“Shoot her, you moron,” Kate heard Erland say, and that was all she needed to hear. She made a diving tackle for Oliver’s bad knee. It cracked when she hit it and she knew a fierce satisfaction in the sound. Amazingly, he didn’t drop the gun. He tried to point it at her, but she had his wrist in both hands. They struggled, rolling back and forth, and Kate’s biggest fear at that point was the crashing of underbrush that signified Erland’s approach.

“Drop it, you little weasel,” she said through her teeth, and at that moment the gun went off.

Kate’s ears rang with the sound of the shot, and her nostrils stung from the smell of burnt powder. She jerked back and felt her torso, her legs, her arms. There was blood on her left hand and she stared at it, horrified, before realizing that it wasn’t her blood.

She looked down at Oliver, at Oliver’s belly, where a huge red bubble was growing. “Oh fuck,” she said, and turned to meet the bull rush of Erland Bannister as he came crashing through a diamond willow. He looked past Kate to Oliver and said, “Goddamn you, Oliver, you useless little shit!” Given that moment of distraction, Kate grabbed for an overhead branch, hoisted herself up, and kicked Erland Bannister right in the chin. His jaw clicked shut and he fell backward most fortuitously against a white birch that had grown so tall its branches were a good eight feet above the ground. His skull hit the birch’s trunk with a very satisfying smack, a sound that Kate would have been happy to hear again, but there was no time. She rifled his pockets for keys and found them, and then she ran for it, flat out, right to the truck. It started at a touch and she put it in gear and floored the gas pedal.

Halfway down the hill, she met Mutt and Jim Chopin coming up in one of those anonymous black SUVs that had government issue written all over it. Fred Gamble was driving.

“Who took out the insurance policies on the kids?” Jim said.

“ Victoria did,” Kate said, “just like everyone said she did. They were maturation policies, generating funds for when the kids got old enough to retire, or to provide financing for their burials, should that be necessary before their time.”

Brendan shook his head. “She never denied taking them out, did she?”

“She never denied much of anything,” Kate said. “Erland told her he’d turn Oliver in if she did.”

“Tell me that part again. I’m having a hard time with it.”

Kate sighed and let her head fall back. “Oliver was in love with Wanda. He thought she was in love with William. Oliver drugged William with his mother’s sleeping pills, took a couple himself so they’d show up in the drug scan, and siphoned some gas out of his mother’s car, which he then ran from the fireplace to both sets of drapes. Then he put the gas can back in the garage, went upstairs, and climbed in bed to wait for the fire to catch and the smoke to rise to the second floor.”

“I still don’t get it. He broke his leg trying to get out the window.”

“I don’t think that was part of the plan.”

“Going out the window?”

“No, he meant to do that all along. It would have looked funny if he’d come down the stairs without trying to bring William with him. William’s bedroom was between his and the stairs. No, Oliver had to go out the window to make it look good.”

“It looked pretty damn good,” Fred Gamble said. “It certainly fooled an entire police force. Not to mention a jury.”

They were in Brendan’s office. Kate had been giving statements continuously since nine o’clock in the morning. It was now one o’clock in the afternoon. She was sticky with tree sap, grimy with sweat and dirt, and very, very tired. Her one consolation was the shaggy gray head pressed to her knee. She knotted her fingers in Mutt’s ruff and Mutt gave a comforting whine and leaned harder. She been glued to Kate’s side since they’d found Kate that morning. Sooner or later, such devotion was going to make it difficult to go to the bathroom, but right now it was equal parts relief and reassurance.

“And Victoria refused to speak to Charlotte because…”

“I’m guessing, to protect her,” Kate said. “ Victoria never told Charlotte that Oliver had killed William. Erland wouldn’t tell her, either, if Victoria would refuse to talk to her. He wanted a complete rift. So long as Victoria was in jail for William’s murder, no one would think to look at Oliver as a suspect. And Erland would have the heir he couldn’t provide for himself.”

“And it worked,” Jim said. “For thirty years.”

Kate nodded. “Okay, your turn. You guys have been pumping me dry for four hours. What happened here?”

“I woke up, you were gone, the boys saw you get taken, they caught the tags, Brendan found that they were registered to a buddy of Ralph Patton’s.”

“Was Ralph one of the men who took me?”

Brendan shook his head. “I had a prowl car go out to his place. He was home with his wife and kid.”

Kate looked at Gamble. “Not that I wasn’t happy to see you, Fred, but how the hell did you get involved in this?”

Gamble looked at Brendan. Brendan brushed fruitlessly at a speck of something disgusting on his tie and said to it, “I had reason to believe the FBI might have an interest in PME and all those who sail in her.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed.

“We were watching Oliver. We followed him to the cabin,” Gamble said primly. “And that’s really all we’re prepared to tell you.”

Racketeering? Money laundering? Kate wondered just what it was that had pulled PME back from the brink of bankruptcy all those years ago, and just how legal it had been.

She noticed Jim looked uncomfortable, and wondered what that was about. An enormous yawn split her face, and she decided to leave it for another day.

The phone rang. Brendan answered it, listened for a moment, said “Thanks,” and hung up. “Well, that was the crime-scene guys. They’ve been going over the cabin. Seems they found a grave.”

“What’s in it?”

“What’s left of what they think was a man.”

“Henry Cowell,” Kate said.

Brendan nodded at her. “We’ll have the lab put a rush on it, but that’s what I’m thinking.”

“He wouldn’t stay bought.”

Brendan said, “You think Erland paid him to throw the case?”

“Maybe not throw it,” Kate said, standing up and stretching. “Even old hanging Judge Kiddle might have noticed that. But Henry Cowell sure didn’t try very hard to get Victoria off.”

Back at the town house, she showered and changed into clean clothes and started to pack. Mutt knew what that meant and she was tiresomely happy about it.

Kate left her duffel by the door and called the cleaning service. They promised to come by the following morning. “Oh,” Kate said, “and there’s some fresh stuff-fruit, vegetables, some meat-in the refrigerator. Tell your people to take it all.”

She drove everything she’d bought to a shipping firm that specialized in palletizing goods and shipping them into the Bush. On the way home, she detoured over to Kevin and Jordan’s house.

Their mother opened the door. She looked sober, for the moment. Kate introduced herself in case the woman had been too drunk last time to remember her, and said, “Your boys have been eating and sleeping at my house off and on for the last couple of days. I’m leaving now, so I won’t be there for them. You’ve got two choices, ma’am. You can sober up and shape up and start taking care of them, or I can call the Division of Family and Youth Services and report you for child neglect and endangerment.”

She took Max to a late lunch to wash the taste of that out of her mouth.

“Goddamn it,” Max said with a bitterness that not even the best mixed martini would soothe.

“Not your fault,” Kate said. “It was a family conspiracy. There’s nothing harder to crack.”

“Bullshit,” Max said. He looked like a very old and very irritated eagle, with his fierce blue eyes and his hawklike nose.