Hunter was exhausted as he and Levi made their way on their bikes down I-93 toward Boston. He hadn’t slept much the night before. First, he and Claire made love outside and then they made love again in the bed. She started talking about her life again afterwards, and he wasn’t even sure what time it was that she finally fell asleep. He smiled as he remembered lying there, holding her and listening to her talk. He never realized what a great feeling intimacy like that could bring. He listened to every word she said and when she did fall asleep, he missed her voice immediately. He watched her sleep for a while before finally falling asleep himself, and he was woken up at eight a.m. by the sound of his phone. He had asked Chase to use any contacts he had to find someone at Fort Bragg that would be willing to get them a list of their Ranger School instructors. No way Robert Potter was a Ranger instructor…but he had to follow every lead. Chase was calling back to let him know that he’d found someone willing to “work on it,” for a fee. Chase wasn’t in a good mood. Hunter’s personal business was eating into his. He snapped out the information and then ended the call before Hunter could say a word. The rude phone call had him wide awake, but Claire was still sleeping. He smiled down at her and thought about how he couldn’t wait until things settled down and he could start pursuing an actual relationship with her, and those were words he thought he’d never think, speak, or act on.

With Claire on his mind and the other, darker things happening in life pushed to the back burner for the time being, Hunter followed Levi off the exit toward Storrow Drive. They went west until they got to the Back Bay/Copley Square exit and on the streets Levi stopped at the red light. When Hunter stopped next to him he asked, “What’s the name of this bar?”

“Harry’s.” Jon said it was an “alley bar” and a place that Robert or Richard, or whatever his name was, frequented.

When the light changed, Hunter took the lead. Levi knew his way into Boston, but since he wasn’t local, he didn’t know downtown or Boston Common well. Hunter followed the bustling, narrow streets to an alleyway behind one of the busiest streets in downtown Boston. It was only a few steps away from the Freedom Trail, which Hunter had walked hundreds of times as a kid. Strangely enough, even as an adult who liked his beer and his pubs, he’d never heard of this one. It was like someone was trying hard to hide it there. In a tourist-packed place like Boston, he wouldn’t blame the locals for wanting a place of their own. The two men parked their bikes in the limited space and Levi looked up at the sign. The H was burned out and one of the Rs. The green neon flashed out “ar y’s.”

“Hmm, this is nice,” Levi said. Hunter chuckled and pushed open the double wooden doors. The place was as “nice” on the inside as it was on the outside. The lighting was way too bright for a bar, and it accentuated the fact that the floors, counters, and old jukebox in the corner were covered with dust and harshly used. Hunter’s eyes went to a narrow staircase in the back, next to the restrooms. He almost shuddered as he thought about Jon and Robert or Richard, or whoever the fuck the man was, “sharing a skank.”

The bar was far from full, and the people sitting in the booths and at the tables were older, and mostly couples. There were a few single men and a group of men in one corner. Hunter and Levi went up to the counter, where a young guy was pouring drinks. He was about twenty-two or -three with dark hair, a stud in his nose, one in his upper lip, and plugs so large that they stretched his earlobes down to his shoulders. His arms were both covered with tattoos and they ran all the way up his neck. “What can I get you, man?”

“I’m looking for some information,” Hunter said. “Have you ever seen this man?” Hunter had Robert Potter’s mug shot. It wasn’t a great picture, but he’d edited it so that the name and date didn’t show at the bottom.

The young bartender looked at the photo and squinted his own eyes. “Nah, I don’t think so. I’m new here, though. You might want to ask some of those guys over there.” He motioned at the booth in the corner. “They’re regulars.”

“Thanks.” Levi and Hunter approached the table full of men. There were five of them in the booth, older men that looked like union men or blue-collar workers or both. The fact that it was only eleven a.m. and they were sitting in a bar probably meant they weren’t working much that day. “Hi, guys, my name is Hunter Donovan and this is Levi. We’re looking for this man. Have any of you ever seen him in here?” The men looked at Hunter and then Levi suspiciously. Hunter had tried to tone down his quirky look slightly, but he couldn’t ride without his cowboy boots and he needed his vest to cover up his holster and gun. Levi was wearing his kutte and his hair was back in a ponytail so the tattoo on his neck was visible. The older men all had bald heads or combovers, and they were looking at the doe-eyed kid like they didn’t approve.

A couple of the men glanced at the photo and then one of them said, “What are you looking for him for?”

“My brother was an Army Ranger. He was killed recently. This man was a good friend of his, an old instructor from Ranger School. My brother left something for him in his will, but we can’t find him. The man’s name is Robert or Richard Potter…”

“Well, which one you looking for?” another man asked. Before Hunter could answer, another guy looked over his friend’s shoulder and said, “That looks like a mug shot. If it is, that’s gotta be Robert. He always was the bad seed.”

Hunter looked at Levi. He was confused. “The bad seed?”

“Yeah, them boys grew up around here. Robert used to love that game where he pretended to be his brother and freaked people out, even when they were grown. Sometimes he even got his brother in trouble. Richard was pissed off at him, a lot.”

“Richard joined up with the army,” another of the men put in. “Last time he was in here, he was talking about being a Green Beret or something. I don’t blame him for wanting to get away from that crazy brother and mother of his.”

“They’re twins?” That didn’t make sense. According to his birth certificate, Robert Potter was a twin…but he had a sister, not a brother. Her name was Roberta and her birth certificate was the last document they’d been able to find on her. He and Brett had tracked down the mother. She was in a psychiatric hospital. She was schizophrenic and barely coherent, and couldn’t tell them anything about either one of her kids. The F.B.I. agents that built the original case against Robert had the same information. Nowhere was there a brother mentioned.

“Well, yeah,” one of the guys said, like “Duh.” “They’re identical. I never could tell them apart by looks…but Richard, he was always real polite and quiet and Robert, he was a little fucker, that one.”

“Have you seen them recently? Either one of them?” Could a birth certificate be wrong? Hunter didn’t think so. He knew it said “twins” and not “triplets,” but these guys seemed convinced.

“Can’t you get Richard’s information from the army?” one of the men asked. Now that Hunter knew he really existed, and Jon hadn’t made him up, maybe he could. He’d like to hear what people who actually knew him had to say first.

“Robert said that he had some security clearance or something where they couldn’t even get in touch with him anymore,” the guy that had called Robert a “little fucker” said. “The last time he showed up here was maybe two, three years ago.”

“Robert?”

“No, Richard. He was home on leave or something and he came in with an army buddy of his. Real big ugly guy.”

“Oh, yeah,” another man said. “Guy reminded me of Lurch from The Addams Family.” The men all laughed. Hunter had to agree, if it was Jon he was talking about. “Have you seen the other one recently? Robert?”

“Nah,” one guy said as the rest of them shook their heads. “He ain’t been around here since before the last time his brother was home. Come to think of it, he told me he was fixing to leave town and when Richard showed up a week later, I thought it was him, back already.”

“But it was Richard, for sure?”

The old man shrugged. “He had on a uniform. Robert ain’t never been in the military. Like I said, that’s the only way I can tell them apart.”

“You have seen them together, though?”

The old men were looking at him like he was crazy. “Of course,” one of them said. “They ran the streets from sunup till sundown when they were kids, wreaking all kinds of havoc.”

Hunter sighed. “So, did any of you know their mother?”

The men all fell silent and looked at each other and then the most talkative one said, “Yeah, she used to live in a home over on Charles Street… nuttier than Grandma’s fruitcake. I heard she was locked up somewhere now. Haven’t seen her in years.”

“When you say nutty…?”

“Walked around talking to herself sometimes. Other times she’d sit on the stoop and scream at people that walked by for no reason. Her neighbors all called the cops on her more than once for walking around naked in the streets, or making them boys sleep outside when they were just little bitty kids because she had a man in the house. She was skinny as a rail and looked like she never took a shower, don’t know why them men would have wanted her, but she gave it away for free and to anyone.” That sounded like the woman he and Brett had met.

“And the sister, what happened to her?”

“Sister?”

“There was a sister, named Roberta…”

The old man laughed. “No, that’s what Robert called his brother. Little fucker was always messing around. He introduced them as Robert and Roberta. It used to piss Richard off. Pretty much everything that little shit did pissed his brother off, though; they were always fighting.”

Hunter looked at Levi, who raised an eyebrow. This got weirder and weirder. “What about their father?” Hunter asked. The F.B.I. had a death certificate on him in the file, but so far today, it wasn’t looking like that file was all that accurate.

“Those boys’ father died real young, car accident, I think. Unfortunately for them it was him and not her. He left them a lot of money and a big old house. She let the house go to shit and I doubt those boys got any of that money. They lost the house right after she got locked up.” Robert was nineteen when his mother got locked up, according to Hunter’s information. But according to the F.B.I. records and tax records they had on him, he didn’t have any money to speak of.

“Where did his money come from?”

“Family money,” one of the old guys said. “Family owns a logging company up in East Foulmouth. Matter of fact, I think that’s where Robert said he was going when he left town.”

Levi spoke for the first time as Hunter was trying to figure out why the F.B.I. hadn’t noted that. “Foulmouth?” The look on his face was hilarious.

“Yep. That’s the name of it. It’s a tiny little logging town, about six thousand people or so.”

“How far is that from here?” Hunter had heard of it, but he’d never been there.

“About 70 or 80 miles up Route 28,” the old guy said.

Hunter was wondering if it would be worth a drive up there. His mind went back to the mother and her mental illness. The F.B.I. profiler said Robert’s hatred of women started with his mother’s mental illness and abuse. “Do you know if either of the twins still keep in touch with the mother?”

“Robert was always a mama’s boy, but that’s because he was about as crazy as her,” the man said. “Richard never said much about her or anything for that matter. He just got out of that house as soon as he could.”

“You know, Richard said he’d just come from visiting his mommy that day he was in here with his friend,” one of the guys said.

“Really? He called her that?” the talkative old man asked him.

“Yeah, that’s why I remember,” the other guy said. “It was weird to hear a grown-ass man in a military uniform call his mother ‘Mommy.’”

The old man looked at Hunter then and said, “Your boy Robert might just have been the last one here. Maybe playing one of his stupid games. Richard always called her ‘Mother’ if he ever talked about her at all. Robert was the one that said ‘Mommy.’ I remember it used to annoy his brother.”

“One more question. What’s upstairs?”

“There’s an apartment up there, but the new owner, Harry, said it was unlivable. The old owner used to live up there. He was a pig, so I believe it.”

“Was the old owner friends with Robert, or Richard?”

“Yeah, he was school buddies with them both. He was a no-account,” the old guy said. “His uncle died and left him this place and he was about bankrupt before he sold it.”

“If one of the twins wanted to use the apartment, he would have let them?”

“I’d imagine so,” the old man said. “Harry told me the place smelled like something had died in there.”