her out in the rain four nights ago. Nearly freezing rain. She was completely naked. She . . . didn’t recognize me. And she did some things.” He blushed. “Well, she was sleepwalking, I think. But it really bothered me. She was . . . Okay, look, she was sort of playing with herself.”
    I took a deep breath. “God.” My mind went blank at the thought. I didn’t want to imagine my sister like that.
    “I know. But she wasn’t herself. She was asleep the whole time. It shocked the hell out of me. I had a friend with me, and we got her into the house, wrapped her up, and she just slept on the sofa that night in front of the fire. I don’t even think she remembers it. I didn’t tell Dad, but by then Dad and I weren’t exactly talking to each other.”
    “Hoo boy,” I said. “Jesus.”
    “Yeah,” Bruno said.
    We let that subject cool a bit with some much-needed silence.
    “They search the house?” I asked finally.
    He nodded. “One of the off-island cops told me that he’d never seen such a wacky house—the way the rooms are laid out. The way you can’t hear anything from the back of the house to the front. The front door doesn’t even lock right. They scoured the woods in back. Who knows? Who would’ve thought this would’ve happened there? I mean, Boston or New York, sure. Or even the Cape. But way the hell out on the island?”
    “I still can’t believe this,” I said.
    “Me, neither. Grogan said he thinks the killer already left. Brooke was driving me nuts all night long. She kept talking about hearing things, and that made me freak out even more. It’s a mess. She’s a mess.”
    “As well she should be,” I said. “You must be exhausted.”
    “Maybe it’s adrenaline,” Bruno said, “but I couldn’t fall asleep right now if you paid me. My head keeps replaying what he must’ve gone through. His last moments. Nightmares. Brooke’s not helping. She’s convinced herself that she saw a ghost.”

     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     

    1

    “Blood. All over,” Bruno said, accepting an offered cigarette. He reached into his pocket and drew out a lighter. Flicked it up, lit his cigarette, and then passed it back to me. “You don’t want to hear it.”
    “Yeah. I do.”
    “No,” he said. “You don’t.”
    We arrived at the dock down at Buzzard’s Bay sooner than I’d expected.
    Across the water, our destination.
    So distant it was invisible.

     
    2
     
    The sky turned a bit dark for noon, even for Massachusetts