Edge of Darkness

by Karen Rose

  “Yeah,” Deacon said grimly. “We know. So the list of people who know about the video doesn’t really help narrow things down. Who knew you’d be at St. Agnes’s?”

  After telling Deacon, Adam had let Isenberg tell the others why he’d been there. He felt nothing but support coming from Scarlett and Trip, which was making this moment so much easier than it might have been. “Meredith and my sponsor. I know she wouldn’t have told anyone. I don’t know if John did.”

  “You said John was saying something in those final seconds,” Isenberg said. “What was it exactly?”

  “He said, ‘I need to tell you why.’”

  “He’d told someone where you’d be,” Deacon said grimly. “Sonofabitch.”

  Adam started to deny it, but found he had to agree. “Looks that way.”

  Scarlett’s tone was gentle as she asked, “Did you ask him to be your sponsor or did he approach you?”

  “He approached me, about a month in. Said cops had to stick together because nobody else understood. What?” he asked when Scarlett’s expression grew sad.

  “The black SUV was sold to him by Barber Motors, eleven months ago. For a dollar.”

  He flinched, the words like a knife in his gut. It was true, then. John had sold him out. For a fucking SUV. “Same place that last night’s shooter bought his SUV.”

  Isenberg sighed. “And the same place that burned to the ground around two a.m.”

  Adam slapped his hand on the table. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Goddammit.”

  Deacon, Scarlett, and Trip let out blistering curses of their own.

  “That was my reaction,” Isenberg said. “Nothing was left. Computers were melted.”

  “I bet we wouldn’t have found anything on them anyway,” Trip said. “Voss’s computers were wiped clean.” He slid a sheet of paper in front of Adam. “I dumped the call log from your sponsor’s phone. The number I circled is the only one that shows up as untraceable. Several calls and texts were made to and accepted from this number. The last text was sent this morning at four fifty-eight.”

  Adam recognized the time and the phone number right away. “That was the same time that I texted John that I’d meet him at St. Agnes’s. And that number is the same one that called the Buon Cibo hostess asking her to seat Meredith by the window.” He stared at the piece of paper, trying to make the pieces fit. And then . . . they did.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. He couldn’t breathe. “Oh my God.” He looked at the team, willing words to work themselves past the blockage in his throat. But it wasn’t working. The words would not come.

  “Adam?” Deacon demanded. “What is it?”

  “It was me. I told John where Meredith was going to lunch. I told him that Mallory was leaving the safe house to sign up for GED classes. I’m the one who set them up.”

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Monday, December 21, 8:50 a.m.

  “Thank you. I really appreciate this information.” Meredith ended her call with a sigh. She and Diesel had set up in the waiting room after Clarke’s nurse ran them out of his room. Clarke was appropriately irate at the nurse, but she’d been right. Meredith could see the headache in his eyes, so they’d left him to sleep. “I suppose it’s nice to know that being kind to people pays such dividends, but it makes me feel kind of sleazy.”

  Now she and Diesel were working to find out how Linnea had dropped onto a killer’s radar. Starting with the social workers she knew in Cincinnati, she’d networked with those she trusted most until she’d landed the name of an Indianapolis social worker who knew Bethany Row, the woman who’d turned a blind eye to Linnea’s pain.

  Diesel looked up from his laptop, lifting a brow. “It was definitely educational. I didn’t think you had the acting chops, Doc. Kudos.”

  “I don’t,” she protested, then sighed again. “Of course I do. Otherwise everyone wouldn’t think I have my shit together, because I totally don’t.”

  Diesel’s smile was kind. “I think we all know you don’t, Merry. But whatever it is that helps you cope . . . I don’t know. It gives us something, too. All of us.”

  Meredith’s eyes burned. “You have to stop saying sweet things, Diesel.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, fine. Tell me what you learned from the chatty social worker. That was impressive, by the way, the way you leapfrogged from social worker to social worker. You network like a boss. And your use of distraction and disinformation to get to the next name? If you ever decide to quit the psycho biz, you’ll make a great PI.”

  Meredith gave him a dirty look. “Nobody can know about any of that. I got a reputation to protect. I’m supposed to be all sweet and kind and serene.”

  He smirked. “Understood. Now dish while this program is running.”

  He was working to break into Bethany Row’s personal e-mail. He’d already accessed her social media and was now trying every combination of her dog’s name, best friend, and boyfriend to determine her password.

  “The last social worker, the chatty one, worked with Bethany for a few years and does not like her. At all.” Meredith grimaced. “That was a lot of vitriol right there.”

  “I guessed that much. You looked like you were eating a lemon.”

  “I bet I did. She said Bethany was fired a few months ago and nobody was shocked.”

  “That’s interesting.”

  “Ain’t it, though? Bethany seemed to live well for a single social worker while employed. Some of the staff speculated that she had a sugar daddy, but this woman thought Bethany was on the take and was proven right—she says—when Bethany was fired. She says she was notorious for having to relocate girls who’d claimed assault, which sounds like a more documentable reason for termination, in my opinion. Apparently, she was fired after placing a girl who’d said she was molested into another home. The girl told her school counselor, who brought in the police. A detective started asking questions.” She sighed. “And then the girl committed suicide. It was a big story in Indianapolis a few months ago.”

  “You’re going to call the cop?”

  “Yes. I should probably tell Isenberg first.”

  “You probably should.”

  “She might tell me not to call the detective in Indianapolis.”

  Diesel just looked at her with disappointed disapproval.

  Meredith caved. “Fine. I’ll call Isenberg.”

  He looked surprised. “Wow. I have power. That’s awesome.”

  She smiled at him. “You do indeed.” She dialed Isenberg’s cell and waited. And got voice mail. She ended the call without leaving a message. “I tried.”

  He chuckled. “You did. I witnessed it.”

  She grinned at him cheekily. “Now I can call that detective with a clear conscience.”

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  Monday, December 21, 8:55 a.m.

  I did this. I set Meredith and Mallory up to be killed. I did this. The words echoed in Adam’s head until they were all he could hear.

  “Adam? Adam?”

  Adam became aware of Deacon’s hands gripping his shoulders, tightening his hold past the point of pain. But it was what Adam needed to stop the storm of words in his mind and yank back into himself.

  “You good?” Deacon asked, looking him in the eyes. He was apparently satisfied with what he saw because he let Adam go, going back into his own chair.

  “Yeah.” Adam swallowed. “I’m good.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. John. How could you? “John and I would go out for coffee after meetings and . . . talk. He’d ask me about my job and I told him . . . you know, what I could. Because . . .” God, this was hard to say. “Dammit, I isolated myself. I did this to myself.”

  “Because he counseled you to break away from your family,” Deacon said, jaw tight. “God, I wish he wasn’t dead because I’d—” He cut himself off. Shook his head. “
Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Adam shoved his knuckles into his temples, needing the quick bite of pain to stay focused as he tried to remember everything he’d told John over the months. “I told him that I was leaving the condo yesterday to go to the precinct. That’s how they knew where the van would be. God. How could I have been so stupid?”

  “You weren’t,” Isenberg said flatly. “You were in pain and he took advantage. All right. So we know where the info was coming from. We need to know where it was going.”

  Adam forced himself to focus. “Right. Okay. So . . . John couldn’t have been the rapist’s friend, the one Mallory heard last night, because that guy was shot in the leg and in the arm. John hadn’t been shot.” He had to swallow hard. “Not until this morning.”

  Beside him, Scarlett squeezed his arm sympathetically.

  “John also wasn’t the raping, murdering cop with a birthmark on his chest,” Adam said. “I was at his house last summer for a cookout by his pool and saw him without his shirt. He doesn’t have a scar or a birthmark.”

  “So what else do we know?” Isenberg asked levelly.

  Nothing. Adam wanted to scream it, but it wouldn’t help, so he clutched on to her calm voice like a lifeline. “We know that someone knew we were getting a warrant for the used-car place because they burned it down. And that somebody knew that Mallory would be at the hospital last night.”

  “Did you tell John that Mallory and Meredith had gone to the hospital with Kate?” Isenberg asked.

  Adam shook his head. “No, so John wasn’t the only leak.”

  “We knew,” Deacon said. “You told us in the elevator as we were leaving for Voss’s house. That was Scarlett, Trip, and me.” He hesitated. “And Nash.”

  No. No, no, no. He trusted Nash. But he’d trusted John, too. I am such a fucking fool. “I know,” he murmured.

  “Nash also knew the way Paula was murdered,” Trip added quietly.

  “But Nash also was the one who led us to the used-car lot,” Scarlett protested, then sighed. “Which we would have found eventually on our own and didn’t really help us until Kate disabled the SUV in the hospital parking lot last night. It was a low-risk bread crumb to throw in our path.”

  Adam shook his head, his gut rejecting the logic his brain was providing. Because . . . Shit. “Wyatt knew, too. I told him when he drove up to Voss’s house.” He looked at the worried faces of his boss and his team. “And yes, he knew about Paula, too, but we are not jumping to any conclusions. We need to know for sure before we accuse anybody. Hell, last night’s guy might have been tipped off by someone in the ER. We don’t know.”

  “But we’ll find out,” Isenberg said as her office phone rang. She picked it up, listened, then thanked the caller before hanging up. “Let’s see what Detective Currie comes up with when presented with all the facts. He’s on his way up now. I asked the front desk to call me when he got on the elevator. Come on. Let’s go to the briefing room and wait.”

  They gathered their things and made the short walk, Deacon’s hand gripping the back of Adam’s neck in a silent show of support.

  He still felt stupid as fuck.

  When they got to the briefing room, Adam noted that there were a few new photos on the whiteboard. Stills taken from the video of Paula’s murder—her slit throat, her body being gutted—had been placed in line with the stills of Bruiser from the Kiesler University surveillance video, and the photos taken of Tiffany’s and her mother’s bodies.

  “I got the stills of Paula so you wouldn’t have to watch it again,” Isenberg said quietly.

  Overwhelmed, he could only whisper, “Thank you.”

  She squeezed his arm, led him to the table. “Have a seat and let’s see what happens.”

  A minute later, Nash entered the room at a fast walk, but immediately slowed. He looked at the grim faces around the table, then up at the whiteboard. He turned to face Adam, his expression shuttering. “You figured it out. That Paula was killed the same way as Tiffany and her mother.” He pulled a few sheets from his laptop case and put them on the table. “I was bringing you the same photo. I didn’t want you to have to see it again.”

  Adam checked the offering and nodded. “Thank you.”

  Isenberg gestured to a seat and Nash warily took it. “Where’s Hanson?” he asked.

  “Arriving in fifteen minutes,” she said. “We wanted to talk to you separately.”

  Nash’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on here? Adam?”

  Adam met his old friend’s gaze straight-on and listed all the things the killer—or killers—had known. And what had been done with that knowledge. He left the point about knowing that Mallory would be at the hospital last night until the end.

  And then he waited, watching as understanding filled Nash’s eyes, followed by a flash of fury. “You’re blaming me? You really think I could be doing this? Me?”

  Adam shook his head. “I don’t. But I’m not trusting myself at the moment.”

  “Which I think has been one of his goals,” Isenberg added. “Whoever ‘he’ is.”

  “Well, he is not me,” Nash insisted. He shoved back from the table and began pacing the room, then pivoted to face Adam, fists clenched at his sides. “Do you know why I’m here? I mean, here on this team? On this case?”

  “Because you were assigned to take down Voss,” Adam said, wondering if that was really true and hating himself for wondering.

  “No. Well, yes, but not at first.”

  Adam blinked hard. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Because I’m so fucking angry,” Nash spat, turning to glare at the rest of the team.

  “They’re being what I can’t be right now—objective and professional,” Adam said with a calm he didn’t feel. “They’re watching my back.”

  “Bullshit,” Nash fumed. “If they’d been watching your back, it never would have come to this.”

  “Wait,” Deacon said incredulously. “What?”

  Nash pointed a trembling finger at Deacon. “You. You were supposed to care about him, but you let him drift. For months. Didn’t you see what was happening?”

  Deacon’s jaw cocked sideways, never a good sign. He slowly, menacingly, came to his feet. “What are you talking about?”

  Nash closed his eyes, then turned to Isenberg. “You’ve seen the video? The one that this still came from?” He tapped the photo of Paula’s mangled body.

  She was considering him carefully. “Yes. Just this morning.”

  “You sent him to us strong. He came back to you broken. Didn’t you wonder why?”

  Isenberg didn’t blink. “I did wonder. I don’t know why I didn’t ask.”

  “Bullshit,” Nash said again, but wearily. “Maybe you knew that you couldn’t take it.”

  “Maybe,” Isenberg allowed. “Probably, even. And I was wrong not to ask. But that doesn’t explain what’s happening right here and right now.”

  “And changing the subject does not make you look any less guilty,” Deacon added, but he’d grown significantly less hostile. His arms were crossed over his chest, but his expression had become uncertain. Like maybe Nash’s words had hit a nerve.

  “No,” Nash agreed. “But it does explain why I’m here. See, I was there. I saw what happened to that poor girl.” He swallowed hard. “And it destroyed me, too, to the point that I couldn’t see anyone or anything else for weeks. Months. I mean, I saw people. I functioned at my job. Barely. But I didn’t see them.”

  “You were going through the motions,” Adam murmured, understanding.

  “Yeah. Exactly. But after some time, and the intervention of people who loved me, I resurfaced. I could breathe. And then I really looked around and I saw Adam. Still alone.”

  “By choice,” Adam said, but even he didn’t believe his own words.

  “No,” Isenberg murmur
ed, shocking him. “He’s right. We own some of this, too. But, Detective Currie, I have to hurry you along, because Hanson will arrive soon and I want to understand your position before I talk to him.”

  “I hope he does,” Nash muttered. “Arrive soon, I mean. See, when I finally saw what was happening to Adam, I checked in with Hanson. And I didn’t like what I saw. He hadn’t missed a beat. Hadn’t seemed affected at all.”

  Adam stared as Nash’s meaning sank in. “That doesn’t mean anything. Everyone responds to stress differently. You don’t know what happens when he goes home at night.”

  “Yeah, I kind of do,” Nash said quietly. “Because I started to follow him.”

  Adam was stunned. “What the fuck?”

  Nash shrugged. “At first it was for myself. If he’d managed to sail on undamaged, I wanted to know how. So I watched him. And at first, it all looked good. Family man, all that good stuff. All the right stuff. Except for things I couldn’t explain. Like how he’d sometimes leave his house late at night.”

  “He’s a cop,” Adam said, shaking his head. “That’s what we do.”

  “Maybe. But I was a little obsessed. And burned out at Personal Crimes. So I asked for a transfer. Into Narcotics.”

  “You followed him?” Scarlett asked, intrigued.

  “Essentially.” Nash turned back to Isenberg. “This part you can confirm with my boss, and I hope you do so quickly. The night Hanson showed up here and you thought it was because my boss had sent him? He hadn’t.”

  Adam looked at Isenberg, confused. “I thought you said he had.”

  She frowned. “No. I’d made the request. I assumed.” She turned her narrowed gaze on Nash. “You’re saying I shouldn’t have.”

  “No. Actually my boss hadn’t decided who he’d send. Or if he could even afford to free up anyone. He was a little surprised when you thanked him for sending Hanson.”

  Isenberg made a wry face. “I thought he was surprised because I’d thanked him.”