“Think about it. For thirty years, he lives with this domineering woman who has unpopular beliefs that caused him to be estranged from his brother. He had to make a choice—her or Julian. She was his choice. Now here she was, weeks away from her book being published, and Julian was going to steal the limelight from her. Everything about his life was going to come out, and Diandra would be embarrassed. She might even lose her TV gig. What if the publisher got squeamish about taking on a new Supreme Court justice and cancelled her book? She wouldn’t have wanted to risk it.”

“So he lured his own brother out of a hotel, hog tied him and shot him in Lincoln Park?”

“Julian never went into the hotel.” The whole thing clicked into focus with such amazing clarity it was all she could do to keep up. “That’s why we couldn’t find him leaving on the tape. Graham and Laine said they dropped him off at the hotel, but neither of them could confirm they saw him go in the door. No one in the hotel could recall actually seeing him after he returned from dinner.”

“So he snuck off and met Preston somewhere?”

“They’d been in touch. Preston said he hoped to see his brother while he was in town.”

“Do you think he intended to kill Julian?”

“Yeah, I do.” Sam stared at a spot on the far wall, imagining the crime going down.

“Did Diandra know?”

“She planned the whole thing. She would’ve been freaking out about the timing, Julian coming to town for contentious hearings just as her book was released. She worried that she’d lose her TV show. How could she continue to spew hate and venom about gays when her Supreme Court justice brother-in-law was one of them? She worked on Preston until he saw no other option but to get rid of his brother. No one would suspect him. They hadn’t spoken in years.”

“What about the money in the Caymans?”

“She did that as a backup. In case Preston couldn’t do it. She probably had someone else lined up.”

“How do you explain their son being shot?”

“Austin might’ve told their father what Devon confessed to us when we interviewed him.”

“I don’t get why Austin would tell their father that.”

“Who knows? Maybe he was rattled from being interviewed by cops. Maybe Preston somehow pressured him into recounting everything they told the cops. Hard to say. However it happened, Preston found out Devon was gay, and all he could see was how it would affect Diandra.”

“So she didn’t know Preston intended to shoot Devon?”

“She had no idea.” Sam recalled Diandra’s reaction to the news about her son. “But she knew right away that Preston had done that, too. What she doesn’t know is why.”

“He’s gone mad, and she drove him to it.”