Regina's Song by David Eddings

in Wallingford—about five blocks from our place. Her headshrinker thinks that going to college might help her.”
    “I’m not sure that U.W.’s the best place to go looking for mental stability,” James noted, as I locked the front door.
    “Her aunt and I will be keeping a fairly tight grip on her,” I told him. Then we closed and latched the back door of the U-Haul van and climbed into the cab.
    “You seem to be quite involved with this surviving twin,” James said rather carefully.
    “There’s none of that kind of thing going on, James,” I told him, starting the engine. “The Twinkie twins were like baby sisters to me, and once you’ve seen a girl in messy diapers, you’re not likely to have romantic thoughts about her. I’ve just always looked out for them.”
    “Twinkie Twins?”
    “In-house joke,” I admitted. “Nobody could tell them apart, so I got everybody started indiscriminately calling them both ‘Twink.’ They pretty much stopped being Regina and Renata and started being Twink and Twink.”
    “I’ll bet you could send Sylvia straight up the wall with that one,” James said, chuckling. “The concept of group awareness might damage her soul just a bit.”
    “Bees do it, and so do ants. In a different sort of way, so do horses and wolves—and lions and elephants, if you get right down to it. If animals do it, why not people?” I carefully drove the truck off the front lawn and pulled out into the street.
    “Did the cops ever catch the murderer?”
    “No, and even if they do, I’m not sure they could convict him.”
    “I don’t quite follow you.”
    “Nobody can be positive which twin was murdered.”
    “What?” He sounded incredulous.
    “Well, nobody could ever tell them apart, and the hospital lost the footprints they took as newborns.”
    “Why not just ask the surviving twin?”
    “She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t remember anything.”
    “Amnesia?”
    “Almost total.”
    “What about DNA?”
    “Identical twins have the same DNA. So if they ever catch the guy, they might be able to prove that he killed
somebody
, but I don’t think they’ll ever be able to prove
who
. A good lawyer might get him off scot-free—which’d be OK with me.”
    “What? You lost me again.”
    “Hunting season opens up along about then. If Twink’s aunt doesn’t bag the sumbitch, I might take a crack at him myself. I’m sure I could come up with something interesting to do to send him on his way. If I happen to get caught, I’ll hire Trish to defend me.”
    “I still think the courts would send him away, Mark. Murder is murder, and if Jane Doe is the best the cops can come up with, he’ll go down for the murder of Jane Doe.”
    “You live in a world of philosophical perfection, James. The real world’s a lot more ‘catch as catch can.’ That’s why we have lawyers.” Then I remembered something and laughed.
    “What’s so funny?” he asked.
    “Chaucer got arrested once—back in the fourteenth century.”
    “Oh?”
    “He beat up on a lawyer.”
    “Some things never change, do they?” he said, as we pulled out onto the freeway heading south.

    When we got to the boardinghouse, James and I carried all my stuff upstairs and stacked it in my room. All in all it’d taken longer than I’d thought it would, so I decided to motel it for one more night. I’d already put in a full day, and I was feeling too worn down to start setting things up. I took the truck back to U-Haul, paid them, and retrieved my Dodge. Then I went by Mary’s place to check on Twinkie—I still felt guilty about the way I’d ignored her for the past week.
    Mary was nice enough to invite me to dinner, and the three of us sort of lingered over coffee afterward.
    “That sanitarium is pretty fancy, isn’t it?” Mary said.
    “I didn’t quite catch that,” I said.
    “My weekly visit to Dockie-poo,” Twink explained. “You forgot about that, didn’t you, Markie?”
    “I guess I spaced