I have to just watch and wonder about how long he was alive, afraid, and suffering as the parade carried on. He would have been able to hear the people cheering, hear the music, know that everyone was eagerly anticipating his arrival. What was the last thing he thought before he died there, alone on the throne he was tied to and that would present his body to the adoring crowd?

  The footage gets a bit shaky as Scott Russo rises up out of the float and it becomes apparent something is wrong. I watch again the performers on the float trying to figure out what’s going on and the doctor discovering he’s dead. I don’t realize I’m holding my breath until the footage stops and I let out a heavy exhale.

  “I couldn’t bear to record any more of it,” Seth admits.

  “I don’t blame you,” I say. “It was horrific. I was standing right there while it was happening. Did you get anything else?”

  “I recorded a little bit while we were all walking away from the parade, but not very much. Just a few seconds, and all it shows is people crying and being confused. I kind of feel bad for even recording that.”

  I hear a chime come from his phone where it sits beside his computer, and he picks it up, rolling his eyes slightly as he looks at the screen.

  “I swear,” he says, picking up my coffee mug, “sometimes it feels like dealing with all the people who contact me on social media takes up most of my time doing this.”

  He goes to take a sip of my coffee, and I hold out my hand. “I think that’s mine.”

  He looks at the mug. “Oh, I’m sorry. I must not have been paying attention.”

  “No problem,” I say. “Do people contact you a lot?” I ask.

  “All the time,” he says. “They’re constantly asking me questions or making comments about my content. Then people will give me ideas or tell me what they think would be the next brilliant story I should cover. I think everybody has it in their minds that they can do what I do, or that it’s just so easy, but they are too busy in their own lives doing other things so they don’t do it themselves. They don’t realize how much work it actually is. But I try to respond to as many people as possible because that’s what’s going to build my audience.”

  Seth is trying to sound like he’s low-key complaining about the attention, but it’s obvious he loves it.

  “Does it feel intrusive at all that people can get in touch with you whenever they want to?” I ask.

  “It can,” he says. “But that’s why I have separate social media for my blog and for my personal life. That way, I can filter people and I don’t feel like dealing with things that are just about work. I can ignore that one for a little while.”

  “That sounds like a good move,” I say. “Well, I’m not going to take up any more of your time. I appreciate you meeting with me this morning.”

  “No problem,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t have more to show you.”

  “It’s all right. At least it was something.”

  I take out my phone and call Detective Bronson as we’re leaving.

  “Can we go back to Scott Russo’s studio and search it again?” I ask. “We didn’t really have much of a chance to look through it without his assistant there.”

  “Sure,” he says. “We secured it so that nothing would get removed or anything once we heard that his assistant was interested in using some of his things to keep the podcast going. We thought it would be better to make sure that he didn’t change or get rid of anything.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I say.

  We’re on our way to Russo’s studio when I get a call from Detective Balboa.

  “I got the information about Marcy Bassinger’s insurance,” she says. “It turns out she had quite a bit. It was divided so that Bruce was the beneficiary of the bulk of it and the children each got a much smaller amount. In the event that Bruce died before her or was unable to inherit, the children would split everything in half.”

  “And you said it was a considerable amount?” I ask.

  “Enough to make somebody comfortable for a good while,” she says.

  “Thanks for letting me know.”

  I hang up with a suspicious feeling in my gut. I already had my questions about how Marcy’s case was unfolding, but now I’m even more unsure. I know I need to talk to them again, but for now, I need to search Russo’s office. I have something specific in mind, and I need to see if I’m right.

  The studio is quiet and looks like it was closed off pretty soon after the first time we had been here. The equipment and piles of notes are still there, and I have a feeling his assistant is feeling very frustrated right about now. He was very eager to take over the podcast and use everything Russo had left behind for his own benefit, and now the investigation has brought that to an abrupt stop. He’ll have to wait until the studio, and everything in it, is released. And even then he’ll still need permission from Russo’s family to access and use everything that’s here.

  “Are you looking for something specific?” Xavier asks as we search through the studio, sifting through files and looking at raw footage that Russo never got around to editing.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “And I’ll know when I’ve found it.”

  We keep searching for another few minutes before I stop.

  “Did you find it?” Xavier asks.

  “I did,” I tell him. “So, did you.”

  “What did we find?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing about Joseph Palmer. Not even a mention of him in any of Russo’s notes.”

  “That’s what you were looking for?” he asks.

  “Yes. That proves to me that they were connected. Not just because they had that meeting. We’d already figured out that they were going to meet up to talk about this secret project Russo was doing. Even if he hadn’t already started interviewing Palmer or done any footage at all, he would have had notes. There would be something in here that had to do with that project. But there isn’t. Which means he was targeted the same way Palmer was. Whoever called and threatened Palmer must have also gone after Russo. They got everything from him so that no one would find it.”

  “But they killed him anyway,” Xavier says. “Just like Palmer.”

  I nod. “Because the threats and having them get rid of the information about whatever it was they were going to reveal on that podcast wasn’t the endgame for whoever planned their murders. They wanted them dead. They were going to die no matter what, and it’s because of what they knew.”

  “What they knew about what?” Xavier asks.

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  I drive to the police department and head into the war room that Detective Bronson set up. He looks up from the notes he’s going over.

  “Dean,” he says. “Good to see you. How did the search of Russo’s studio go?”

  “Nothing did not manage to escape our keen searching skills,” Xavier tells him.

  Bronson’s eyes narrow slightly as he seems to try to chew his way through that confusing sentence.

  “He means we didn’t find anything,” I say. “And that’s actually exactly what we were looking for. There was nothing about Scott Russo in Joseph Palmer’s office or his computer, and there was nothing about Joseph Palmer in Scott Russo’s studio. Yet they were obviously planning this project together.”

  “He got rid of everything,” Bronson says.

  “Exactly what I was thinking. The killer went after Russo the same way he did Palmer. Whatever they were going to be talking about, it was important to get rid of it,” I say. “I was wondering if you got access to their social media. Palmer and Russo.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “The platform just gave us access.”

  “Perfect. Can I look through them?”

  “Sure,” he says. “But I’m not sure what you think you’re going to find. If they are being this careful about getting rid of anything and even went so far as to force at least Palmer to talk to them on a burner phone, do you think they would say anything on social media that would be so easy to find?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “I just want to look at it.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll get you the computer.”

  Sitting down at the computer that Bronson brings me, I use the information he provides to access Scott Russo’s social media first. I figure he is like Seth Powers in that he has a personal account as well as a professional one, and I’m correct. The professional account has a large number of followers, and the inbox is packed with comments, questions, and even gushing declarations of love.

  “This man has been proposed to at least a dozen times in the last six months,” I say, scrolling through all the messages.

  “Did he take any of them up on it?” Xavier asks.

  “No,” I say with a laugh.

  “That’s kind of disappointing. That would be a great story to tell the grandchildren,” I say.

  “Ever the romantic, X,” I say.

  I’ve gone back nearly a year in the messages before I concede that at least his professional platform isn’t going to offer me any information. I go on to his personal one and see immediately that he is friends with Joseph Palmer. This isn’t all that unusual. He’s also friends with many of the other people throughout the community, and it looks like he might be the kind of person to just accept whoever wants to make a connection on the platform and then largely forget about them. I’ve noticed he isn’t connected to Palmer on his professional profile, which doesn’t surprise me. If they were working on something secretive together, they wouldn’t want to advertise their connection until it was time for them to reveal the project.

  I start going through the messages on the profile but find nothing of any interest. He had normal conversations with people that do nothing to catch my attention or make me suspicious of anyone. Finally, I decide I’m not going to get any more from the personal profile than I did from the professional one. So, I switch over to Joseph Palmer’s account.

  Almost immediately, I notice something that catches my attention. On his list of friends is a name that I instantly recognize—Lydia Nunez. I’d seen that name in the articles I read about the trafficking case. Nunez was one of the other jurors who had been willing to make her identity known so that she could speak about the experience and the backlash that came after the verdict.

  I search more and find several other people who had been jurors on the case. I click on one, Rowena Mercer, and the back of my neck tingles. I click her profile and go back to the other jurors, paying close attention as I check through each profile’s list of connections. When I don’t find what I’m looking for, I go back to Rowena and look at her connections list again. Because I’m signed into Joseph Palmer’s account so that I can search through it, the platform shows me all the connections shared between Palmer’s account and that of whom I click. When I look at each of the juror’s profiles, they show each other, linking the small community together. There are a couple of extra shared connections with some of the jurors, but the only one that stands out to me is Joseph’s connection with Rowena.

  Seth Powers.

  I decide not to say anything about the Seth Powers connection yet. I don’t know what it means and would rather keep it quiet until I have a better understanding of what exactly I’ve uncovered. Instead, I thank Bronson for giving me access to the social media accounts and shift gears to talking about Celeste.

  “Do you know what’s happening with the investigation into Celeste’s attack?” I ask.

  “There isn’t really anything to go on,” Bronson says. “Detective Winston is handling it but says he hasn’t been able to find much evidence. He went to the neighbors to find out if they saw anything, but none of them did. They all said the same thing. It’s a quiet neighborhood, and people keep to themselves. They’re friendly when they see each other, but they aren’t the kind to interfere with anyone’s privacy.”

  “So, no one noticed any strange cars or anything?”

  “Not that they can remember. Winston says he’s going to go to the hospital and talk to Celeste about accessing her doorbell camera. If someone entered her house through the front door or even approached her house from the front or close to the sides, it should be caught on the camera. You said you heard the back door open before you went into the backyard and found her body,” he says.

  “I did. That’s actually why I went into the yard. I thought it was Celeste coming out of the house. But I didn’t see anyone on the deck, and then I noticed her in the pool. When we were waiting for the ambu lance to get there, I went inside and looked around the first floor, but I didn’t see anyone or any signs of anyone,” I say.

  “But the responding officers searched the house and didn’t see anyone either,” he says.

  “I know. Which means they had to have either been hiding in a place they didn’t think to look or they got out without anyone noticing. If it’s that quiet of a neighborhood and they really do keep to themselves, it would be easy for someone to slip out and not be noticed,” I say.

  “But I would think that even in a neighborhood where the neighbors don’t have a lot to do with each other, something like an ambulance and police showing up would be enough to draw out some curious onlookers at the very least,” Bronson says.

  “That’s entirely possible. But if they don’t all know each other really well, they might not recognize a stranger who is acting like he’s supposed to be there. That’s assuming whoever this is didn’t sneak out in a way that kept them totally out of sight. The point is, I know someone was there. It’s the only reason that Celeste survived. I must have gotten there right after this all happened and was able to get her out of the water before she drowned. They had to have been there,” I say. “I can talk to Celeste about the camera if you want. I was going to check on her and bring her home from the hospital if she’s ready, anyway.”

  “I’ll let Winston know. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  Celeste smiles when she sees me come through the door. She’s still in the emergency department, but they’ve brought her extra blankets, and the TV is on when I walk in.

  “I thought they were moving you upstairs,” I say.

  “The doctor that came on shift decided I didn’t need to be moved. It’s slow in the ER right now, so they can keep an eye on me here,” she says.

  “Do you think you’re about ready to be discharged?” I ask. “If so, I can bring you home.”

  “That would be great. Thank you,” she says. “I’ll have to wait for the doctor to come back and check on me to find out.”

  “Well, while we wait, I have a couple of questions for you,” I say.

  “Oh. And here I was just thinking you’d come to visit with me,” she says.

  “I did come to visit with you,” I say. “But I also came to help with the investigation. It was either me or Detective Winston.”

  “I’m glad it’s you,” she says.

  “Good answer. Anyway, he wanted me to ask about your doorbell camera. He wants access to the footage to see if it captured the person who attacked you going into or out of your house.” I say.

  “I thought you said the door was locked when you got there,” she says.

  “It was,” I say. “When you didn’t answer the doorbell or me knocking, I tried the door. I was worried that something might have happened to you, and I wanted to go inside and check on you, but the door was locked.”

  “Like it always is,” she says. “I never leave that door unlocked, and it requires a key to both unlock and lock, except from the inside. It’s not automatic. If it was locked when you tried it, that means it was still locked from when I locked it the night before. No one, unless they somehow had a key, would have been able to leave through that door and lock it. And I highly doubt someone who was in a rush to get away from a scene like that would go through the effort of locking the door, even if they did somehow get their hands on a key, and I don’t know how they would have done that.”

  “Spoken like an investigator,” I say.

  “I might have picked up a thing or two,” she says. “But why would they think that they would catch the person coming out of the house, anyway?”

  “When I was coming around the side of the house, I heard the back door open and close. I thought it was you, but it obviously wasn’t. It was an unmistakable sound, and the back door was unlocked. I was able to go inside and look around, but I didn’t see anybody. The police searched your house for signs of anyone being there, but they didn’t see anyone.”

  “Did they search the basement?” she asks. “The basement has a walkout door that goes right out of the side of the house. It’s hard to see from the street and leads into trees that separate my house and the neighbors.”

  “I’ll ask the detective,” I say. “Do you know if any of your neighbors have cameras that cover that tree line?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. There’s a lot of emphasis put on privacy in our neighborhood. You’re allowed to have a camera that covers your own front porch and back door, but it can’t show any part of any of the neighbors’ houses. Even doorbell cameras are discouraged if the angle of your house reveals any part of the neighbors’ property. Since those trees are there in addition to the privacy fences to give each plot its own space, I think that would be covered in not being camera-friendly,” she says.

  “Those are really strict rules,” I say.

  “They are, but it’s also nice to know that all of my movements aren’t being recorded or watched because of wayward cameras,” she says. “What else did you want to ask me? You said it was a couple of things.”

  “I know you said you can’t remember anything about the way the person who attacked you looked, but can you remember anything about their size? Were they much bigger than you? Smaller? Tall? Large? Do you remember anything?” I ask.