“Leave it. Leave it!” Lucy says, and he drops the green ball and looks bored.

I smell the perfume of the roses along the back wall behind our Cambridge house, and the breeze is cool for August. The sun burns bright orange over rooftops and trees, and soon I need to go back inside and finish preparing dinner but it’s not just that. I don’t want to sit here. It’s hard for me to listen to the stories. I’ve heard them multiple times and they don’t get better in the retelling.

Chanel Gilbert was a Navy underwater photographer who left the military to work for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of her aliases was Elsa Mulligan, the name Carrie called herself when she “found” the body and claimed to be the housekeeper. It’s a bad story, the worst of stories, and it’s all connected to cyberterrorism, to data fiction. The man murdered in a Boston hotel this summer, Joel Fagano, was also CIA. He and Chanel Gilbert were colleagues, both of them spies. Janet knew Chanel before Lucy did, and no one has told me what that means.

“We don’t exactly know when Carrie alerted to Chanel.” Benton continues to talk about what really can’t be explained, not entirely.

“Probably it was when she began working as an adviser to the Ukrainian security service,” Janet offers. “Beyond that who knows why anybody ends up on Carrie’s radar.”

“It’s as subjective and personal as picking out who to date.” Marino takes a big swallow of beer. “It’s sort of like being attracted to someone. That’s what I’ve always figured.”

“People are more the same than they’re different.” Benton remembers his drink, and ice rattles quietly. “They fall in love with someone who looks like them. Chanel was fit and into extreme sports. She was compellingly attractive in an androgynous way. She would have appealed to Carrie’s narcissism.”

“So she takes on at least one of Chanel’s identities and even takes over her property here in Cambridge? Plus she manages to get a Range Rover—an SUV the police, the FBI still can’t find? You have to admit she’s unbelievably brazen, doesn’t seem to have a fearful bone in her body.” Donoghue sounds annoyingly impressed.

It enters my mind that she’d probably like nothing better than to represent a notorious monster like Carrie.

“The best place to hide is in plain view,” Benton says. “Neighbors saw a red Range Rover in and out. They caught glimpses of a young woman. Why would they think anything was amiss? Carrie’s probably pulled stunts like this countless times all over the world.”

“So she hijacked Chanel’s life or lives,” Donoghue says. “Then what made Carrie decide to kill her right after she returned here from Bermuda?”