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been in the news, right?”
    I gave him a look and didn’t answer.
    â€œRight,” he said. “But there’s a lot they don’t tell you. Such as, there is no evidence at all that any intruder was ever in that house.”
    â€œMaybe he wore gloves,” I said.
    â€œThat only accounts for fingerprints. What about hairs, fibers, footprints, saliva, maybe a spot or two of blood? You can’t go someplace without leaving evidence. Dirt, dead skin particles, whatever—with the technology the state police have got, they would have found something if an intruder had been there. And there was no sign of forcible entry. How—”
    â€œMaybe some door wasn’t locked.”
    â€œThe front door was unlocked when Cecily got home. Nathan said he locked the doors. Then he changed his story and said he wasn’t sure. His first story, he said he locked the doors and went to bed, his sister woke him up screaming, he went down and saw Aaron’s body, he called 911. He didn’t say a word about your phone calls. But the cops have your voice on the answering machine, they have Jamy and Cecily and two others to verify that you made the calls, so Nathan changed his story. Now he says it’s the phone that woke him up, and he answered it before Cecily came home and he saw the body. But to get to the downstairs phone from his bedroom, he had to walk past the body. So he says he got it upstairs. But that phone is in his parents’ bedroom, and the carpet had just been vacuumed, and there are no footmarks. And the downstairs phone has bloodstains on it.”
    I started to feel cold, remembering how I had felt so relieved when Nathan had answered, and now Dad was saying he had picked up the phone with—with blood on his hands.
    â€œMaybe it got there when he called 911.”
    â€œOkay, maybe. He says he wasn’t thinking, he touched Aaron, and that’s when he got blood all over him. Okay, fine, but Cecily would know whether he had blood on him when she got home, right?”
    Oh, my God.
    I just sat there. Couldn’t make myself ask.
    â€œAnd she’s not saying,” Dad answered the question I couldn’t ask. “The cops try to talk with her or hook her up to the polygraph, she just gets hysterical.”
    God have mercy. Poor Aardy.
    â€œThey can’t make her testify against her brother anyway,” Dad said, “but they don’t need to. There’s plenty of physical evidence. For starters, Nathan’s footprints are in the blood trail all over the house.”
    Cold. I felt cold. So cold I couldn’t speak.
    â€œSomebody—and I for one think it must have been Nathan—had cleaned up the blood trail,” Dad said, “but you can still see it under black light. Kitchen, living room, stairs, kitchen again, and Nathan’s footprints are in it all the way.”
    I found my voice. “So he was stupid, he cleaned it up, his footprints got in it—”
    â€œBut there are no other footprints in it. Only his and Aaron’s.”
    I turned away, staring out the car window at the night like it could tell me something.
    I heard Dad’s voice. “Use your brain, son.”
    God damn everything. I whispered, “But … but why would Nathan kill Aaron?”
    â€œAh.” Dad actually sounded like I’d said something right. “That’s the prosecution’s one weak point. Motive. But with all the physical evidence, they don’t really need to prove motive. I mean, brother killing brother, ask the cops. Something like ninety percent of domestic calls where it’s brother fighting brother, sooner or later it ends up in murder. But I bet the funeral preacher didn’t mention the first crime in the Bible, did he? I bet he didn’t talk about Cain and Abel.”
    I didn’t say anything, just sat there, but Dad kept talking. “They’ll send him up for psychiatric