“She wrote to you because she wanted something,” D.D. deduced.

Adeline smiled. “Now you sound like my adoptive father.”

“But you’ve hung in there with her. All these years, various suicide attempts later. You’re her single longest relationship. Right?”

“True.”

“To what end? According to you, your sister doesn’t feel empathy, doesn’t bond, doesn’t even understand a real relationship. So what does she want from you, Adeline? You and she have been talking for two decades, for what?”

“We haven’t been talking regularly for that long. It was only six or seven years ago that Superintendent McKinnon started permitting the monthly meetings.”

“Still, why? What does Shana want from you? I mean, this is a woman who’s destroyed how many families, how many lives? No repentance, no remorse. Biggest emotion she sounds capable of is boredom. So why keep you coming back? Two decades later, what does she need from you?”

“She needs to keep me safe, Detective. It’s a promise she made to our father forty years ago. And if you don’t have family, you don’t have anything.”

“Seriously? Keep you safe? Seriously?”

Adeline kept her gaze fixed down on the sidewalk, her footsteps quickening, as if she could outwalk the skepticism in D.D.’s voice. It occurred to D.D. that when it came to her sister, Adeline suffered a giant blind spot. She didn’t think she did. She dished up clinical evaluations, offered frank statements to the likes of Mrs. Davies: Don’t worry about me. I harbor no illusions about my sister.

But Adeline did. All these years later, some part of her still wanted a big sister.

Making her the perfect victim-in-waiting for Shana Day. Question was, what was Shana waiting for?

“Sounds like Janet Sgarzi was close to her sister, Martha Johnson,” Phil spoke up. “Meaning if there was something more to Donnie’s murder, some relationship or secret friend his mother knew about but never thought to mention after Shana pulled her son’s ear out of her pocket . . .”

“Janet Sgarzi could’ve known something about the crime,” D.D. agreed, “whether she realized she held the key or not. Which leaves the Rose Killer feeling a need to dispose of her after all these years.”