“Don’t worry. Never going to happen.”
“I do not know definitively. But the man I think you are looking for on this vengeance quest for your girlfriend, for the choir shooting—I do not know for sure. Not even enough to speculate. You’ll have to keep digging. I am not saying anything else—until I have an attorney present, and an offer of protection. There will be men out there that will kill me for this. I need protection for myself, and for my daughter. She is all I have left.”
That was what it was really about. Stillman had pissed one of his cronies off, and he was worried about his kid. A man like this—it was always something that served them. No one like this really did anything out of the goodness of his heart.
Even so-called redemption for men like this—it wasn’t real. It was to make them feelbetterabout themselves. Faith was justa way for justification.Forgive me, I have sinned, I have found Jesus—so no, I shouldn’t pay for my earthly crimes now. Praise be! I am redeemed!
Well, Dom had never fallen for that kind of bullshit. Faith or not—if what he was saying was the truth, Stillman had known people were being killed. And he deserved exactly what he had coming to him.
“I’ll talk to the chief. See where we go from here. But…you have to give me one more thing.”
Stillman just waited.
“Where can I find Ernie Newcomb’s son?”
Stillman smirked at him. “Haven’t figured that out?”
“Can’t say that we have. Yet. Still looking. Just learned he had one yesterday.”
“His name is Steven Ernest Newcomb. But in his teens…he changed it. To Wilson. Interesting coincidence, that. Right? How many Steve Wilsons do you really think there are?”
Son of a bitch.
But…that would have been known by now. He knew enough about how the science worked. Unless…not biological son, maybe? It was likely. Newcomb and Wilson didn’t look a damned thing alike. “That would have shown up in our database of reference samples. Try again.”
“Not if someone went in and switched the samples before they could be tested. Ernie doesn’t have a legit reference sample on record and never has. Something for you to consider. Even DNA canlie. With a little human intervention. From a man namedPete.He’ll give you a good place to start.”
Pete. The tech that Madison was always complaining about? Pete had been in the forensics lab for…decades. He was almost mid-sixties now. Imagine that. If it was true.
And this man had made his career searching outlies.“So how much did you sell your soul for, Stillman? Inquiring minds want to know.”
“Not enough, Acardi. Money is never worth a soul. Something to keep in mind, as you dig into Satan’s den. Everything you want to find—it’s in Hughes Heights, you know.”
Well, now. Wasn’t that just convenient.
92
“What are you doing?”Madison stared at Pete and the men next to them. She stepped in front of Miriam, as best she could. “What are you doing, Pete?”
Pete had a guilty look on his face. He had always been a grumpy old troll—from the moment she had met him, but she had never imagined he would be involved with whatever this was. “You’ve been stealing evidence? How long?”
“We don’t have time for the big long, villain-confessions, Madison,” the man beside Pete said. “I am here to retrieve a few things, to preserve some…family unity. Then we will be on our way.”
Well, Madison wasn’t that stupid. She and Miriam had come out of the back vault after searching for four cases on Major Crimes’s list. Only to see Pete and Newcomb overriding the security system in a way Madisonknewwas not legit. For one thing, Pete didn’t have access. And that wasnotthe badge that was used to get in here. There were only three access badges, and they were red. That one was gray.
Newcomb didn’t have clearance. Not since he had been transferred. Only Madison had access to a list of those allowedin—and that list had been Haldyn’s before. Only Elliot Marshall had the ability to override that. “What are you doing in here?”
The man behind himdefinitelydidn’t have the right.
Madison recognized him. He had been one of the men with Newcomb and Hamler and Stillman when they had invaded her lab after what had happened to Powell and Heather. “You need to tell me what you are doing in here, right now, and what that badge is.”
She didn’t like the way the younger man was just staring at Miriam. Or the way Miriam was on the verge of panicking.
“We are just…doing a bit of housekeeping.”
“Under whose authority?” Madison looked at the woman behind her. She shifted. Miriam was almost at the door. A few large steps sideways, and Miriam would be out in the hallway. “You really need to explain to me what is going on here.”
She looked at the younger man. At theblood…
