Richie shifted, uneasily, against the door. “I don’t know about any of that. She wasn’t like that at my place.”

Something in my stomach clamped tight. “Of course she bloody well wasn’t. She knew you’d be on the phone to me in a heartbeat, and that didn’t suit her plans. She’s crazy, not stupid. And she’s got some serious willpower, when she feels like it.”

“She said she’d been over at yours the last few nights, talking to you, and the case had your head melted. She …” He glanced at me. He was picking his words carefully. “She said you weren’t OK. She said you’d always been good to her, never once been anything but gentle, even when she didn’t deserve it—that’s what she said—but the other night she startled you, when she showed up, and you pulled your gun. She said she left because you told her she should kill herself.”

“And you believed that.”

“I figured she was exaggerating. But still … She wasn’t making it up about you being stressed, man. She said you were coming apart, this case was taking you apart, and there was no way you’d put it down.”

I couldn’t tell, through all this dark snarled mess, whether this was Dina’s revenge for something real or imaginary that I had done to her, or whether she had seen something I had missed, something that had sent her banging on Richie’s door like a panicked bird beating against a window. I couldn’t tell, either, which one would be worse.

“She said to me, ‘You’re his partner, he trusts you. You have to look after him. He won’t let me, he won’t let his family, maybe he might let you.’”

I said, “Did you sleep with her?”

I had been trying not to ask. The fraction of silence, after Richie opened his mouth, told me everything I needed to know. I said, “Don’t bother answering that.”

“Listen, man, listen—you never said she was your sister. Neither did she. I swear to God, if I’d’ve known—”

I had come within a hairsbreadth of telling him. I had held back because, God help me, I thought it would make me vulnerable. “What did you think she was? My girlfriend? My ex? My daughter? How exactly would any of those have made it better?”

“She said she was an old mate of yours. She said she knew you from back when you were kids—your family and her family used to get caravans together at Broken Harbor, for the summer. That’s what she told me. Why would I think she was lying?”

“How about because she’s fucking nutso? She comes in babbling about a case she hasn’t got a clue about, drowning you in bullshit about me having a nervous breakdown. Ninety percent of what she says is gibberish. It doesn’t even occur to you that the other ten percent might not be on the level?”

“It wasn’t gibberish, but. She was dead right: this case, it’s been getting to you. I thought that from the start, almost.”