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“He had nothing to do with any of that,” Holland said. “But Mac was one of the good ones. When I asked him for help, he bent over backwards to help get me the resources I needed. How long have you been at this? Private investigation, I mean.”

“Not long,” I said. “A little over a year.”

“Tom’s helping you?”

He was feeling me out. I was certain Mac or someone else from back home had filled Dan Holland in plenty regarding my father and who I was. Would I sugarcoat things? Play coy?

“He’s in the process of closing down his practice,” I said. “I work out of his office. Yes. He works with me.”

“I figured old Gale Force would drop dead arguing in front of a jury someday. It’s gotta be tearing him up feeling like he’s been put out to pasture.”

“Well, if you know my dad at all, you know nobody’s putting him anywhere he doesn’t want to be.”

Holland regarded me, his eyes narrowing to pinpoints. Then he threw his head back and let out a big belly laugh.

“He’s gotta be driving you nuts,” he said. “Doesn’t do a damn thing you tell him to, does he?”

I smiled. All right, I thought. I showed you mine, now you show me some of yours.

“I’m trying to understand how you zoned in on Sidney as the prime suspect. Did you think of him right away?”

Holland got up, went to an ancient fridge and pulled out a bottle of Amstel Light. He offered me one. Was that also some sort of test?

“Sure,” I said. “I can get away with one beer while I’m on the clock.”

Holland twisted the caps off two bottles and handed me one. Then he clinked the neck against mine.

“Sidney,” he said. “No. I wasn’t thinking about Derrek Sidney at first. I was just trying to sort out what was right in front of me. Sidney didn’t pop on my radar until I started reaching out to other agencies. The feds contacted me pretty quickly. There was a task force set up devoted just to Sidney’s crimes. Mac was on it at my request.”

“Certainly you didn’t make an arrest on the MO alone, though.”

“No, I did not. I had a witness who came forward claiming to have seen Sidney in the area on the evening before the murders. We had him on surveillance cameras in a gas station parking lot. A patron at the gas pumps spotted him. The guy called it in the next morning. Claimed he didn’t even know about the Deadwater Lake murders. He saw a Crime Stoppers ad on the news relating to Sidney being at large.”

“Do you have any information about how they think Sidney escaped custody in Putnam County?”

“You’d have to talk to somebody down there about that. If you can find any of them. I couldn’t even tell you all of their names anymore. I was singularly focused on solving the crime in front of me. I was grateful for the resources the feds were able to provide me. But I was never interested in the circus surrounding Sidney himself.”

“What do you mean?”

“The guy had cult status by then,” Holland continued. “The cable news channels were covering him nightly. It was ghoulish to me. The Adonis Killer. What a crock. They were digging up his friends from high school, hounding the guy’s poor ex-wife. I even saw an advertisement for a segment discussing Derrek Sidney’s favorite salad order while he was in jail.”

“That was all going on while you were actively investigating the Deadwater Lake murders?”

“It was,” he said. “Then and after. Even now, I still get calls from reporters begging me to give interviews about the guy. I’m not interested. I don’t want my name associated with that devil in any way. There are plenty of people out there who want to glorify what he did. People like your dad who figured out how to get famous off monsters like that.”

I winced. He clearly meant that for me too. Dad gained fame and fortune as one of the first cable news legal commentators in the early ’90s. He practically created the template for the celebrity lawyer.

“Well, I’m not looking to get famous either,” I said. “This is really about helping my client come to terms with what happened that night.”

“Everyone knows what happened,” he said. “Sidney got into that cabin and strangled those girls one by one. I hope you’re not exploiting their grief. How much are you getting paid?”

“Detective,” I said. “My job is to figure out if there might have been someone else working with Derrek Sidney. My client strongly believes there might have been. So my question is, do you?”

Holland went still. His glare gave me the answer I needed.

“There was no sign of forced entry,” I said. “Were the doors locked from the inside? Surely you know the answer to that. I would think it was one of the first things you verified. Is it possible one of the other girls let him in? Or could he have been lying in wait the whole time?”

“Why does this matter to you?”