Bennie cruised the block in the dark before she pulled up in front of Della Porta’s rowhouse, making sure there were no news vans or reporters out front. Trose Street was quiet, with only a few people out. She parked and locked the Expedition, got out with the case file, and plucked through her keys until she found the one to Della Porta’s apartment.

Bennie climbed the stoop to the entrance, unlocked the inside door, and went up the stairs to the apartment. She opened the door at the top of the stair, thinking about Connolly. How it must have felt for her to come home to this apartment, to Della Porta. What it was like to find him dead. Bennie had experienced that horror herself, except that she’d loved profoundly the man she’d found. How could this happen to both her and Connolly? Wasn’t it too coincidental?

She opened the door, entered the apartment, and flicked on the switch for the overhead light. The apartment looked the same as before, the living area on the left, with the bloodstain. She walked to the faintly rusty outline and flashed on the awful day she saw the pool of blood on her lover’s desk. Bennie stared at the bloodstain, deep in thought. She had to admit that she was starting to feel, more than she could logically justify, that Connolly was her twin. Maybe because Bennie had watched Connolly, observed the way she looked and acted. Noted her mannerisms and the coincidences in their lives. Yet the more time Bennie spent around Connolly, the more she felt she understood her, even as she trusted and liked her less. It was paradoxical, but Bennie was starting to feel of Connolly in some way. It was an uneasy sensation, being suddenly uncomfortable in her own skin.

Bennie stared down at the stain. Blood. It always came back to blood. She had to win this case. She had a duty, not only as Connolly’s lawyer, but maybe even as her sister. And there was one way to win. The ethics of it were arguable, but at the same time, she had an equal ethical duty to represent her client as zealously as possible. It was a thorny problem, but most were, in the law, and that’s what kept it interesting.

“Just get on with it, girl,” Bennie said aloud, and hurried to the bathroom to save Connolly’s life.

Snip, snip, went the scissors. Bennie had bought them at a drugstore on the way over and they were more suited to construction paper than hair. She squeezed the orange handles and tried again, cutting a strand of hair near the front of her face.

Snip. The honeyed strand fell to the sink, where Bennie had spread out the day’s newspaper from her briefcase. Her hand moved an awkward inch to the back of her head and she grabbed another hank of hair.

Snip, snip. A chunk fell to the newspaper, and she checked the bathroom mirror. The front part of Bennie’s hair was now clipped in layers. She already looked more like Connolly, even given the difference in their hair colors. Clearing the hair from her forehead emphasized the similarity in their eyes.

Bennie looked at her reflection and imagined the way she and Connolly would look at counsel table, identical sisters, side-by-side in front of the jury. It would have to affect the jurors. Bennie knew she could get a jury to trust her; it was her greatest strength as a trial lawyer. And if she could get the jury on her side, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to get them on Connolly’s. Especially if every time they looked at Bennie, they saw Connolly. And vice versa.

Bennie chopped away, preoccupied. Her first approach to the case-hiding the fact that she and Connolly were, or might be, twins-was wrong, and untenable now that the news was live at five. If the media was flogging the story that they were twins, why not go with it? Why not turn it to Connolly’s advantage? If Bennie went public with the twin issue, played it up, then every article the press wrote and every story they printed would generate sympathy for Connolly. The buzz had to reach the potential jurors, with the trial only a week away. Suddenly the tight time frame became an advantage, too.

Bennie smiled grimly as she hacked away. It was a great plan, and there was no way the D.A. could counter it. Even if Judge Guthrie issued a gag order, the press would be off and spinning. Every “no comment” would tantalize. Snip, snip, snip. Bennie had disguised herself in the past, to look less like herself. This time she was disguising herself to look more like herself. A mask, inside out. If Connolly was her twin, the mask was Bennie’s true identity.

She made a final cut and set the scissors on the edge of the sink. Snippets of blond hair covered the newspaper and filled the basin. She admired even her crude handiwork, turning her head left and right in front of the mirror. Her head felt lighter; she felt freer.

She dived into her purse for her other new purchases, grabbed a tube of lipstick and twirled it open, revealing a rosy missile. She raised the lipstick with a schoolgirl’s excitement and applied it to her lips. She blotted like she’d seen her mother do as a young child, then reached back into the bag. Liquid eyeliner. She unscrewed the top, took the little brush, and made the first line on her left lid. The goop felt like a cold worm going on and looked worse, but she finished the job.

Bennie looked in the mirror, unsatisfied. The makeup brought a bogus liveliness to her features, but her clothes were wrong. She whipped off her jacket and stuffed it onto the empty towel rack, then opened two buttons of her cotton blouse and tucked her collar under, so that her neckline mimicked the V-neck of Connolly’s prison jumpsuit. Bennie rechecked the mirror and was almost satisfied. The clothes underscored the effect of the haircut. At trial she’d dress her client and herself to match; not identically, that would be too obvious, but in the same colors and styles.

Bennie grinned in the mirror, then quickly deflated. Something was wrong. Her smile looked too warm, too happy. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and her nose wrinkled at the bridge. Connolly never smiled that way. Her smile, such as it was, came off as cynical, hardened. Could Bennie make herself look exactly like Connolly?

She stepped back from the mirror, tilted her mouth down at the corners, and knit her brow deeply. She checked the mirror. Too much. She stroked her cheeks, smoothing the animation from her features. She needed her face to look slack, vaguely without affect, like Connolly. She closed her eyes and imagined how it felt to be raised with remote parents, never to find a career that satisfied her, and ultimately to be charged for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. To be on trial for her very life.

Bennie slipped deeper inside Connolly’s mind. She imagined herself discovering that she had been put up for adoption, and that as lousy as her life had turned out, she had an identical twin who became a successful lawyer. Who was chosen over her by their mother; whose success was attained through her sacrifice. Who had taken her very blood for her own. Bennie opened her eyes and looked in the mirror. The expression on her face was Connolly’s.

Bennie was Connolly.

And it terrified her.