He had been so, so spot-on.

  “Thanks.”

  He placed the take-out bags on the coffee table and hugged her. “You’re a great mom, Kerri. Don’t ever doubt it.”

  Great was probably pushing it. But it was possible she wasn’t half-bad.

  They settled around the table, and Falco passed out the burgers and fries. “Wait”—Kerri pushed to her feet—“I’ll get the beer.”

  “You,” Falco ordered as he stood, “stay put. I’ll get the beer.”

  She nodded and dropped back into her seat. Apparently, her exhaustion was obvious to her partner as well. She wasn’t surprised. They were well attuned to each other’s moods. Good partners always were.

  Kerri picked up a fry and nibbled. By the time Falco reappeared with the cold, sweating bottles of beer, she’d gotten a second wind. “So tell me how the interviews went.”

  Falco unwrapped his burger. “There are seven names on the list—all small business owners in the area like Kurtz. I talked to five.” He tore off a bite of burger.

  Kerri nodded as she unwrapped her own. “You made good progress.”

  “Except”—he knocked back a swig of beer—“I got nothing for it. I pitched the story that Kurtz was working on a small business–owners’ committee. None of these guys had talked business with Kurtz since before Christmas, when they discussed the holiday open house idea.”

  “What about the final two?”

  “I’m waiting for callbacks from both.”

  No forward momentum on the case, but they were checking off more necessary boxes. That was something, she supposed.

  Kerri focused on her burger, though she wasn’t very hungry, mostly to give Falco time to finish his before she launched into her latest thoughts on the case. When they’d both polished off their beers, she said, “I’ve been thinking about Walsh’s parents since the briefing, particularly after the meeting in the bathroom with his mother.”

  “Oh yeah. What’re you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking his father should be making more noise.” Kerri braced her forearms on the table. “I love my kid more than anything. I have all these hopes and plans for her. Most parents do.”

  Falco nodded. “Course.”

  “So, what went wrong with Walsh and his father? Why bother with the prestigious education and clerkship, then come all the way to Alabama for a county DDA position? Sure, his aunt is here, but if his plan was to please her, why not attend Samford instead of Harvard? What happened between the clerkship and his taking the DDA position to change his mind about joining his father’s law practice? Why would the hierarchy of power within the drug trade in Birmingham, Alabama, have any bearing on Asher Walsh’s future? It makes no sense.”

  “First off, parents have killed their offspring for less,” Falco pointed out.

  Kerri made a face. “I’m not suggesting the father killed Walsh,” she clarified. “I’m wondering how far the son would go to prove something to his father. You know”—she shrugged—“the in-your-face-dad scenario. Maybe Birmingham was the city he chose to do it because his aunt and fond childhood memories were here. He was no doubt aware how much his father despised the aunt and all things south—according to the aunt.”

  “Maybe in trying to prove whatever he intended to prove”—Falco picked up the theory from there—“the son got in too deep and got himself killed.”

  “Exactly.” Kerri pushed back her chair and stood. “Maybe there’s no big mystery here. Could be nothing more than a gone-too-far situation.”

  Falco nodded slowly. “You may be onto something, Devlin.”

  She grinned, feeling light for the first time since the call from the school. “I think I might be. I’ll get the next round.”

  Kerri headed for the kitchen. There was nothing like feeling the weight of being a failed parent to make you see the possibility in others.

  She shook off the idea. In any event, the parents had to be ruled out just like anyone else close to the vic.

  Had nothing to do with her own failings.

  At least that was what she told herself.

  13

  8:00 p.m.

  Leo’s Tobacconist

  Oak Grove Road

  Homewood

  Sadie watched the small haughty crowd gathered around the bar. Mostly old white dudes. Their elegant clothes and fine leather shoes said plenty. Money. Lots of money. The privileged of Birmingham.

  She sipped her bourbon on the rocks, ignoring the urge to down it and to order another. Keeping her shit together was important. It was the least she could do for Asher. In addition to finding that local power link to the cartel, he’d wanted to help her. This he had told her over and over. Eventually she would determine his actual motive. Not that she didn’t believe he’d wanted to help her, but she’d learned the hardest way of all that even people who cared about you had a motive for every action. They might not be aware themselves of the underlying incentive, but it was there.

  Human nature. Survival and all that bullshit.

  Tara McGill had motive for what she had done too. With her, it was easy to figure out. She was the proverbial gold digger. Money was her goal. She didn’t have enough. She wanted more. But McGill wasn’t clever enough to be working directly for the cartel. If she was involved at all, someone would be feeding her orders, orchestrating her every move. McGill was the source Kurtz and Asher had suspected. Kurtz had discovered her little entrepreneurial endeavor. He’d been watching her for a couple of weeks when Asher approached him. Sadie’s sources had pinpointed the shop as being a link in the distribution chain. McGill wasn’t quite as discreet as she should have been. A mistake that would cost her big-time—whether from the good guys or the bad.

  Kurtz had agreed with Asher’s conclusion that if someone in his employment was working for the cartel, there could be other small business owners suffering the same treachery. Small businesses like his would be overlooked in the grand scheme of things when it came to law enforcement investigations. Too insignificant. Unless a significant number of insignificant establishments were pulled unknowingly into the game. Simple math. Little veins were far easier to hide than big bulging arteries.

  Sadie’s guess was that McGill had provided the information and access needed by whoever had offed Kurtz and Asher. Under the circumstances she likely considered herself innocent of the crime, but she was wrong. She was just as damned guilty as the shooter.

  Another sip of bourbon slid down Sadie’s throat as she watched McGill flit about, crooning over one customer and then another. Ensuring she touched each one on the arm or shoulder, sometimes the back. Dressed in a skintight black dress barely long enough to cover her ass, with a scooped neck that revealed lots of cleavage, along with black stockings and sexy black heels. The old bastards probably got hard-ons just watching her.

  Sadie looked away. What she needed was the shot caller in whatever the hell went down. Her gaze shifted back to the group gathered in memory of the murdered owner. Could be one of these rich guys. Whoever it was, it would be someone in a position of power. As badly as she wanted the actual shooter, more than that she wanted the one who had given the order.

  Taking down the ones who got their hands dirty scarcely slowed the flow. You had to find and cut off the head of the lead snake. Even then a dozen other snakes slithered seemingly out of nowhere to take its place.

  It was all one endless, vicious cycle.

  “Would you like another?”

  Sadie looked up at McGill. She’d obviously decided to float over to the table in the deepest, darkest corner of the establishment. No surprise. Sadie had been nursing this one drink since she’d arrived. Establishments making money from the sale of alcohol didn’t care for those who took up space and purchased only one drink.

  Or maybe she had caught Sadie watching her one too many times.

  “No thanks. I’m good.” Sadie shifted her gaze forward in dismissal.

  “I’ve seen you here a couple of times before. Did you know Leo?”

  “No.” Sadie took another sip of the now-watery bourbon. The two times she had patronized the establishment had been to be eyes and ears for Asher. Too bad she’d failed to recognize the full depth of the danger within these seemingly innocuous walls.

  “That’s a shame. He was a great guy. We’re going to miss him terribly.” McGill sighed. “I suppose the place will be sold.” She made a vague gesture with her arm, sending the smell of perfume wafting over Sadie. “I’m running things until then. Someone has to.”

  Sadie lifted her gaze to the woman once more. “I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”

  McGill smiled. “I saw you watching me. Is there something more than a drink you need?”

  Now this was an interesting turn of events. Sadie manufactured a smile. “Always.”

  “I could meet you after the place closes. Say ten thirty?”

  Softening the rejection with a smile, Sadie offered, “I’m afraid I’m already committed tonight. Another time?”

  “You know where to find me.” McGill began her float around the room once more. Laying on the compliments and doing her touchy-feely act.

  The invitation was one Sadie definitely hadn’t expected. She wore her usual—a black tee, jeans, and sneakers. It wasn’t like she looked rich or powerful. Maybe McGill had been hoping for a night of slumming.

  Sadie would be back tonight to see what McGill did after work. There were a number of perfect stakeout locations nearby. It was always possible the invitation had been a trap. Sadie doubted McGill had any idea about her involvement with Asher. Kurtz wouldn’t have, either, unless Asher had told him. No reason for him to make that sort of move without informing her.

  Whatever. She needed to get out of here for a while. To think. She wasn’t going to learn anything until McGill closed up. Maybe she should go home with her. Find out her secrets. Dig up a little evidence to support the conclusions about McGill.

  But then, Sadie had walked into a trap once too often. Whatever she decided, caution would be her watchword.

  She had no desire to repeat past mistakes.

  Eighteenth Street and Morris Avenue

  Birmingham, 9:30 p.m.

  Sadie sat down on the grimy concrete. She’d left her car parked at the Greyhound station, then walked around the corner to Eighteenth and found the exact spot under the overpass.

  This was where she had been found in late November three and a half years ago, three years and seven months, to be exact. Unconscious. Broken. Loaded with drugs. The homeless guy who’d found her had thought she was dead. But she had been alive. Barely. Her right leg had been broken. The weeks-old injury had healed, but the bones hadn’t properly aligned. The correction had required surgery. Left shoulder had been dislocated, the humeral head fractured. Weeks in a sling and months of physical therapy had salvaged most of the use of that arm. Her nose had been broken at some point, but it, too, had healed—not as straight as it had once been. An MRI showed evidence of recent and repeated head trauma. So many bruises and scars. Whoever had tortured her had been damned good at his work.

  There were other things . . . things she didn’t like to think about.

  Do not go there.

  The doctors had all agreed that the memory loss was a result of a combination of the head trauma and the extended overuse of hallucinogens, among other drugs.

  Sometimes she had the most bizarre episodes. Possibly flashbacks but she couldn’t be sure what was real and what was imagined. Dr. Holden had suggested that whoever had done this might have used video footage along with the drugs to imprint false memories.

  Basically, she was seriously fucked up.

  Ignoring the people just yards away, tucked into cardboard boxes for the night, she closed her eyes and let her mind go back.

  “Hey! Hey, you okay?”

  The man crouched over her that night had looked about as much like hell as she had. He’d worn dirty, torn clothes. His beard had been long, his face wrinkled and leathered. But his eyes had been keen, watchful.

  It had hurt to move. Oddly, she’d grown accustomed to the pain. Probably from all those months of torture she couldn’t really recall. She remembered opening her eyes to the old guy.

  She hadn’t been happy about it. The one thing she’d known for sure was that she hadn’t wanted to wake up. Being dead would have been preferable. The realization wasn’t actually a memory, just a knowing.

  “What’s your name?”

  Sadie had lain there for about a minute, trying to figure out how to answer him.

  “I’ll get help.”

  He’d apparently realized she didn’t know her name or couldn’t speak, so he’d gone to the bus station to get someone to make the call, but there had been no need. A BPD cruiser had been at the bus station, so the old man had led the two uniforms to her.

  An ambulance had arrived and whisked her away to the hospital. A few hours later her father had arrived and identified her. Most of the other stuff that had occurred those first few days was yet another blur in her life.

  The concrete felt cold beneath her now. She remembered that cold . . . it had seeped so deep into her bones that night it had taken days before she felt warm again. She’d lost weight while she was missing. Nothing but skin and bones. They’d all said it was a miracle she was alive.

  But it wasn’t.

  Very recently, maybe with Asher’s help, she’d realized that she had survived by sheer force of will. Subconsciously she had determined to survive, possibly for nothing more than revenge. But years of recovery had been required to come to that understanding.

  She laughed, the sound echoing in the night. The sad part was she couldn’t remember precisely who the target of her revenge was. Yeah, yeah, the Osorio family for sure. The old man would have ordered whatever was done to her. But she wanted the others involved too. The ones who’d beaten her, cut her, and worse. So much worse.

  She pushed away the thought.

  Of course, she wanted to get Carlos, first and foremost. But there was something about the person or persons who’d inflicted the torture that made her want them even more. Faces she couldn’t remember. Voices that were unfamiliar and unclear and came to her only in bits and pieces.

  Nailing down the identities should be a piece of cake.

  “Right,” she muttered.

  She pushed to her feet and started to pace the length of pavement under the overpass on the Eighteenth Street side. Back and forth. Back and forth. She’d eventually tracked down the guy who’d found her and gone for help. There was no way to gauge how many others had walked right past her. Lab tests on her clothes showed that at least one person had pissed on her. Whether that was before or after she’d planted herself facedown under the overpass, no one could say.

  Witnesses in the bus station had stated that she’d gotten off one of the buses. The consensus as to which bus was mixed. Possibly the one from Houston, maybe the one from New Orleans. Drivers from every imaginable direction had been interviewed, and no one had remembered her.

  Ultimately the answer to how she’d ended up at the Greyhound station and then under the overpass was yet another mystery.

  She wandered into the station and watched the people coming and going for a while. Watched those waiting in the lobby, heads dropping forward or back as people fell asleep in their chairs. She noted the one hoodlum who watched those dozing off, his gaze going from them to their bags.

  When he got up to snatch a bag, Sadie stuck her leg out in his path. “Don’t even think about it, asshole.”

  The kid gave her a nasty glare and hustled away.

  A few minutes later she felt as if she’d soaked up as much of the shitty atmosphere as she could tolerate. She decided to go back to Leo’s and follow that lead.

  Why not? She had nothing to lose.

  If she got herself dead, her only regret would be not getting Asher’s killer first.

  Leo’s Tobacconist

  Oak Grove Road

  Homewood, 10:35 p.m.

  Sadie had backed into a slot in the rear of the parking lot at Leo’s. She could watch the stockroom exit and McGill’s car from her position. She’d made a quick detour on the way here for the gear she would need. It wasn’t much. Something for copying McGill’s house key. Decoding software in case she managed an opportunity to have a look at her computer.

  At 10:39 the Vandiver guy exited, cell phone against his ear. He climbed into his vintage BMW and roared away.

  Another five minutes elapsed before McGill came out. She strutted across the pavement in the direction of her car. Waiting until her target was at the halfway point between the rear exit and her Corolla, Sadie emerged and began walking toward her. Hearing the footsteps, McGill jumped and turned in Sadie’s direction.

  “Whoa. You scared the hell out of me.” A hand on her bare chest, McGill said, “I thought you had other plans tonight.”

  Her voice shook ever so slightly. She wasn’t completely sure of the situation or of Sadie. But she didn’t run.

  “I decided I liked your offer better.” By the time Sadie reached her position, she had her hands on her hips and was looking all cocky. “Unless you made other plans.”

  “No other plans.” McGill moved in closer to Sadie. The heels McGill wore put the two of them nose to nose. “Your place or mine?”

  Sadie looked directly into her eyes. “Yours is probably closer.”

  McGill traced a finger over Sadie’s lips, then a path down to her breasts. “You riding with me or following?”

  “I’ll follow. Makes the morning after less complicated.”

  McGill grinned. “I’m liking you more already.”

  Sadie headed back to her car and climbed in. She waited until McGill did the same and darted out of the parking lot. Sadie followed.

  Her phone vibrated, and she checked the screen.

  Falco.

  She decided to answer since he might have an update from today’s task force meeting. She touched the speaker icon. “Yeah.”