He followed my gaze and scooped up the pile of papers before I could get a better look. “Nothing.”

“Fine. So, I’m working the Adams case, and I noticed in the report that you were the first officer on scene.”

“You’re on the Adams case? Did the boyfriend hire you?”

“Taft, you know I can’t tell you that. You look good, by the way.”

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Okay, let me have it.”

“What?” Some people were so suspicious.

“The only time you tell me I look good is when you want something.”

“That is so not true.” It was, actually, but I could argue with a parking meter. “I just want to get an idea of what you think of the case.”

“Do your own legwork, Davidson.”

He went back to punching keys, chomping dots and fruit and following it up with a discreet fist pump. I was almost impressed. “I didn’t even glance at your legs. I’ve been hired. For reals. They’re going to pay me and everything.” I hoped. “And I have permission from the higher-ups to interview you.”

He stopped playing and leveled a dubious smirk on me. “How high?”

“High-ish. Mid-level-y?”

“Why don’t you bug your uncle?”

“Not his case. It’s Joplin’s. Joplin hates me.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Right? So, the car?”

“Fine, what do I think?” He handed me a file folder, put his elbows on the arms of his chair, and clasped his fingers. “I think a beautiful, smart woman suffered a horrible death at the hands of her jealous boyfriend.”

“Really?” I opened the file. It held his report only. But I had yet to read it, as it wasn’t in the file Parker slipped me. “You’re liking the boyfriend for this?”

“Who else? Have you seen the mountain of evidence against him?”

“I haven’t seen any of it.” And I hadn’t. Not literally.

“His fingerprints were in the car.”

“They were dating.”

“The prints were in the blood, Davidson. After the incident occurred. In more than one place.”

“He found the car. He opened the door and touched the blood, which was apparently everywhere, when he searched for her.”

“What’s there to search? He opened the door. She wasn’t in the car. The car was drenched in blood. He was drenched in blood.”

“There was a sleeping bag in the backseat. He thought she might be in it. He crawled inside to check it.”

“So he crawls through buckets of blood to check a sleeping bag he could have checked by going around to the other side and opening another door?”

He had a good point, but there was an explanation. I just wasn’t telling him what it was. Ammunition should this go to trial. That door handle was tricky and would only unlock with the remote. The interior door locks didn’t work on it. If they didn’t figure that out on their own, they would look incompetent, and that always helped.

I handed the file back to him. “That’s all circumstantial.”

Taft leaned forward and played his trump card. “He’s done it before.”

After taking care to guard my surprise, I gauged his emotions. He wasn’t lying. “What do you mean?”

“Have you even checked into this guy’s background? Did three years. Man two.”

Manslaughter? Damn it. Parker didn’t mention that part. It would make my job harder, but not impossible. I didn’t care what the guy did in his past life. He was innocent of killing Emery Adams.

“So, that’s why you guys are jumping on the arrest so fast.”

“Pretty good reason, if you ask me. Once a murderer—”

“Manslaughter is a far cry from murder.”

“He was directly responsible for another person’s death. If that’s not murder…”

* * *

Feeling more ill equipped to handle this case than I had, I flew back to the office to check on Cookie’s progress and to do a few background checks of my own, all the while trying to figure out how to get close to a god without being detected. If one or both of the gods of Uzan were hijacking humans and discarding their dead bodies willy-nilly, they needed to be stopped sooner than later. This wasn’t just about Beep anymore.

Well, it was mostly about her, but people were dying, and I couldn’t help but take a little of the blame. We’d been warned, Reyes and I. We’d been told not to consummate our relationship, though admittedly we weren’t warned until the deed had been done. Several times. In more than one location. And on a variety of surfaces.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Cookie said, rushing over to me. She handed me a file on Lyle Fiske. After my conversation with Taft, I dreaded looking at it.

“So,” I said, regarding her hopefully, “thumbs-up or thumbs-down?”

“It’s debatable. I will say after what you told me about him, take everything you read here with a grain of salt.”

“Will do.”

I read for several hours from the plethora of info she’d dug up on both Lyle Fiske and Emery Adams before doing my own investigation on a third cog that just didn’t quite fit. Why was Parker so convinced of Fiske’s innocence? Or was this about something else? And why did he purposely leave the man two conviction out of Fiske’s file? I was certain he did that on purpose.

Cookie took off to pick up Amber from school while I read late into the afternoon. Fiske was a fraternity president at UNM. A kid died in a hazing accident on his watch, and it happened to be around the time fraternity hazings were under fire from the media, activists, and politicians. To make an example of him, the judge sentenced him to five years for negligent homicide. He got out early for good behavior.

His record would make it more difficult for a jury to acquit him no matter how much Nick Parker tried to sabotage the case. And his career in the process.

A search of the shady ADA’s digital footprint showed that he had been in the same fraternity as Lyle. He did say they were old college buddies. He failed to mention the frat connection. Or the hazing accident.

A general background search didn’t reveal a whole lot on Emery’s grieving father other than the fact that he’d made a couple of bad business investments over the years. Who hadn’t? I still couldn’t believe Martian Barbie didn’t take off.