“You’re right,” she said. “His methods make it hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.”

“The most dangerous people at home are the ones refusing to cooperate with the government’s efforts to root out terror, either out of real loyalty to AlQaeda, or ignorance, or through misguided ideas about the legal rights of America’s sworn enemies.” Edwards set his coffee cup down so hard that the delicate handle snapped off.

“Just because you express your anger more violently than I do doesn’t mean you’re right-it doesn’t even mean you’re angrier than I am,” his mother said. “Don’t you see that Catherine was shot because people like Rick Salvi believe they’ve been given a green light to use any means at their disposal if they think they have a terrorist in view? It was your daughter they had in view. And they acted literally on the old saw, `Shoot first, ask questions later.”’

Edwards’s eyes were angry slits in his face. “They knew they had a terrorist who’d fled the house; they didn’t know my daughter was there. It was a shocking mistake, but if you’d been looking after her properly, it wouldn’t have happened.”

He turned to me. “As for you, if you were in Larchmont Hall Friday night, you fled the scene. You could have had Sadawi with you.” “Tucked under my arm like Anne Boleyn’s head,” I agreed.

When he exclaimed “What the-” I said, “You know, that old Bert Lee song–’The sentries shout is Army going to win/They think that it’s Red Grange instead of poor old Anne Boleyn! What did you tell the police when they asked about Mr. Bayard’s books?”

“Mr. Bayard’s books?” Edwards repeated uncertainly, looking from me to his mother.

“Your father’s childhood books. Maybe the police don’t ask people like you the same questions they ask people like me. They wanted to know why his book about the boy attacked by the giant clam was in the attic next to an Arab-English dictionary. I told them I thought Mr. Calvin Bayard was coming over in the middle of the night to translate the story into Arabic. At the time, I didn’t know there was an Arab-speaking kid in the house.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them: it was a ghastly mockery of a man with Alzheimer’s, to joke that he was studying a foreign language.

Renee frowned at me, her heavy brows almost meeting across her nose. “I think we all know why the books were there. And I can see that you are agile at dancing away from questions you don’t want to answer. Did you see Benjamin Sadawi? Or talk to him? Or help him escape?”

“No, ma’am.” The lie got easier every time I told it. “And I am most eager to talk to him.”

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because he had a chair set up in the attic where he stood looking out into the back garden. He was lonely; he probably stood up there watching, hoping Catherine would appear. So I think he saw what happened the night that Marcus Whitby died in that pond.”