Emerald Blaze

Chapter 6

I dreamed of floating in a lazy river on my back. The current gently carried me forward, and above me tree branches slid back, the sun shining bright through the gaps between the leaves. Alessandro floated next to me and he was speaking low in Italian, his tone soothing . . .

My phone chimed. I sat up and grabbed it before my eyes even opened. A call from Patricia Taft, our security head. Wow, 8:02 a.m. The family must’ve felt sorry for me and let me sleep an extra hour.

I accepted the call.

Patricia’s clipped British accent made every word sharp. “I have Sergeant Munoz and Detective Giacone from Houston PD here.”

Crap. Munoz belonged to the House Response Unit, the division of Houston PD tasked specifically with handling problems with Houses. Each member of the division was assigned a roster of families, and we belonged to Munoz. A visit from him was never good.

“What do they want?”

“They would like to question Leon in connection with Audrey Duarte. Should I let them in or should I phone the lawyer?”

Munoz wouldn’t have made the trip for a simple complaint. The fact that he and Giacone were here together meant a felony. Audrey would never accuse Leon of assault. It wasn’t in her nature. She tried to buy him with gifts and relied on emotional blackmail, but she wouldn’t do something to actually hurt him. If someone else had assaulted Audrey, Leon would be the first person she called.

She hadn’t called, because Leon would’ve told me if she did. That meant only one thing.

Audrey Duarte was dead.

Ice shot through me. Poor Audrey. Poor little harmless Audrey. She was barely nineteen.

It gutted me. It would hit Leon like a train.

“Hold on.” I grabbed my tablet and FaceTimed Leon.

He answered on the first ring. He sat in the office room he shared with Bern. The floor behind him was strewn with papers. He must have been doing research. When Leon sorted through data, he drew strange abstract doodles and threw the paper down when he finished them. If the problem was thorny enough, he would go through fifty pages in a couple of hours.

“This is really important. Answer honestly. Did you go to Audrey’s last night?”

Leon dramatically whipped off his imaginary shades. “Look into my eyes. I. Did. Not. See. Audrey. Yesterday.”

“But did you go to her place?”

“No. I went home. Straight home, no detours. You know when I left MII. Check the log. I checked in and haven’t left.”

“What time did she call you last night?”

He checked his phone. “5:42 p.m.”

“I need you to stay in your office.” It was on the other end of the building on the second floor. “Don’t come down here, don’t call. I’ll call you.”

Leon leaned closer. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know yet. Stay where you are, please. Promise.”

“Fine.”

I hung up and turned to my phone. “Patricia, bring them into the conference room in fifteen minutes. Don’t let them question anyone.”

“Got it.”

I hung up and called Bern. He picked up. “Yes?”

“We’re in trouble. Munoz and his partner are here. Please lock Leon out of the conference room feed and tell Nevada and Mom.”

I hung up, jumped off the bed, and rummaged through my closet for clothes.

I had seen Leon kill before. He did it without remorse or hesitation, but when he got home, he would get a beer and go off by himself, sometimes onto the roof, sometimes into another building. He would sit there for hours, sipping the beer and brooding, which he claimed was “quiet thinking.” Taking a life mattered to him. It drained all the humor and joy out of him and he turned silent and withdrawn. He hadn’t been that way last night and he wasn’t that way now.

Besides, Leon only killed when he had no other choice. To become his target, you had to put the family in danger. He knew Audrey and didn’t consider her a threat to himself or us. He was annoyed with her, but my cousin never killed anyone out of annoyance.

Eight minutes later I tore out of my bedroom, dressed in a dark skirt, blue blouse, and navy pumps. My hair was pulled back from my face into a severe bun, and my makeup was understated, minimal, but there. I looked like the Head of the House who had been awake for hours handling important business. Image was armor, and I needed every inch.

My sister walked out of the guest bedroom, wearing a blue wraparound dress. Magic radiated from her like a razor-sharp corona. Nevada looked ready to go to war. If I weren’t her sister, I would be shaking in my shoes.

“Will you sit in on this?”

Nevada rolled her eyes. “Do you even have to ask?”

Ten minutes later, I pretended to be engrossed in my laptop as Patricia ushered the two officers in. Nevada had parked herself at the other end of the table, hiding her bare feet under it.

Sergeant Munoz strode into the room and gave me his hard cop stare. Middle-aged, light-skinned, and world-weary, he looked like a cop who had always been a cop. It was impossible to imagine him as young or naive. Instead, he must have come into this world just like this, wrapped in authority, jaded, and empowered by the city of Houston to take on all of its chaotic craziness.

Behind him, Detective Giacone gave the room a once-over. Taller than Munoz by six inches and younger by about five years, he wore a better suit and had a better haircut. You saw Munoz and you knew he was exactly where he wanted to be. When you looked at Giacone, you got the impression he was waiting for his chance to move up.

A soundless notification window popped up in the corner of my laptop. Bern had accessed the security camera feed from the conference room. Ten to one, everyone except Leon was watching it.

“Prime Baylor,” Munoz said. “Prime Rogan-Baylor.”

“Good morning, gentlemen.” I indicated the two chairs in front of me. “Please sit.”

The two officers sat. Behind them Patricia Taft walked into the room and took a seat to my right. Fit, with light brown skin and bold attractive features, Patricia inspired confidence. She wore a beige pantsuit and her dark brown hair was cut in a perfect shoulder-length bob, but everyone in the room sensed that she would rather be in uniform, hair tucked into a beret. Everything about her was precise, efficient, and together. Surprisingly, the complete opposite of her wife, Regina, who wore flowery maxi dresses and strappy sandals.

Munoz squinted at me. I radiated all the warmth of an iceberg. I had slipped Victoria Tremaine’s granddaughter on like a comfortable jacket. It fit, and Giacone shifted under my cold stare. His spine straightened; his shoulders tensed.

“I don’t see Leon Baylor.” Munoz looked at me. “Why isn’t he here?”

“He’ll join us if I decide it’s necessary.”

“He’s a person of interest in an ongoing investigation.”

“And if you explain to me why, and if I determine that you have sufficient reason to question him, I will make him available.”

Munoz and I stared at each other.

“I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.” Giacone made a conciliatory gesture. “We’re all on the same side.”

I shot him my Tremaine look. His mouth clicked shut.

“It’s my intention to cooperate with your investigation, which is why we are having this conversation without our House counsel. If you would prefer to conduct this discussion with Sabrian present, I will call her in. I trust you remember Sabrian, Sergeant?”

Munoz’s eyes told me he did.

“I’ll start, in the interests of good faith.” I leaned back in my chair. “Ms. Duarte is a former client. She wanted to pursue a romantic relationship with Leon, and he declined. She attempted to send him several expensive gifts, which we returned, and showed some obsessive tendencies.”

“How?” Giacone asked.

“She sent numerous texts and made many phone calls even after being asked to stop.”

“Have you reported this?” Giacone asked.

“No, but we extensively documented it and consulted our attorney. I can make these records available to you upon request. The last contact Leon had with Ms. Duarte took place yesterday at 5:42 p.m. Ms. Duarte called his phone and indicated that she feared there was an intruder in her home. My cousin advised her to call the police and dialed 911 on her behalf.”

“That part we agree on,” Munoz said. “Where was your cousin when he received the text?”

Nice try. “It was a call, not a text. He was on the 17^th floor of MII.”

Munoz’s face told me nothing. “Why was he at MII?”

“It was a professional matter not relevant to this investigation. Besides Leon, the meeting involved me, Cornelius Harrison, Augustine Montgomery, and his assistant, Lina Duplichan. All of them can confirm his presence. MII will be able to provide the exact time he left the building.”

“Where did he go after he left MII?” Giacone asked.

“He accompanied Cornelius Harrison to deliver a small tamarin monkey we’d recovered to a child from whom she’d been stolen. Her family and Mr. Harrison will verify this for you. Then he drove home.” I tapped my tablet and placed it in front of them. “Here’s last night’s security footage.”

On the screen, Leon parked in front of the booth, exited his Shelby, walked up to the window, and placed his hand against the holes drilled in the bulletproof glass. A moment passed. Leon returned to his car. The barricade turned, lowering into the ground, and he drove to his parking space. We watched him enter the building. The time stamp on the video said 6:33 p.m.

“He hasn’t left the property since he arrived last night,” Patricia said. “I have hours of boring footage if you would like to go through it.”

Munoz took out a tablet and placed it in front of me. He tapped the screen. A recording of an apartment building popped up, a tall Art Deco rectangle bristling with balconies. Probably the feed from a security camera mounted across the street.

“Where is this?” I asked Munoz.

“Ivy River Oaks apartments.”

Audrey’s residence, an upscale apartment complex.

On the screen, “Leon” walked into the building. The time stamp said 6:27 p.m.

At 6:39 p.m. “Leon” exited the building and walked away. He moved like Leon, he wore the same clothes, but he was not my cousin, because Leon was here, in this building, when it happened.

“Is she dead?” I asked.

“She is,” Munoz answered.

My pulse spiked and for a second I worried they might hear it.

First, they tried to provoke Arabella into exposing her magic. When that failed, they went after Leon. They tried to lure him to her place with the phone call, and when he didn’t show up, they framed him for Audrey’s murder. This went beyond a simple attack. It was subtle and elegant. These people weren’t just another House starting a feud. This was executed with a professional smoothness that spoke of experience.

Arkan’s people wanted me out of the way. If they killed me, Linus would go in guns blazing, but they didn’t need to kill me. They just needed to distract me long enough to accomplish their goals. Going after my family was the surest way to incapacitate me.

This incident was just the opening salvo. Since the frame-up would fail, there would be more, probably nastier and harder to get out of, and we needed Munoz and the Houston PD on our side while we fought them off. I had to obtain Munoz’s trust at any cost. My trump card sat in the chair next to him, and if I played it, there would be a price to pay. I shouldn’t have asked Nevada to sit in on this conversation. Shit.

Munoz slid his finger across the tablet. On it appeared the crumpled body of a girl curled in the fetal position halfway on a white shag carpet, her knees drawn all the way to her chest. Blood pooled around her head, staining the wood floor. Her long blond hair fanned all around her, covering her face like a funeral shroud. A dark red hole gaped in her skull, just above the ear.

The breath lodged in my throat and stayed there, like a rock. They killed her just to get to us. She was collateral damage. A life cut short for nothing.

“Here’s what I have,” Munoz said, his voice hard. “A nineteen-year-old girl has a crush on an older guy.”

“Leon is twenty, Sergeant.”

“She calls him, she sends him gifts, she keeps bothering him. Maybe she has something on him. Maybe she told him she’s pregnant. He wants her to go away. So, he either hires someone, or his friend, an illusion mage, does him a favor. He assumes his form and drives his car back to his house. Meanwhile, your cousin goes over to Ms. Duarte’s residence. Maybe they have an argument, maybe it becomes an altercation. Maybe he goes over there with the idea that things may turn violent and that’s why he takes the time to build his alibi. He kills her, gets a ride home, and his buddy slips out of your house.”

Nevada laughed. It sounded cold, bitter, and frightening.

The two cops looked at her.

“She is laughing because you think that Augustine Montgomery or any of his employees would incriminate themselves for our sake.” I shook my head. “We are talking about the same Augustine Montgomery, aren’t we?”

Munoz didn’t even blink. “Who knows? Perhaps he owed you a favor.”

“Prime Montgomery and House Baylor have a complicated, often adversarial, relationship,” I said. “Oddly enough, he did once come here as one of us.”

“Who?” Giacone asked.

“Me,” I said. “He made it past all of our defenses.”

“Before my time,” Patricia said.

“Which is why we have taken certain measures to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Patricia fiddled with a tablet and put it in front of the cops again. This was turning out to be the ballad of dueling tablets.

A brightly lit interior of the security booth appeared on the screen. Two guards manned the console. A large German shepherd lay on a pillow by their feet.

“This is Cassius. This is what happens when one of us approaches the booth,” I said.

On the screen the dog rose and sniffed the holes in the glass. A separate feed in the corner of the screen showed Leon outside of the booth.

“Note the time stamp,” Patricia said.

6:33 p.m., yesterday.

Patricia fiddled with the tablet again and returned it to the table. “This is what happens when an illusion mage attempts to gain entry while impersonating a member of House Baylor.”

On the screen Grandma Frida walked up to the booth. Had I not known that this was a hired mage, I would have sworn that it was my grandmother. She walked with the same bounce in her step. Her clothes were right, her smile was right. Even the engine oil stains on her coveralls were right.

She approached the booth. She was five feet away when Cassius snarled, baring his teeth, and exploded into barks.

“As you’re well aware, an illusion mage can change their appearance but not their biochemistry. We have four canine sentries,” Patricia said. “They work six-hour shifts. We test them every month. They have never given a false positive.”

“I don’t know who that is on your recording,” I said. “But it’s not my cousin. Leon would never kill Audrey. Nor would he have a relationship with her or lead her on. He is a Baylor.”

“Are you implying that he’s too good for her?” Munoz asked, a faint warning in his tone.

“I’m implying that, as a member of an emerging House, Leon understands discipline and obligation to his family. He works fifty hours a week on average. Sometimes, especially in the beginning of a new case, he works more. He still resides with the rest of us here, he logs his every move, and he doesn’t sleep with clients. That would be against our policy. He doesn’t have the time, opportunity, or the energy to commit to a relationship, all of which he explained to Audrey. You can listen to the recording if you wish.”

“And he just happened to record this conversation?” Munoz asked.

“No, but she did. You can view it on her YouTube and Instagram, video #468. Titled ‘Should I give him a chance?’ She recorded the phone call and inserted chunks of it into her video with her commentary while doing her makeup. This was over a month ago.”

Munoz looked like he wanted to say something. I would drag him over to our side. Whatever it took. Very well. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

I turned to Giacone. This would have to be done just right. I looked at him as if he were a dog. A loyal, but stupid, dog.

“How is Amanda, Henry?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nevada frown.

Giacone pulled himself ramrod straight. “She’s well, thank you.”

“I understand she’s made quite a lot of progress with her violin.”

Giacone offered me a shy smile. “Yes. She has a recital later this month.”

“Are you considering the Mayflower Academy?” The Mayflower Academy was a high school for gifted students, private, exclusive, hellishly difficult to get into and far out of a typical police sergeant’s range.

“We thought about it,” Giacone said.

Of course you did. “My grandmother believes your daughter would be a good fit.”

Giacone turned slightly whiter. “Thank you.”

“Give us a few minutes, Henry.”

“Yes, Ms. Tremaine.”

He rose, walked out of the room, and shut the door. Next to me on Patricia’s tablet, Britney Hays, one of our security people showed Giacone to a room across the hall and followed him in there.

If Munoz could be any more inscrutable, he’d turn to stone, but I knew he’d caught that “Tremaine.” Henry had slipped. And that’s after he hit his own professional impartiality over the head with a shovel and buried it in his backyard.

I dropped the mask and looked Munoz in the eye. “Detective Giacone is my grandmother’s creature. He’s been bought and paid for. This is a show of trust on my part. I’m giving you a chance to transfer a mole out of your department.”

Munoz leaned back, the nonchalant expression gone. “As long as Giacone is my partner, he’ll be keeping tabs on you and reporting to her. You want Victoria Tremaine out of your hair and you’re using my hands to do it.”

“She’ll know it’s me.” And she won’t like it.

Munoz fixed me with a heavy stare. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can manipulate me, Ms. Baylor.”

Everyone had a pressure point. I knew Munoz’s, but that was the difference between me and Grandma Victoria. I would never use it.

“You don’t believe Leon did it either. If you did, you would have gone about this meeting in an entirely different way.”

“What I believe isn’t as important as what the evidence tells me.”

“Sabrian Turner will shred that recording in court and you know it,” Nevada said.

“Sergeant Munoz, in the last forty-eight hours we’ve been attacked three times. We are in someone’s crosshairs. I don’t know who is behind this series of unfortunate events, but I’ll find out. I have no reason to manipulate you. I just want you to be aware of what’s happening, and I don’t want Houston PD to jump to conclusions, because I expect more trouble. A lot more. I’m asking you to trust me and offering evidence that I’m trustworthy.”

I had served him Giacone on a silver platter. Munoz was too smart not to recognize it as an overture to the alliance. I gave him the mole. In turn, when the next piece of weird evidence involving us crossed his desk, he would view it more carefully.

“Consider me aware.”

“I’m not asking for special treatment. Just a little patience.”

He shook his head. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

“I have to protect my family, Sergeant.”

He nodded, stood up, and left.

I waited until the camera feed on my laptop assured me that the two officers exited the building under Patricia’s watchful eye and then tapped my keyboard. An image of Bern nestled in the computer room expanded on the screen. Arabella was behind him and Grandma Frida sat on his left, while Mom was on his right. They woke her up. Figured.

Patricia came back and sat in the chair across from me.

“We are being targeted because of Linus’ case I’m working on. Originally I thought I was the primary target, but it doesn’t seem to be the case.”

I told them as much about Arkan as I could without betraying Linus’ confidence.

“Whoever Arkan sent is smart and knows way too much about us. As of this moment, we’re going to proceed as if we are in a feud. Bern, please check our networks, the servers, the cameras, everything. Arabella, please review our financials. Liquidate anything that can potentially result in a crippling loss if someone starts manipulating the market.”

“That would be about thirty percent of our portfolio,” she warned. “We’ll take a hit.”

“Do it,” I said. “We don’t want to be financially vulnerable.”

She nodded.

Grandma Frida threw her hands up. “I’ll dust off Romeo.”

“Thank you, Grandma.”

Grandma Frida subscribed to the philosophy that most problems could be solved by applying a tank to them. I had a terrible feeling that this mess wouldn’t be that simple to fix.

I closed the laptop.

“How did you know about Giacone?” Nevada asked.

Crap. There was no escape. “Victoria told me.”

My evil grandmother had expected me to use Giacone as an asset.

My sister stood up, walked over, and stared at me from across the table. “You visit her?”

“Every other Thursday.” At the start of our relationship, I visited her every other day for a month, but Nevada didn’t need to know that.

“Catalina!”

I looked up at her. “Yes?”

“That woman is evil. Do you have any idea how dangerous she is?”

“Yes.”

“You have to stop talking to her. She’s—”

Nevada’s phone went off. She glanced at it. “Damn it. I have to take this. Don’t go anywhere.” She walked out and ducked into the nearest office across the hall.

“Time to earn my pay,” Patricia said.

“We know they have at least one illusion mage with them.”

“We’ll sniff test everyone.”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I have more information.”

Patricia nodded. “Do you want to talk to the Lone Gunman or should I?”

I got up. “I’ll talk to Leon.”

“What do you want me to do about Prime Sagredo?” Patricia asked.

“I don’t follow.”

She pushed her tablet toward me. A silver Spider waited a few yards away from the security booth.

“How long has he been here?”

“Since 7:00 a.m.”

And nobody told me. Considering that nobody shot him, my family showed remarkable restraint.

“We don’t need to do anything about him. He’s guarding me.”

“Where do the two of you stand?” Patricia asked.

“I’ll tell you as soon as I figure it out.”

I climbed the stairs to the second floor. Leon sat in his office chair. A huge coffee mug with a drawing of an action figure and the slogan “If you’re not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot” waited on his desk.

Leon’s shoulders were rigid, his spine tense. He already knew.

Bern was smart. He vacuumed up data, and his powerful brain sorted it into logical chains. He had excelled at almost every subject in school, because once he learned something, he remembered it forever. Leon had failed most of his classes and limped to graduation with a C average, but he was sharp. When the occasion called for it, he made lightning-fast deductions. If his brother’s mind was a lighthouse beam, Leon’s was a strobe light, firing off unpredictable flashes of blinding brilliance.

“Audrey is dead,” I said.

“I figured that out. How?”

“A single shot to the temple, very quick. They have security footage of someone who looks exactly like you walking in and out of the building.”

“Looks like me or is me?”

“Is you. A high-ranking illusion mage. The clothes were right, the posture was right, and they even sauntered like you.”

“I don’t saunter.”

He said it on autopilot, his voice without any emotion. Oh, Leon.

“They killed her just because of me.”

“No. They killed her because of me.”

He jerked to look at me. His voice was harsh. “Tell me.”

I told him about Arkan. “He’s targeting us to divert attention from Felix Morton’s murder. Nothing you did had anything to do with it.”

Leon looked at me. His eyes were red. “I should have gone over when she called me.”

“Then she would have died half an hour sooner.”

“Or I would have saved her. She called me for help, and I didn’t come.”

“This was a trap,” I said. “They tried to lure you there. They waited to see if you would show up, and when you didn’t, they went with plan B. It was a pretty good plan B but flawed. They didn’t account for our dogs.”

“I should have gone, Catalina. She must have been terrified. I could tell she was scared on the phone, but I thought she was acting. I ignored her and they killed her just to set me up. If it wasn’t for me, she would still be alive.”

But she was dead, and every time I thought about it, my heart jerked in my chest. There would be time to process it later. Right now, Leon needed reassurance.

“You didn’t ignore her. You talked to her. You called the police. You told her to dial 911.”

His eyes were dark, his face grim. I could tell nothing I said made any difference. I had to lift some of this from him.

“You told me about it, and I told you not to go.”

“It’s not on you,” he said.

“Yes, it is. I’m the Head of the House.”

“She was my responsibility.”

“No. She stopped being your responsibility when you finished the case. Leon, if I could rewind yesterday, knowing what I know now, I still wouldn’t have let you go. Not alone. If you had gone, now Audrey would be dead, you would likely be dead, and we would be planning your funeral. I can’t do that, Leon. I can’t bury you. I just can’t.”

His face remained grim.

I wished I could do something, anything, to make him feel better and to make Audrey not be dead. But life didn’t offer do-overs.

“We’ll make them pay,” I promised.

His gaze focused. A cold expression hardened his face.

“What was their plan?” Leon said, his voice icy. “Lure me there, stage a murder-suicide?”

“If I were doing it? I’d kill her and shoot you but make sure you survived.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“If you died, we would be gunning for revenge. Grief hardens you. It makes you into a determined opponent. What would you do if I was killed?”

“I’d turn the city inside out.”

“Exactly. Our whole family would be foaming at the mouth to find your killer. But if you were still clinging to life, most of our energy would go toward clearing you and making sure you recovered. We would be angry, sure, but mostly we would be scared that we might lose you. It’s not just the frame-up, it’s the uncertainty. Will you live? If you live, will you be charged with killing Audrey? Are you in a coma, unable to refute the charges but tainted by murder? If you’re hovering between life and death, the authorities can’t charge you, they can’t clear you, and meanwhile House Baylor is smeared with the scandal. A PI who murders a celebrity YouTube star. Investigating Felix’s murder on top of that would be the last thing on my mind.”

He stared at me. “So, in this scenario, I’m a total screwup who murdered an innocent girl, tried to take the coward’s way out, and fucked it up? Jesus, I thought I was dark.”

That was a little splash of life. I would take it. “You need to up your game.”

I hugged him. Leon stiffened, then hugged me back. For a long moment neither of us spoke and then I took a step back.

“Have you told anyone about Audrey?”

He frowned.

“She never mentioned you by name in any of her videos. There is nothing on any of the social networks tying you together.” Bern had checked on that because Sabrian asked him to. “Who would know about it?”

“Albert,” he said.

“Albert Ravenscroft?”

Leon nodded.

“Why?”

My cousin sighed. “You know how I run in Freshmeadow Park in the morning? He started running with me three weeks ago.”

“He did?” That was news to me.

“Yeah. He talks.” Leon said it as if it explained everything.

“About what?”

“About everything. Sports. Family business. Cars. It always comes back to what a good match he would make for you. And wouldn’t it be cool if we could be buddies and in-laws. And if I could talk to you about him.”

“Let me guess, he has many fine qualities that women find attractive?”

“So many,” Leon said.

No doubt.

“One morning Audrey called, and he heard me tell her to stop. He said it was kind of harsh, so I told him about her. I know it’s against policy, but I felt it was a good teachable moment.”

“How did he take it?”

“He didn’t get it,” Leon said. “I don’t understand this guy. He seems smart. I made parallels between Audrey and me and him and you. It totally flew over his head.”

I rubbed my face. I would have to speak to Albert.

“You’re not backing off from the Pit?” Leon asked.

“No.”

“Good.” Leon bared his teeth. “I sent Marat’s background to you.”

“Thank you.”

“I suppose you want me to sit on my hands at home?”

I did but telling Leon that virtually guaranteed that he would do the opposite, especially if I mentioned that Arkan’s people would target him. He wanted that confrontation. Instead I went for Mom’s approach.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Leon. You know the situation. Right now, Houston PD must get a warrant to talk to you. The moment you leave, they’re free to approach you on the street. People are free to record this encounter, which will almost certainly devolve into a confrontation. People can post it on Herald, share it on Snapchat, and speculate about why the police are talking to you and then someone will mention Audrey’s name . . .”

Leon held up his hand. “You made your point. I will stay here and clear the Hoskins case.”

“Thank you.”

Leon locked his teeth. Muscles stood out on his jaw. He held up one finger. “One condition.”

“Yes?”

“When we find who did this to Audrey, I’ll kill them.”

“I’m counting on it.”