“There’s a chance, and to me minor, biological connection, and nothing else. You think one of them—and you lean toward the daughter because of her travel—has this grudge against me. Like their mother did.”

“She may very well have helped instill it.”

“Yes, I can see that. And their father died, disgraced, died because my mother protected me, herself, Mimi. So we can be blamed for that. Their mother died, and I guess we could be blamed for that, too. She died not long before the poems started coming.”

“Possibly a psychic break, that final loss. Coupled with the release of your own DVD. But the timing certainly plays into my theory. While I strongly believe one or both of them is responsible for this, I need to conduct more interviews. Because I believe this is more than poems. I was delayed leaving DC because I went to interview another of Bennett’s affairs. She lives in Foggy Bottom. She had the affair, from the time line, about a year before he started one with your mother. She was very forthcoming, and during the course of the interview I asked if she’s received any threats, any anonymous poems. If she’d had anything happen to make her feel threatened, and so on.

“No letters, no phone calls,” Rachael said, taking another cracker. “But she’d moved several years ago because of a break-in and a tragedy. Shortly after her divorce, she’d gone away—impulse with a new boyfriend—for a long weekend, and had her sister stay in her house. Just house-sitting, but mostly to give her sister a change of scene, as she’d recently been downsized out of her job. Someone broke into the house. The sister was shot, multiple times, as she slept. Several items were taken, valuables, in what appeared to be a botched burglary.”

“You don’t think that.”

“No. I made that trip to Foggy Bottom because I’d had a conversation with the mother of another woman whose name was on Catherine’s list—the names she gave to the reporter.”

Absently, Rachael spread cheese on another cracker. “Let me add in that it’s going to take awhile to locate everyone on the list. Marriages, divorces, moving to different locations. In this case, the mother lived in Bethesda, so was easy to reach.

“She knew her daughter had been involved with an older man while in college. A married man. A fling, nothing more. I spoke with the mother, as the woman herself was stabbed to death a few years ago while taking her usual morning hike. Attacked on a trail in Northern California, where she lived with her husband and two sons.”

Very carefully Adrian picked up the bottle of wine, added more to her glass. “They both had affairs with Jon Bennett.”

“Their names were on the list given to the reporter. So whether they did or not, Catherine believed they did. Police wouldn’t have that list, or any reason to connect a shooting death during a break-in in DC with a stabbing death in California. The only link is that the owner of the house where the first victim was shot was a woman, like the second victim, who went to Georgetown University. At different times. I wanted to get this information to you as soon as possible. I’ll start checking the other names on the list right away.”

Adrian took a slow sip of wine. “My mother’s name is on that list.”

“I’ve contacted her, and she’ll take precautions. I can’t tell you there’s no risk to her, but it’s more probable they—let’s use ‘they’ for simplicity—have focused on you. It certainly may be they intend to deal with her at some later point, but the poems come to you, and have all along. They resent you for your very existence. The fact that you were born took something away from them, diminished their standing. And it makes you responsible for their father’s death, for their mother’s eventual suicide. If using this theory, you read over the poems, that blame and resentment is clearly there.”

“Yes,” Adrian agreed. “Yes, it is.”

“More? You’re successful in your field, enjoy some celebrity in that field. You’ve paid no price for the insult of your birth. Add to that, you’re a young, very attractive woman with considerable financial security, and an admirable family legacy. Their legacy is adultery, abuse, suicide, public humiliation.”

“Hurting me won’t change that, but I can follow your theory. What now? Will you take all this to the FBI, the police?”

“I will, but I’d like to contact the other women, if possible, first. Or as many as I can locate. And I want to talk to Nikki Bennett. If I can solidify the theory, law enforcement will be a lot more inclined to bring her in for questioning, to find her brother. And if they can tie one or both of them to these murders, to charge them.”

“Okay. Okay,” Adrian said again, with a decisive nod. “Because I think you’re right. It makes a terrible kind of sense. You’ve already found out more in weeks than the rest have in years.”

“I’d really like to take full credit, but I came at this late in the day and with fresh eyes. Also without a stack of case files on my desk. I could focus on this, just this. And I got lucky with the timing. Dennis Browne was ready to spill. Once he had, it presented solid angles to work with.”

“Don’t care.” Adrian gestured with her glass. “All I know is that for the first time I have a reason for all of this, and I can actually believe it’s going to end. Those women, those two women.” She shut her eyes. “There may be more.”

“Yes, there may be more.”

“How many on the list?”

Rachael took a moment and her last swallow of wine. “Thirty-four in the fourteen-year period before his death. That she documented. He averaged better than two a year.”

“Thirty-four? That strikes me as more sex-addict behavior than straight dog. And it had to eat at her, his wife. It had to, no matter how hard she tried to normalize it. Children know when things are wrong inside the home. They feel it.”

“I agree. Are psychopaths born or made? A lot of theories on that. In this case I’m inclined to go with both. I’m going to head back home unless there’s something more you need from me.”

“No. No, but you’ve given me a lot to process.”

“There are more specific details in the written report. If you have any questions, contact me. Meanwhile, look out for yourself.”

“I will. I hope your drive home is smoother than the drive here,” Adrian added as they rose.

“It almost has to be. Thanks for the wine—and that cheese.”

“Wait, let me wrap it up for you.”

“You don’t have—”

But Adrian had already dashed inside. She dashed back out, covered the cheese in clear wrap, put in crackers, the olives she’d seen Rachael nibble on in a little lidded tub, added a small bottle of S.Pellegrino.

“My mother’s paying you. But this is from me.”

“I’ll take it, thanks. I’ll be in touch, Adrian.”

She watched Rachael drive away, then lowered a hand to Sadie’s head.

“I feel sick inside. Sick. I haven’t given his children a single thought in … I don’t know if I ever really gave them one.” Because her legs felt wrong, just wrong, she sat, lowered to wrap her arms around Sadie, to hold the comfort. “The idea they may have given me all this thought, all this twisted thought, it makes me sick inside.”