“Now, I want to bring you up to date on our investigation, tell you what we’re doing. We’re running criminal record checks on everybody on the island, full-time and part-time residents, and yes, this means you, no exceptions. We’re particularly interested to know if anybody on the island has ever been arrested or convicted of a crime of a sexual nature, so if there’s something like that in your background or the background of a person you know, I urge you to come to me directly about it, rather than wait for the record to turn up.

“We’re also rechecking the ferry records to see who was and wasn’t on the island at the time of the first murders, those of Richard Stone and his wife and daughter. There are no records of which private airplanes were parked at the airstrip at that time, but a resident who lives within sight of the airport has told us what he remembers about who was here, so we have a pretty good list of owners. Tom and I are going to be visiting every single residence on the island, so you will be seeing us at your house pretty soon. We’ll be talking by telephone with those residents who have recently left the island to return to their homes.

“We are going to determine from these interviews the name of every single person who was on the island the day the Stone family died, the day Don Brown died and the day Janey Harris died, so we’ll be asking each of you about that, and believe me, we’re going to verify every statement you make, so I want the truth from everybody first time out. Anybody who lies to us will immediately be treated as a suspect.

“Now, anybody have any questions? I’d rather you ask them now, because I don’t want to have to go over this again with every person I meet.” He looked around the room.

A man raised his hand. “We heard that you had determined that Janey had been raped.”

“That’s true,” Young said.

“Did you recover any DNA evidence during the postmortem examination?”

“I can see you’ve been watching CSI on television,” Young said. “The answer is no, we didn’t. The body had been in the water for several hours, and that would have helped remove any superficial DNA evidence or hairs or fibers that could have been of use. We found no DNA internally, either, which could mean either that being in the water removed it or that the perpetrator used a condom.”

Another man raised his hand. “Was there any connection between the firearm used to kill the Stones and the one used to kill Don Brown?”

“No,” Young replied. “They were each killed with their own weapons: the Stones with a .380 and Brown with a .45.”