She went into Orrin’s bedroom closet, where she had tossed the shopping bags of clothes she had bought earlier in the day. She pulled out a cap-sleeve shirt and started to pull it on. As she did so, one of her arms brushed against a line of his shirts and trousers all hung up neatly, arrayed like soldiers. That’s when she saw the niche behind his clothes. Pushing them aside, she found herself looking at a line of homemade DVDs in clear plastic cases. She slipped one out. “HEIDI” she read, along with a date. Her heart rate abruptly elevated, she checked out others. Each one was labeled with a female name and a date. At least half of them predated Orrin’s divorce from Bridget. A sickness rose in her gorge.

She took one of the DVDs from its case, slipped it into the DVD player. Turning on the TV, she navigated to the correct input. Thirty seconds of watching Orrin thrashing around naked with “NOREEN” was enough to assure her that she had been dead wrong to take Orrin’s side in the divorce. The intense sibling rivalry she and Bridget had endured all their lives had blinded her to the truth. How could she have been so wrong about Orrin? The shmoo had turned into a weasel right before her eyes.

“Julie?”

She started at the sound of his voice, rose quickly from the edge of the bed, extracted the DVD, slid it back into its case, and replaced it in the closet. She switched the input back to TV seconds before Orrin came into the bedroom, a stemmed glass of red wine in one hand.

“What were you doing in here so long?”

“Just checking the news for, you know…”

“You’ve got to stop obsessing over the incident.”

That’s what Orrin had taken to calling Sydny’s murder. It so trivialized her death it made Julie want to slap him. And now that she knew who and what he really was, she had far more incentive to.

Instead, she smiled at him, switched off the TV. “You’re right,” she said. “Of course you’re right.” She almost retched, pecking him on the cheek as she passed him.

He was right behind her as she went down the hallway and into the living room, where a man was standing, legs slightly spread, muscles tense as a pulled bow-string. He was dressed in black, unshaven, with the coarse features of a thug.

“Who the hell are you?” Orrin said. He seemed rooted to a spot behind and just to the left of Julie. “How did you get in here?” He turned on Julie. “Did you forget to lock the door?”