'Under her nails?' Conni said. Spencer could see she was about to deny it.

Spencer leaned closer, hollow-eyed, gaunt, pale, and, trying hard to stay in control, said, 'Let me ask you, when you knocked her on the ground and put a pillow over her face to kill her, and she reached up with only one working arm to struggle for the last time and took that chunk out of your face, and you pressed the pillow harder into her, harder and harder, until her hand fell away and she stopped moving, let me ask you, did you then get off her, or did you sit on her for a while longer to make sure she was really dead?'

Conni nearly cried. 'I don't know what you're talking about!' she exclaimed in a frightened voice.

Spencer said quietly, 'Constance, your blood was under her nails. Do you understand what I'm telling you?'

Spencer could see by Conni's face she understood.

'Listen,' she said uncertainly. 'Things were coming to a head between us. We used to be really good friends. But you just came into our lives at a really bad time,' she added, sniffling.

'Certainly a bad time for her,' said Spencer.

'No, a bad time for both of us. I just couldn't take it anymore. I'd try so hard to believe both of them, but it was getting harder and harder. My relationship with Albert and her was getting out of control.'

Spencer waited.

'But those marks on my face, I didn't that wasn't in the woods. That was in her room. Outside her room. We had a fight.'

'When?'

'Tuesday evening. Around midnight.'

'Midnight you said?'

'Yes.'

Spencer said, 'You told me you didn't see her that night after eleven-fifteen.'

'I did.'

Spencer pushed his coffee cup aside. 'Conni, I'd recommend calling your family and asking them to arrange for a lawyer.'

'You think I still need a lawyer?' she asked lamely. 'But I'm telling you the truth.'

'The truth? What is that?' said Spencer. 'I don't know what that is anymore. The three of you have made me doubt the truth of my own name.'

Conni exclaimed very loudly, very insistently, 'I did not put my knees up on Kristina's chest. I did not kill her! This is ridiculous. You know I didn't kill her.'

Spencer shook his head slowly. 'Do I know that? No. I know nothing. In any case, you won't have to prove it to me. You're going to have to prove it to twelve of your peers.'

Conni got quiet, and then said, 'Really, you must believe me. I didn't do it.' Whatever facade she had had was gone. What was left was a Cold Spring Harbor sunny day that she couldn't see because she was inside the air-conditioned house. What was left, Spencer mused, was twenty-one years of instilling in your kids that they could do whatever they wanted if only they put their minds to it and then spoke loudly about truth. Well, Constance Tobias did what she wanted. She put her mind to it, and when at first she didn't succeed, she tried again.

Conni went on, 'Why are you torturing me like this? I'm telling you the truth. We had a fight. I don't know what happened. I just lost it and went for her. She tried to push me away, and things got out of control for a second, but only for a second. I was angry, you know?'

Spencer leaned forward, wanting to grab her by the shoulders. 'Angry enough to kill her?'

'I told you, I told you several times. Why won't you believe me? I didn't kill her.'

Spencer went on, 'Wouldn't be the first time you tried to kill her, huh, Conni?'

Falling back against the chair, Conni paled, her mouth opening. Spencer couldn't look her in the eyes and lowered his gaze.

'Lieut Detective O'Malley,' she stammered, 'I don't please, you have to believe me. This time no ... I didn't kill her.'

'You can't really confess to me, Conni, can you? You can't say, yes, I did it, because if you confess, there's only paperwork and sentencing left for you. No, you have to have a fighting chance. But you did kill her, didn't you?'

Rubbing her face and sounding frightened, Conni said, 'Look, that thing, last year, what? Did Frankie tell you that, too? God, that Frankie. Who needs enemies, right? Well, that thing, last year ' She giggled uncontrollably, and then cried.

Spencer reached into his pocket and pulled out some tissues, handing them to her. She wiped her face. They said nothing. 'Oh, God, it's really bad, isn't it? I didn't see it before, why didn't I see it? But it's just so bad ...'

'Yes,' Spencer agreed. 'It's pretty bad.'

'Does everybody know that?' Conni asked with a glimmer of hope. 'Or just you?'

Just you, officer, is it just you who knew I was going too fast, why, aren't you handsome, maybe you'd like to go out sometime, you and your blue eyes, maybe 'Miss Tobias, everybody knows it, everybody and their aunt. Besides, you weren't going to suggest that I keep vital evidence as to motive and your state of mind away from the DA's office?'

'No, of course not,' she said dejectedly. 'Look, it's true, obviously, I mean, I did I was enraged, I did ... sort of ... you know, push her, I shoved her '

'Like you shoved her into the snow?'

'The snow? What are you talking about? Please. No. That time, I pushed her legs '

'Why did you do that?' Spencer interrupted.

'Why? I already told you. She drove me crazy. I loved her and hated her. I understood why Albert would be smitten with her and hated her for it, I just wanted her to go away '

'Forever.'

'Just go away!' Conni cried. 'I admit, it was dumb, I don't know what got into me, but it's true, I pushed her off the bridge to make her fall. She was drunk it was likely she'd just fall herself someday.'

'What happened?' Spencer quietly asked.

'What happened? What, didn't Frankie tell you that part?'

Spencer said, 'Obviously Kristina survived.'

'Yeah, she survived,' Conni said intensely. 'I pushed her right near the foot of the bridge. I didn't realize the slope would break her fall. She was pretty banged up and everything, she looked like a like a '

'A pledge gone badly wrong,' Spencer finished.

'Something like that. But she was okay.'

Spencer scratched his head, nodding. 'Conni, I don't get something. You pushed her, you tried to kill her. Why would Kristina leave you any money?'

'We made up, I apologized.'

'How do you make up after something like that? How do you do it?'

'I said it was an accident, and she, I think she was too drunk, she believed me. You just go on, pretending everything is okay, pretending nothing happened ...'

'Is that possible?'

'We did it.'

'Not well, I see,' said Spencer.

Conni remained silent. Spencer watched her. 'If you didn't kill her, who did?'

'How should I know? A crazy man. I don't know. I wasn't there.'

Spencer persisted, 'It must've been hard for you with Albert. Lies can do that. Never knowing the truth can do that.'

'No, you have no idea,' Conni said. 'This is such a small campus, and we were always together, we were such good friends. I trusted them so much, Kristina was a wonderful person, you know? I mean, how could she do that to me?' Conni lowered her voice. 'It took me a long time to even get suspicious.'

Spencer leaned closer to Conni and said, 'Conni, who is Albert? What do you know about him? I tried to check out his background yesterday and had little luck. Did you know his infirmary emergency card has no emergency contacts on it? Just the name of a law firm here in town.' Spencer sat back. 'And when I called Clairton, Pennsylvania, to find a Maplethorpe, I was told there were no Maplethorpes in Clairton, Pennsylvania.'

Looking perplexed, Conni said, 'Clairton, Pennsylvania?'

Spencer nodded, tapping on the table with his coffee spoon. 'Yes. That's where he told me he was from.'

Conni laughed. 'He's not from Clairton, Pennsylvania, he's from Fort Worth, Texas. And he doesn't have any family. He's an orphan '

Spencer jumped up, knocking over his chair and dropping his spoon. 'Oh my God,' he muttered. 'Oh my God.'

Conni got up with him. 'What's the matter?'

'Nothing, I gotta go, I'll ...' He was already out the door and running to his car.

Spencer drove out onto Interstate 89, put on his police siren, and flew to Concord police headquarters, where Ed Landers worked. He asked Landers to show him the fingerprints from Kristina's room and to accompany him to the basement, where the FBI data terminal was kept.

'I've never scanned in anyone's prints,' Spencer said, panting, as if he had run to Concord. 'Could you help me with that?'

'Sure,' said Landers. 'I'm here to help. Is it the girl's prints you're interested in? I hear they're going to arrest her.'

'No, the guys' prints. Albert Maplethorpe's and Jim Shaw's.'

'Oh, okay.'

'That's it,' Spencer said, putting his hand on Ed's back, trying to hurry him along downstairs.

'Here, it's not so hard,' Landers was saying when all Spencer wished was that Ed would get it done. 'You put the picture of the prints facedown on this scanner, close the cover, push this green button '

'This one?'

'That's right.' Landers smiled. 'You're getting the hang of it.'

Get on with it, get on with it, get on with it, Spencer thought, smiling politely, blood draining from his tense fingers.

'We open up this scanning software, scale the photo of the prints. Is this sharp enough for you? Do you want them enlarged?'

Spencer nodded to everything.

'Now we choose a print path, now ... here we go.'

Spencer stopped listening and closed his eyes.

'Now we wait a few minutes. Let's sit down.' Ed sat down in front of the monitor. Spencer sat down, and thought he wanted to bolt back up again, he willed himself to stay down. 'It'll come up in a minute,' Ed said.

It was one of the longest minutes of Spencer's life.

'Okay, look here. The prints are in the machine. Now the computer wants to know if we want to search for possible matches.'

'Say yes, of course.'

'Of course. We press F5 for search, and wait.'

We sure wait a lot, Spencer thought.

The readout on the monitor said, Can you narrow the criteria?

'What does that mean?' said Spencer.

'It means it wants something more specific. Maybe there is another print close to this one but it can't be sure. Shall we say, male?'

'By all means.'

Landers entered the data and waited. The same message for narrowing criteria came up.

'Oh,' said Spencer. 'How often does that happen?'

'Well, you have to be fingerprinted sometime in your life, like for citizenship or extensive traveling, diplomacy work, investment banking, and of course committing a federal offense. The last group is usually the first to be classified.'

'Can you try all the categories?'

'Of course. Let's try male traveler.'

They waited. The basement reminded Spencer of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock morgue. But this wasn't as clean and well-tended.

Now they had something. The hard drive cranked over and made some humming noises, then up came a photo of Jim Shaw, along with ten of his fingerprints and a short bio.

'How's that?' Landers asked.

'This is okay. Ed, can we scan in the other set of prints?'

'Sure, bear with me.'

Spencer bore. His fingertips, white with strain, were pressing into his legs.