“The kicker for me was her account of what she said,” she snorted. “How could you? or Why? Yeah, sure. That’s what I’d have had her say if this was an episode of Days of Our Lives. But this is the real world. If she was that hepped up on blinding, murderous rage she’d never say something as lucid and calculating as How could you? She probably wouldn’t have said anything at all.”

“She said she took the gun with her,” Chief Clark said. “So there’s been no talk of blinding rage. It was premeditated.”

“No, she said she can’t remember taking the gun with her.” Amanda pointed a finger in the air. “She said, and I quote, ‘I was so angry at the time that I think my brain just didn’t record certain things.’”

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.