Fuck.
I remember, suddenly, the vaguely familiar person in the crowd. I didn’t see it at the time. Russo was just a shape then, but Roman saw him. He always sees what I don’t.
I can’t say for sure, but given where Roman dumped the body, I put two and two together.
Turns out Roman’s not entirely done sending me messages in cadavers. Except this one feels like a bittersweet goodbye.
One more puzzle piece, for old time’s sake.
My stomach churns. This is bad timing for such a revelation.
Lawson slides the photo toward me with one gnawed-off nail. “Recognize him?”
“Of course,” I say. My voice doesn’t break. “Captain Russo.”
Lawson’s pen clicks, a little faster now.
“Your prints are all over his office, his car, his house.” Lawson gives me a smile like old milk. “And you have no alibi for the night of his death.”
I take a breath through my nose, slow and controlled, counting to four. My pulse doesn’t cooperate.
“I was home. Alone.”
Unprovable, but hard to disprove, too.
Lawson leans forward. “You’ve been off the grid for a while now, Detective. You didn’t answer any of his calls or texts.”
“It’s been a rough couple weeks.”
That’s a lie.
It’s been a lot more than rough, and for a lot longer than a couple weeks.
“Being a little too edgy to chat with your boss because someone is carving your name into bodies isn’t a crime, though.”
“That is strange, isn’t it? The killer’s fixation on you, I mean. Just for him to lose interest all of a sudden.” Lawson taps the pen against the table. “We found DNA on Russo’s body. Yours.”
I want to laugh at the idiocy of it—how many times did Russo steal a sip of my coffee because he hated the decaf his wife made him drink? We were barnacles on the same damn ship.
And you were there when he died. Don’t forget that, Giselle. You’re being questioned for something you did, more or less.
As if I could forget.
“Is that unusual?” I ask. “We worked together most days.”
The words hit too near the bone. I feel myself fraying at the edges. Grief claws up my chest, meets rage on its way back down.
Russo, you fucking rat bastard. You fucking rapist. You fucking LIAR!
“Word is, he and you were very close,” Lawson asks, suddenly soft. “Closer than you maybe should have been.”
I sneer at the implication. Made all the worse because I know, now, just how closehe was to my sister.
“Maybe,” I say. “We had a good working relationship. He looked out for me.”
That one stings. I bite my lip, let it tremble just a little. The performance matters. It’s also not all a performance.
“So you’d say it was more like a paternal relationship?” Lawson pretends to be taking a note.
