‘You good?’ Deacon asked, looking him in the eye. 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 onto 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 breadcrumb 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 of 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 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.’