Chief Clark looked through the glass at Stephanie, who had hidden her face in her hands, the scrunched tissues peeking out from between her fingers.

“You ask me, it’s a false memory or she’s covering badly for someone,” Amanda said.

Sweeney felt the air leave her lungs in a long, sickening sigh. She had been so exhilarated to bring her first homicide to a close. The first notch in what would surely be a long row before she found her confidence in the role, before she would believe that her colleagues over in Holloways Beach weren’t laughing at her for taking the placement so early out of patrol. But she acknowledged now the tiny seedling of doubt that had started growing in her the moment she saw Ted Conkaffey walking Stephanie up the steps of the police station that afternoon. Not Stephanie.

“She’s tired.” Sweeney cut into a low stream of Chief Clark’s threatening and grumbling at Amanda for interrupting their official interview with her wild theories. “Stephanie. She’s tired and guilty and grief stricken. Confused about how angry she is at Andrew that he had the affair and how sad she is that he’s gone. She hasn’t had a stitch of emotional support since the thing happened, except from Andrew’s father, who’s grieving himself. Maybe she … I don’t know. She’s constructed a memory in which she killed Keema and Andrew and rolled it around and around in her brain enough times that she now thinks it’s true.”

Chief Clark folded his arms, stared Sweeney down. She could almost hear his thoughts. His quiet calculation of how he was going to get her out of his police station, this fuck-up, this trainee detective who’d brought him nothing but unusable witnesses.

“I’m not ready to release her.” Clark gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Maybe she is tired and confused, but she’s all you’ve managed to dig up so far. Get her into a cell, get her to sleep and when she wakes up put her straight into a room with a psychologist. Search her house. I’ll organize a warrant. And you”—he turned on Amanda—“you’re banned from this station. I don’t want to see you unless you’re under arrest for something.”

“Ooh.” Amanda smiled, clapped the chief on the shoulder as she passed him, making for the door. “Don’t tempt me, Clarky. You know I’m a naughty girl.”

Amanda was standing on the steps of the police station when Sweeney emerged from the glass doors. The strange investigator was standing stiffly, facing away from the building, her elbow out at an awkward right angle from her body. As Sweeney approached she noticed an enormous multicolored butterfly walking the length of Amanda’s forearm, wings upright except for the occasional pause when it spread flat, seeming to want to blend with the vibrant tattoos crowding Amanda’s arm. Sweeney felt the humiliation and dread of the past few minutes shift slightly, not completely lifted, but resisting a definite push from the sight before her. Amanda turned her arm as the butterfly strolled over her wrist, onto her palm and settled there on the bare pink flesh, stark against the rest of her colored skin.