“Phoebe,” she said gently.

“I need you to tell me exactly what happened in that house.”

From the hallway, Roland was already shouting — that he was a prominent developer, a friend of the mayor, a donor, that he wanted his attorney.

It was the sound of a man reaching for the armor of status that had protected him for years.

And I reached over and took my sister’s cold hand, and felt her fingers close weakly around mine, and I looked Detective Cruz in the eye and said the truest sentence I have ever spoken.

“I don’t need to tell you,” I said.