Finding out about Calvin Crane was about as easy as taking a cab to the New York Public Library. Walking past the magnificent stone lions that guard its entrance, Adrienne climbed the stairs to the third floor reading room, where she found a much-thumbed copy of Who’s Who among a shelf of reference books. Taking the burgundy tome to a mahogany conference table, she sat down beside an elderly man with a nimbus of flyaway hair, and searched for Crane’s entry. Finding it, she began to read:

Adrienne sat back in her chair, and drummed her fingertips on the open page. As she did, the old man to her right gave her a sidelong glance, then returned to the book he was reading: Secrets of the Great Pyramid.

The Who’s Who entry required a certain amount of deconstruction, Adrienne thought. Harvard and Yale suggested money. Then a job at some law firm, interrupted by the war. OSS. That was spy stuff. Then back to the law firm. Then a spy again, and then a job with State—in Switzerland where, she noticed, he’d been before. After that, the foundation job. For forty years. Prestigious clubs and honors, capped by a Florida retirement.

Prematurely ended by her crazy sister.

There had to be more. Getting up from her chair, she went to the reference desk and asked directions to the periodicals reading room, which turned out to be just down the corridor. With a librarian’s help, she selected microfiche spools from the New York Times, Miami Daily News, and the Sarasota Star-Tribune. Each of the spools covered the same period in October when Crane had been killed.

Sitting down at one of the readers, she went from obit to obit until she had a sense of the man—if not an understanding of her sister’s relationship to him.

The references to the OSS were especially interesting. From what she read, the organization had been formed under the influence of British intelligence at the outset of World War II. Like its European counterpart, it had recruited from the country’s upper classes, drawing as much as possible from the best schools and most prestigious firms on Wall Street. According to the Times, the OSS was “at once the principal precursor of the CIA, and a transatlantic Old Boys network par excellence.”

As if to emphasize the point, there was a page of photographs—billed as “a visual tribute”—in the Star-Tribune, showing Crane at different ages. As a young man, he’d been almost movie-star handsome, with bold eyebrows, a strong chin, and a shock of thick dark hair that fell, Kennedyesque, over his forehead. He was shown shaking the hand of Franklin Roosevelt; posing on the slopes around Gstaad with Allen Dulles; clinking champagne flutes with de Gaulle; and escorting Audrey Hepburn through the front doors of the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb. Forty years in Switzerland, give or take a day. Lawyer, spy, foundation head. How do you make that transition, Adrienne wondered. And then Florida. Where he supported a slew of good causes, including the Sarasota Symphony Orchestra, the Conch-House Preservation Society, and Native Ground, an ecological group dedicated to combating the overthrow of native flora by invasive species. Before his confinement in a wheelchair, those causes and the game of golf seemed to constitute the major parameters of the old man’s life.

It was all very interesting, Adrienne decided, but it didn’t tell her anything about why her sister took a train to Florida and shot him. It occurred to her that Nikki might have imagined Crane to have been one of the men who’d “abused” her, but it seemed a stretch. In fact, if his Who’s Who entry was accurate, Crane had been living in Switzerland all during the time that Nikki had been growing up.

Returning to her hotel, Adrienne found the red diode blinking on the telephone next to the bed. Retrieving the message—Call ASAP, any hour—Ray Shaw—she phoned him at his home.

“We’ve had a breakthrough,” Shaw told her.

“Fantastic! So… “ She cleared her throat. “So come on, who is he?”

“Well, he’s a very troubled man.”

“Doc…”

“His name is Lew McBride—Lewis with an ‘e.’ That’s the good news. The bad news is: he beat his wife and son to death with a baseball bat.”

“What!?”

“I think you heard me, though whether this is another fantasy of his—or something else—we can’t be sure.”

Adrienne let her head fall back against the wall behind the bed. “Where did this happen?” she asked.

“San Francisco.” Shaw filled her in on McBride’s background, from Bethel to Bowdoin to Stanford, including his parents’ deaths. “Bright young man—no question. Magna cum laude. Doctorate in psychology, prestigious fellowships—it was all ahead of him. Until…”

“What?”

“He went off the deep end. Suffered a psychotic break, of some kind. Beat his family to death. Swears he wasn’t on drugs, though you have to wonder if angel dust wasn’t involved.”

“He killed his wife?” Adrienne couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it.

“And his infant son. Three months old.”

They fell silent for a moment. Then she asked: “Was he arrested, or… what?”

“‘Or what,’ indeed!” the psychiatrist exclaimed. “According to the patient, everything slips into soft focus at that point. He remembers the murders, but that’s it. The next thing he knows, he’s in Washington, and he’s Jeffrey Duran, therapist.”

“So… where is he now?”

“In restraints. I have him on A-4. Security ward.”

Adrienne couldn’t imagine it. “You think he’ll try to escape?”

“No. I think he’ll try to kill himself. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

“Then… “ Adrienne was at a loss for words, and running short on ideas, as well. Finally, she asked, “What about… that thing?”

“The implant?”

“Yes.”

“That could have been a part of the problem, but I really can’t tell you anything. I’m having a helluva time finding out about it,” Shaw complained. “I’ve called the lab three times and… nothing.”

“So—”

“I’ll deal with the lab,” Shaw promised. “But, I have to say that if Mr. McBride’s recollection of himself as a murderer is accurate, it would explain a lot—the dissociation he experienced, the hysterical amnesia—even the sublimation of his personality into an alternate identity.”

“‘If’…”

“Pardon me?” the psychiatrist asked.

“You said, ‘if’ his memory is accurate.”

“So I did.”

Adrienne was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up the complimentary pen beside the telephone, and asked, “When is this supposed to have happened?”

“Five years ago—in San Francisco.”

“Let me look into it,” she suggested. “And if I find out it’s true… ?”

“I don’t think either of us would have any choice. We’d have to notify the police.”

She knew he was right. But she also knew there was room for doubt—and that any call to the police at this time would be premature. Until the day before, the recently-confessed murderer had been someone else entirely. “I just can’t believe it,” she said.