Alex smiled at her now, blue eyes crinkling with understanding. “You are who you are, you do what you do. And you’re tougher than you think.”

“Isn’t that from Winnie-the-Pooh?” she asked him.

“Hey, I happen to like a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff. What do you think Jack and I do with our free afternoons?”

She rolled her eyes. He smiled again, and for a moment, life was good.

“All right, back to the case,” Alex said. “Male or female killer. Have you decided yet?”

She made a face. “Tricky. Odds would still say male. Shana Day aside, not many female killers would engage in this level of postmortem mutilation. Of course, Shana Day is involved, meaning all bets are off.”

“The use of chloroform strikes me as girly,” Alex said. “Not to mention, women arouse less suspicion than men, especially when walking a neighborhood late at night or visiting a cancer-stricken elderly woman. It might be one of the reasons your killer has been operating beneath the radar screen.”

“True. But what motive? I like someone such as foster brother Sam, who was once involved with Shana, had some kind of attachment. Shana doesn’t have, and apparently has never had, any girlfriends. Only female bond in her life is with her sister.”

Alex stared at her. “You mean the one who shares the same homicidal gene pool, not to mention a medical school background that must’ve involved scalpels?”

“Yeah. That one.”

“Have you looked at her?”

“Please, she’s pretty much part of the case team. As tactics go, we’re keeping our friends close and our enemies even closer.”

“Does she have alibis for the nights in question?”

“Nope. Phil asked. Apparently, Dr. Glen spends most of her nights alone.”

“Meaning . . .”

D.D. shrugged, winced again. “It’s possible Adeline’s involved. It would be naive of me to assume otherwise. But . . . I think Adeline’s trying to figure this thing out, too. I think her sister is as much a mystery to her as to the rest of us, except in her case, it hurts more. Shana is her only living family, and while Adeline talks a good professional game, you can tell she’s vulnerable when it comes to her Shana. She does want some sort of relationship, even as the clinician in her understands that’s never gonna happen; Shana isn’t capable of it. Besides,” D.D. added more briskly, “if you believe this all has to do with Donnie Johnson’s murder thirty years ago . . . Adeline wasn’t around back then. Didn’t even know what had happened to her sister.”

“Why the graphic nature of the murders?” Alex asked. “If this all has to do with covering up a thirty-year-old crime, why the postmortem mutilation?”

D.D. didn’t have to think. The answer came to her immediately, from the back of her mind. “Because the murders are staged.”

“What?”