Joe exhaled. “You and Connor?” he confirmed.
She took his hand and squeezed it. “You and me.”
———
The county jail was always a depressing place to be, and even more so on a holiday. Joe led Doreen toward the row of chairswhere visitors could speak to inmates through telephones connected through plates of glass.
Doreen clamped tighter on his arm when the attendant left to fetch Connor. “What if he doesn’t want to see me?” she asked.
“If that’s the case, he won’t come forward. He does have a choice in that.” He guided her to the chair and backed away, giving her privacy with her nephew.
The door opened from the other side, and Connor appeared, a shadow of the man he’d been. A beard obscured his face, but not enough to hide his pale complexion. Neither did his jail uniform disguise that he’d lost weight. A jagged lump convulsed in his throat when he saw Doreen.
With a small cry, she placed her palm on the glass that separated them.
Joe turned away, his middle twisting. How was he supposed to feel here? He could feel sympathy for Doreen without question, but was there any to be had for Connor himself? He had shot an unarmed man. He’d gotten into some kind of trouble Joe didn’t understand. He swallowed, pushing down emotions that wouldn’t help him do his job.
He didn’t know how much time had passed while he stood with his back to Doreen. It was enough time to remember that the last time he and Connor had been here, they’d been on the same side of the glass. The same side of everything, or so Joe had thought.
“Joe,” Doreen called, and he turned.
A charge went through him when he met Connor’s gaze. Just as quickly, Connor looked away, but he still held the phone, waiting.
Joe closed the distance between them and sat on the stool where Doreen had been. Her complexion mottled, she clutched a handkerchief and walked away.
The phone felt heavy. Joe pressed the weight to his ear.
“Thank you for taking care of her.” Connor’s voice was husky through the wire.
“We’d never leave your aunt to fend for herself,” Joe said quietly.
“It’s good to see you,” Connor said. His collarbones formed small shelves behind his uniform. His fingernails had been bitten to the quick. “You’re okay, right?”
“Could be worse.” Joe allowed his tone to convey much more. He didn’t understand why Connor had taken the shot in a place crowded with civilians, many of them inebriated. He especially didn’t understand why Connor discharged his weapon at a target inches from Joe. If the gun had been rotated slightly, it would have been Joe in the ground instead of Wade Martin.
But because he wasn’t allowed to talk about the reason for Connor’s arrest, he couldn’t say any of that.
This was going to be a short conversation.
Connor scratched behind his ear. “Any interesting cases lately? I’m about to die of boredom in here.”
“I’m doing a lot of the same old policework I always did,” Joe told him. “Writing up reports for prosecutors, interviewing witnesses and suspects on several ongoing cases. Trying to stay away from speakeasy raids for as long as Murphy will let me. You understand.”
Connor looked away, and silence buzzed through the earpiece. He did not say that he never meant to kill an unarmed civilian. He didn’t say that he should never have discharged his weapon.
Maybe he was merely following the rules by not talking about that night at all.
An itch crept between Joe’s neck and collar. “The only thing new since you were around is that I’ve started looking into forgeries. Found one right away, but it’s really small. Dr. Westlake—you remember me talking about Lauren from years ago, right?—she’s an Egyptologist at the Met now, and she says it wouldn’t have been worth much anyway, even if it had been genuine. So even if someone discovered they’d purchased a fake, the amount lost would not be worth killing over, at any rate.”
The hollow gaze swung back to Joe. “That oyster shell,” Connor whispered. “Tell me you got rid of it.”
“Does it have anything to do with your upcoming trial?” Joe asked. “If it does, then we can’t talk about it.”
“I’m serious, Joe. Let it go. Don’t think about it again. There is other work to do. Safer work.”
Joe’s ire spiked. “We didn’t join the police to be safe. I’m in the job to find the truth and stand up for justice. And if there’s one thing I know about that shell, it’s that it’s loaded with secrets.”
“Some secrets are better left alone.”
