“So anyway, my dad and I take a break and start going through it. And I can still remember seeing Win’s photo—all blond hair and blue eyes and looking like he was modeling for the cover of Preppy Ass Waffle magazine. He had that haughty expression on his face. You know the one.”

Brooke imitated it to perfection.

“Yes, exactly.”

“Like he’s the most superior creature on God’s green earth.”

“Right, and it listed his snooty prep school, and his full name was there. So I’m reading this—Windsor Horne Lockwood III—and I’m laughing about it, and I show my dad and he laughs, and I say, ‘I won’t even see this guy in my four years, never mind be friends with him.’”

Brooke smiled. “Oh, I know what you mean.”

“We met that night. He’s been my best friend ever since.”

“So you get what I’m saying.”

“Sure. People see him and they hate him. They see him and think arrogant, Waspy wimp who couldn’t bruise a peach.”

“Easy pickings,” Brooke said.

“Yes. And Win mostly kept it under wraps at first. I mean, I could sense the darkness right away. Even when we met at the first orientation social.”

“Maybe that’s what drew you to him.”

“What, the darkness?”

“Yep. His yin to your yang.”

“Maybe,” Myron agreed.

“So when did you know for sure?” she asked. “I mean, about his, uh, talents. Do you remember?”

He did. Too well. “Freshman year, maybe a month into the school year, a bunch of football players decided to shave Win’s head. You know how it is. They thought his hair looked too perfect, what with the straight part and the yellow blond and all that.”

“Right.”

“So one night, these big football players break into the room when Win’s sleeping. Five of them, I think. Four to hold his arms and legs down, one to shave his head clean.”

“Oh boy,” Brooke said.

“Yes.”

“So how did that go for them?”

“Put it this way,” Myron said. “The football team had a terrible season. Too many guys on the injured list.”

Brooke shook her head. “Good to have him on our side,” she said.

“Yes, it is.”

“So what’s our plan here, Myron?”

“It’s like Win said. Whatever horrible thing happened to those two boys, it went to London but it started in your home. He’s on one end of that. We take the other. We go back to the beginning. We figure out what might have happened.”

Brooke considered that. “I’m not sure I see the point. We’ve been over the crime scene a million times.”

“Yes, but we go back at it now with fresh eyes. We can see ahead of us a bit. It’s like a car trip where you don’t know where you’re going. Last week, you only knew the starting point. Now we know where the car was three days ago. So we can try again.”

“It can’t hurt to try,” Brooke agreed.

“But more than that, we have to get Patrick to open up.”