“He can’t drink, Arlo,” said Tori. “He’s on duty.”

“He can drink a Muscle Milk.”

“No thanks. I’m fine. This is quite the place you’ve got here.”

His voice dropped to an intimate level, “Do you think it’s over-the-top? I worry that it is. There’s a line between luxury and tacky. The girls and me—I trust their taste, but we don’t always see eye to eye. I worry it’s over-the-top. Hey, did they introduce you to my snakes?”

He now presented the three serpents: Babe (the boa), Emerald (the Emerald python), and Lucifer (the Burmese python).

“You sure you don’t want a Muscle Milk? Or a Gatorade?”

When I refused, he sat down in his towel on the couch between the women, extended his arms along the top, and spread his legs. If he shifted position by a matter of centimeters, he was going to give me a show I didn’t want to see. I would have thought Burch was showing off—“Dude, look at me, I’ve got two women sharing my bed, and they’re twins!”—if he didn’t seem like such a good-natured dimwit. My first impression of Arlo Burch was that he was an entity I’d formerly considered mythological: the man without a care in the world.

“First I want to say,” he began, growing solemn, “that my second cousin is a cop over in Nashua, New Hampshire. So I’ve got a lot of respect for you guys. Police, I mean. Wardens included.”

“We appreciate your support.”

“Tori said you wanted to ask me something about Professor Chamberlain. What can I do for you, man? Ask and you shall receive.”

Putting on some clothes would be a start.

“The Warden Service is taking another look at the Eben Chamberlain case. My superiors gave it to me for some fresh perspective. I’ve reviewed the file and been briefed by Lieutenant Rivard.”

“Former lieutenant,” said Tori.

I hadn’t been surprised that Mariëtte Chamberlain had heard about Marc’s fall from grace. But how the hell did Tori Dillon know about it? Maybe I wasn’t the only warden whose career she followed. That seemed like a stone worth turning over—but not at present.

I locked eyes with Burch. “I understand you were the last person to see the professor alive the day he disappeared.”

“That’s what people tell me. But I mean, someone else might’ve seen him alive after me, and I wouldn’t know, right?”

Tori grabbed a handful of his chest hair.

“Ouch!” he said. “What did you do that for?”

“Because you’re being a tool. You were the last one to see him. Don’t pretend it’s some unknowable mystery.”