“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I just have this deep need to go. Like it brings me closer to my parents or something. I know it doesn’t make sense, but that’s how I feel.”

  “I don’t want to give any defense lawyer something to call into question.”

  “Which a good one would do.”

  “A good attorney like you.” He chuckled.

  “I don’t represent murderers, but yeah, I’m good at my job.”

  “And modest.”

  She laughed and took a bite of the burrito she’d chosen, the tender chicken and gooey cheese melting in her mouth.

  “Seriously, though, if you really want to be there, I guess it would be okay. As long as you don’t step foot in the garage before the place is processed.”

  Her heart soared at his kindness, and she grabbed him in a hug. She expected him to push away or at least remain still, but he scooped her closer, and she clung to him.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, smelling his unique musky smell mixed with another scent she couldn’t pinpoint.

  He pushed back. “I’m glad to help when I can.”

  She thought there was a but coming. Instead, he opened his computer and got the video playing, then picked up one of his tacos.

  Just like that. Like she hadn’t hugged him at all. Like he hadn’t returned the hug with gusto. Which he had, and he certainly hadn’t been complaining. But he clearly didn’t want to acknowledge his feelings, and she would follow his lead. She tucked into her meal while keeping her eyes on the video.

  They ate in silence, and she was about to lose hope of seeing a suspect when a guy walking toward the exit caught her attention.

  “Stop,” she said, her mouth full of burrito.

  He paused the recording.

  She swallowed and leaned closer. “It might be him. The build is right, and his walk is right. Keep playing it.”

  Ian started the video again, and the man exited the hotel, but before he did, he glanced back. Half his face was visible.

  Ian hit pause. “Know him?”

  “Can you make his image bigger?”

  Ian enlarged the picture, but all it did was make the picture grainy.

  “Can you back it up and play it again?”

  “Sure.” He reversed and let it run.

  “I really do think it’s him, but I don’t know him. At least not from seeing this video. My ID wouldn’t likely hold up in court, though. After all, I didn’t see his face, only his body and movement.” She looked at Ian. “You know how that can be distinct, right? And I had such a long time to watch him walk when he came toward me with the gun.” She tried to keep the image of the shooter in the ballroom from popping into her brain, but it played in brilliant technicolor, and she shuddered.

  “Hey.” Ian rested a hand on her shoulder.

  The urge to turn her face and seek even more comfort had her almost swaying his way. She wanted to seek the touch of his skin on hers, but she sat like a statue and tried not to encourage him with cries of distress or anguish. After all, she wanted his touch as a woman wanted a man’s touch, not as a detective might comfort someone helping on his investigation. She wondered if his earlier hug had been motivated by a desire to comfort and nothing more.

  How many times was she going to feel those strong emotions with him? Wanting things to be different? But she had to face facts. They weren’t, and if she’d learned anything from losing her parents at such a young age, she’d learned that wishing for something did no good. Doing was what made things happen. Or not doing, as in this case, or not getting in trouble growing up and inviting a chance for their foster family to want to send her packing.

  “We’ll find this guy.” Ian squeezed her shoulder and let go.

  “Is this image clear enough for facial recognition?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so, but we can give it a try.”

  “Can we send it to Nick at Veritas? He might be able to enhance it, and if not, know someone who could.”

  “Sure, and we can also ask Reed. The FBI manages the national facial recognition software, and they might have the necessary tools to do it.”

  She nodded. “I’ll text them both if you’ll prepare to send the photo.”

  “Why don’t we finish looking at these videos first? Our guy might come back in the door, and we’ll have a better look at him.”

  “That sounds good.” She tried not to pin her hopes on that fact but demolished the rest of her burrito as she watched. She didn’t even taste the food, but she had to eat to keep up her strength to help nab the killer.

  They didn’t see the suspect again, so they emailed the video to Nick and Reed and moved on to the garage. Three stacks of boxes remained, one of them all paperwork and books that her parents had loved. She remembered seeing a picture of the built-in bookshelf in the living room loaded with these books, and she couldn’t wait to put them back on the shelf in the same order. Hopefully, the other decorative items were in the remaining boxes.

  “Would you look at that.” Ian lifted something from the bottom of a box and held up a zipped nylon case. “You know what this is, don’t you?”

  She shook her head.

  He slid open the zipper and set the case on the box to reveal a full-sized telephone handset with a cord. “It’s a bag phone.”

  He lifted the end of another cord. “This plug goes into a car cigarette lighter to get power and allow the owner to make calls. It was used before cell phones were common. Not a lot of people had them because they were expensive, and the calls were really costly too. I wonder if your mom and dad had it in the car at the time of their crash.”

  Hope built in Malone’s stomach. “If they did, do you think we could get phone records to see who they called?”

  “We’ll need to go through the boxes of paperwork to see if the executor kept phone bills. And while we’re at it, we can look for bills for the landline at this place too.”

  Pumped by a potential lead, they switched their attention to the other boxes and flipped through folder after folder until Malone located a utilities folder. She paged through the papers and held the file up. “Phone bills for the house.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “Set it aside, and we’ll keep looking for the bag phone records. I’ll get the information to Londyn so she can work on compiling a list of names to go with numbers we find.”

  Still looking through the boxes, Ian paused to study a folder. “This is interesting. Not related to the phone but to your dad’s work.”

  He turned the file, allowing her to look at it. She read articles about how Chinese drywall containing formaldehyde had been imported into the United States. The drywall off-gassed volatile chemicals and fumes. It worsened when temperature and humidity rose and gave off a sulfuric odor. Smelled like rotten eggs and caused copper surfaces to turn black and powdery. People in homes with the drywall installed had breathing issues.

  She looked up. “What if my dad’s company imported this drywall and tried to cover it up? Could he have been planning to blow the whistle?”

  Ian’s lips pressed together. “If so, it’s certainly something that would cost the company a lot of money to repair.”

  “I’m assuming there would be class action lawsuits too. That would add even more to their costs.”

  Ian met her gaze and held it. “If the people in charge at the company wanted to keep it quiet, it certainly could be something worth killing to cover up.”

  8

  Early the next morning, Malone shifted on the stool at her kitchen island, Ian sitting next to her. She tapped her foot and couldn’t wait to go to Peck’s place. Like she’d told Ian, she didn’t know why, but just knowing that Emory and the criminalist would process the car gave her hope that she would find the person who killed her parents. Even after hearing the news the night before, she was still shocked to learn they’d been murdered. She needed answers. Desperately. Not only who killed her parents, but who killed Junior and how his murder was related to her, if it even was.

  Hopefully, the video call from Nick and Erik would provide some of those answers. They’d canceled the morning meeting with the Veritas partners, as Nick and Erik were the only ones on the team with an update. Malone and Ian were waiting for them to join the call.

  She shifted on her stool again and resumed thumping her foot on the rung as she waited for the guys to appear on her computer screen.

  “You look antsy,” Ian said.

  “Sorry. I think things are settling in. It’s starting to hit me.” She took a breath. “I never imagined Junior’s claim at the reunion would turn out to be true.”

  “I get that.” He held her gaze. “But it’s good to know the truth, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  “I hear a but in your tone.”

  “But now I know it wasn’t a fluke accident. Someone intentionally ended their lives.”

  “I see the families of victims all the time. Witness their suffering at such a sudden loss of life. But I’ve never felt it as deeply as I do with you.” Conviction rang through his tone.

  His words touched her heart, but she didn’t know how to respond.

  “This is personal for me now,” he continued. “It’s never been personal in the past. Sure, the families suffering is hard to take, but I made sure I remained impartial so I could continue to do my job well and not burn out. But today…” His voice cracked, and he looked away.

  She couldn’t hold back and took his hand. She held it tight, but she still didn’t know what else she should do. Best course was to keep quiet rather than risk saying the wrong thing.

  His computer sounded a chime for their video, and she jerked her hand free as if caught disobeying by the teacher in school. He glanced at her, then accepted the incoming call.

  Nick and Erik sat next to each other and shared a screen. They both had dark circles under their eyes.

  Malone swallowed away guilt at being the cause of their lack of sleep. “You guys look tired.”

  Erik scrubbed a hand over his face. “All-nighter, but it was worth it. We have some interesting info.”

  “You want us to start with your parents or Junior?” Nick asked.

  “My parents,” Malone said, as she wanted information on them more than anything.

  “They checked out as expected,” Erik said. “Like Reed mentioned, your dad was a corporate attorney and your mom a kindergarten teacher. Your dad worked for a huge local construction company, Ground Floor Builders. They’re big in commercial building. I didn’t find anything negative about the company, but the building trade can often take shortcuts or use substandard materials that come back to bite them. So I think it would be worth talking to someone at the company who might have more information.”

  “We found a file that said the company was importing Chinese drywall containing formaldehyde,” Ian said.

  “That would be worth covering up if they installed it and had to remediate it,” Nick said. “Nothing came up in my searches, but this might suggest how your dad got wind of it, and they found a way to hush it up.”

  Malone didn’t know what to think at this point. “Or the company just fixed the buildings where they’d installed the faulty product and my parents’ crash just occurred at that time.”

  “Could be.” Nick tapped his chin. “But your dad must’ve had a reason for having those papers at home, and the executor had a reason to keep them.”

  “Is he still alive?” Ian asked. “Can we talk to him?”

  Malone shook her head. “He died from a heart attack a little over a year ago.”

  “Then I’ll start an algorithm to search specifically for the drywall as it relates to this company,” Nick said. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  Ian looked at Malone. “I wonder if there’s anyone at the company who might remember your dad.”

  “Way ahead of you there,” Erik said. “I’ll email you a list of executives who still work there.”

  “Perfect,” Malone said. “Thank you, Erik.”

  “That’s it for your parents.” Nick stifled a yawn. “I’ve been working on Junior’s background. He had a falling out with his dad about five years ago. He once worked for his dad’s company, Flagg Contracting, but then his dad disowned him.”

  Ian’s expression brightened. “Do you know what their falling out was about?”

  Nick shook his head. “Junior posted on social media that they’d parted ways, and he seemed bitter about it, but he didn’t share why.”

  “I’m already planning to interview his parents again,” Ian said. “I’ll ask about it. But when I did the death notification, they didn’t mention the estrangement. They didn’t seem to know much about Junior’s current life, though, so that tracks with a separation. They had no idea who or why someone might want to kill him.”

  “Then they’re in denial or they really don’t know anything about their son or they’re lying,” Nick said. “It also looks like Junior was a middleman in a local drug syndicate run by Tirone Olivo.”

  “Olivo?” Ian’s mouth dropped open. “He’s known to nearly every police officer in the city. But he keeps his hands clean, and the drug squad can never get anything on him. They’ve tried to tie him to the mafia but never made any connection there. On the surface, it seems like he’s on his own and above board.”

  “Exactly,” Nick said. “He looks like an ideal citizen on paper. Heads up an import company, bringing in Italian furniture. The business appears to be legit and originated when his family emigrated from Italy.”

  Ian shook his head. “I know the drug squad has searched his furniture shipments in the past, but they’ve never produced anything illegal.”

  “Which is why he’s been a major drug player in the area for so many years,” Nick said. “No one can break into his organization.”

  “How did you make the connection with Junior?” Malone asked.

  A smile slid across Nick’s face. “I wrote an algorithm to scrape the internet for any mention of Junior. Found a couple of pictures with him attending street parties thrown by Olivo’s import company. Then a couple of photos with him and several low-level dealers on social media.” Nick rolled his eyes and shook his head. “When are these creeps going to learn that you don’t brag about criminal activities on Facebook?”

  “I hope never,” Ian said. “Helps us catch them. I ran Junior’s name through our system, and he doesn’t have a record. But now that I know about the Olivo connection, I’ll get with our drug squad to see what they have on him.”

  “I’m guessing he’s known to them too,” Erik said.

  Malone could hardly believe what she was hearing. “But what does any of this have to do with my parents’ accident? Did they have something to do with this Olivo guy? Was he even in the drug business back then?”

  “Yes to being in the drug business at the time of their accident,” Nick said. “As to a relationship to your parents, I didn’t find any connection. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I just haven’t located it. Maybe they’re connected through work. I’ve got a search running for any link between Ground Floor Builders and Flagg Contracting. Not that they are even in the same realm. Flagg does home remodels and Ground Floor is all about commercial buildings. I’ll keep after it for you.”

  Malone smiled at him. “I don’t know how to thank you for putting all of your time into this.”

  “You and Reed are family,” Nick said forcefully. “We take care of our own. You need anything else, just let me know.”

  Malone’s heart bloomed under his kindness, and she had to look away before sobbing like a baby over something that most people wouldn’t even react to. But she had no family other than Reed. Zero. So it meant the world to her that the Veritas partners had adopted them.

  “Did you have any luck enhancing the picture I sent?” Ian asked.

  “I have a buddy who’s much better at improving video quality,” Nick said. “He’s working on it, but you should know that we really can’t do a whole lot to improve the image. That could be a problem with facial recognition software since it identifies facial landmarks and maps the geometry of the face. Certain items need to be present for it to work well, like the distance between a person’s eyes and the distance from forehead to chin. I think we have what we need, but we won’t know until we run it against the database.”

  “Reed’s also got someone at the FBI working on it,” Malone said.

  “Good move. Not that I’d usually respond that way if a client brought in the FBI for something I can handle with the help of a buddy. Not so with facial recognition. The feds are still the pros in this arena, and we need all the help we can get. Let me know if he gets a match before I do.”

  “Will do,” Malone said. “And please let us know the minute you have anything.”

  Nick nodded. “Keep me updated on your interviews with Junior’s parents. If it turns anything up, we can add the details to our search.”

  “Thanks,” Ian said. “If only we had guys as skilled as you working for our agency.”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “We all flock to the private sector.”

  “We can’t compete with the money you make there,” Ian said.

  “Hey, it’s not the money.” Nick grinned. “It’s the equipment, baby.”

  Erik and Nick looked at each other and laughed, but Malone knew they were serious. Not only couldn’t public agencies provide anywhere near the salary IT professionals made in the private sector, but budgets didn’t stretch to include the state-of-the-art and frequently updated equipment that Malone had seen in Nick’s lab.

  Nick and Erik said goodbye, and their pictures disappeared from the screen.

  “I really am blessed to have such support,” she said, closing her laptop. “I don’t suppose I could come with you on that interview.”

  She expected a quick no, but he tilted his head and honestly seemed to be considering it.

  “Never mind,” she said. “I know you could get in a lot of trouble for bringing me along.”