"You shit," Caroline said.

Caroline kicked off her shoes and unbuttoned her skirt, which she let drop to her feet. She crossed her arms, took hold of the bottom of her sweater and pulled it over her head, revealing her shadowed shaved underarms. She reached behind her back, unsnapped her bra, and shrugged it off. Her breasts were covered in goose bumps. Her nipples were the rusty rose of the shotgun shells. She took off her panties.

"Pick up your clothes," Robert said, "go out the door and turn left down the hall."

3.

At the end of the hall, Jack and Caroline, followed by Robert and the shotgun, took two steps down to a landing, feeling dwarfed by the landing's cathedral-size window, which overlooked the swimming pool in the side yard. In the pool, Jack saw a body floating facedown.

Another corpse?

Jack stopped to take a closer look.

Or one of Keating's resin constructions?

"It's a float," Robert said.

When Jack looked at him skeptically, Robert added, "Made to look like William Holden at the beginning of Sunset Boulevard. One of my father's least successful business ventures. Along with the bobble-head Katharine Hepburn car doll."

In the sky, a thunderhead veined with lightning looked like an electrified brain.

"Down the rest of the steps," Robert said, "and through the door."

The crack of thunder made the glass in the window vibrate. Rain spattered against the side of the house.

Naked, side-by-side, Jack and Caroline continued down the stairs to the first floor and out the massive door, down the steps outside, and onto the driveway. "Robert," Jack asked, "did you ever hang out with your sister?"

"Half sister," Robert said. "Once or twice."

"Did you do drugs with her?" Jack asked.

"Once or twice," Robert said.

"Did your father know?" Jack asked.

"No," Robert said. "Are you constructing a motive for murder, Jack?"

"Did you ever fuck her?" Jack asked.

Caroline shot a glance at Jack.

Robert sucked his thumb where he'd bitten off a strip of flesh.

"Nervous?" Jack asked.

Jack felt Caroline's hand searching for his.

"Get the fuck out of here," Robert said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

1.

Clutching Caroline's hand, Jack led her into the shadows under the huge trees, inching his way forward, feeling his way, one hand stretched out-like one of the plaster lawn jockeys.

Halfway to their car, Jack and Caroline stopped and dressed.

While kneeling to tie his shoes, Jack looked back at Robert, who was filling his car-a dark blue Honda Accord-from an old-fashioned Esso gas pump outside the property's six-car garage.

With his free hand, Robert flipped open his cell phone, punched in numbers, with his thumb hit call-and blew up in a fireball that splintered the high window and filled the air with a black, hot, gasoline-smelling cloud.

2.

"A spark from his cell phone," Jack said.

The air stank of burning chemicals and rubber, scorched metal, which made Jack and Caroline's eyes sting and their throats burn. Caroline put her left hand on Jack's shoulder to steady herself as she leaned sideways, away from Jack, and retched.

The breeze blew the hair hanging forward from her forehead, the locks moving like snakes.

Under the other smells was the aroma of cooked meat. Sweet. Like pulled pork. Robert's flesh.

Once more, Caroline retched.

She straightened up, wiping away a thread of spittle hanging from the side of her mouth with the back of her hand.

Without looking at her, to give her privacy, Jack handed her his pocket handkerchief.

The wind swept the sky clear of curdled clouds.

Directly above them, at the pivot of the sky, were Vega and the other stars that suggested the two parallel lines, the two strings, of the constellation Lyra.

To the north was Draco, the Little Dipper, the Big Dipper-more familiar to Jack than Lyra. To his right were constellations he didn't recognize.

Jack kept staring at the sky until he thought Caroline had a chance to collect herself. They were walking away from the burning car. The stench was less powerful.

Caroline swallowed.

"Do we call the police?" she asked.

"I've had enough to do with the police lately," Jack said. "And I'm not ready to explain why we came."

Caroline hesitated-both in answering and in walking toward their car.

"Are you?" Jack asked. "Ready to explain?"

"I don't think I could," Caroline said. "What about our fingerprints?"

"We've been here before," Jack said. "There's nothing to tie us into tonight."

They were at their car. Upwind of the fire.

Caroline gulped air.

"But Robert-," she started.

"He'll be found soon enough," Jack said. "There's nothing we can do for him."

"And Keating?" Caroline asked.

"There's nothing we can do for him either," Jack said.

Caroline ducked her head to slip into the car. Her shoulders heaved. She started sobbing.

Lightly, Jack rested his hand on her back. Felt her body shake.

He forced himself to say nothing.

She stopped crying as suddenly as she started. And swung around to sit in the car.

Moonlight, shining through the windshield, bathed her left cheek. Turned her face into a half-dark moon.

She turned her head more to her right. To look beyond Jack at the trees, Jack thought. Maybe at the sky.

And more of her face was shadowed. Her cheek was now only a sickle moon.

Diana, Jack thought. The Virgin Goddess of the Hunt.

Diana killed Orion, Jack couldn't remember why. Caroline would know, though this wasn't a good time to ask.

Jack searched the sky for the constellation of Orion. The three stars that made up his belt, but Jack couldn't find them.

As a kid, Jack wanted to know all the stars, the names of all the plants, all the creatures around him.

Diana also killed Actaeon.

Jack remembered that story because in his old mythology book with the orange cover there was a picture of Actaeon, his dogs at his heels, peering through the trees at Diana, who was bathing, naked in a stream.

In the illustration, Diana had small breasts and a hairless crotch.

Because of the hairless women in Greek and Roman mythology and in the statues of goddesses he saw when he was taken on a class trip to a museum in Springfield, Jack wasn't prepared for his first girlfriend's pubic bush, a dark, curly, moist tangle that delighted him.

But he thought Actaeon got a raw deal.

Being turned into a stag and torn to pieces by his own dogs just because he stumbled on a goddess.

No, Jack changed his mind-that seems right.

Every time in his life that he had stumbled on a goddess-in the guise of girls or women he'd fallen in love with-there always came a time when he felt the girl-the woman-would sic his dogs on him if she could.

3.

Caroline faced front in the car. The moonlight made her face silvery. A metal mask. Expressionless.

Jack shut her door and came around to the driver's side, opened his door, slipped in, glanced once at Caroline whose face was immobile, now all in shadow. A cloud had covered the moon. He turned on the ignition, put the car in reverse, backed in a semicircle, put the car in forward, and descended the long drive away from the Flowerses' house.

Part Three.

KEATING.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.