Faith scanned the Grant County articles, confirming what Nick had said. “You’ve already lost two appeals. You know judges don’t like to admit other judges are wrong. How is an investigation going to benefit you?”

“It’ll benefit everybody. These are dirty cops. They locked up the wrong man. They framed me and they let the real killer get away. The rot started in Grant County, but it spread across the state and now these other women are dead because of it.” Nesbitt sat back with a smug look on his face. He could feel the tide shifting. “We’re in lockdown for another week. Like I said, I’ll give you that long to look into it.”

“We’d need a proffer,” Faith said. “Something to prove that you can deliver what you’re offering.”

“I will tell you one stash location once I know you’re seriously investigating these cases.”

“Define that,” Faith said. “What does ‘seriously investigating’ mean?”

The smug look got even smugger. “I’ll know.”

Faith’s fingers were still drumming the table as she tried to see through to the end of this game. “Hypothetically, let’s say we uncover proof that law enforcement acted inappropriately. That’s no guarantee that you’re going to get out of here.”

Nesbitt confirmed one of her suspicions. “Second-best thing to me getting out of this hellhole would be those crooked bastards ending up in here.”

“I hate to tell you this,” Faith said. “But Jeffrey Tolliver died five years ago.”

“You think I don’t know that? The whole fucking county went into mourning. There’s a damn plaque in the middle of Main Street, like he was some kind of hero, but I’m telling you he was poison.” Nesbitt was getting agitated again, this time with righteous indignation. “Tolliver was the ringleader. He taught that entire force how to break the law and get away with it, and they’re still out there doing it. I want that fucking plaque torn down. I want to shit on his name, then set it on fire.”

Faith had to wrap this up before Nick went off again.

She told Nesbitt, “No matter how solid your information is, the state is not going to spend resources on a vendetta. We investigate crimes. We make cases. We can’t retroactively charge dead people.”

“This dirty fucker will snitch on Tolliver the minute you show her the cuffs.” Nesbitt jabbed his finger into one of the Grant County articles.

DETECTIVE TAKES THE STAND

Nesbitt said, “She’s still a cop. Still out there pulling the dirty shit Tolliver taught her, destroying everything she touches. It’s your job to take down bad cops. You take her down, I guarantee she’ll drag Tolliver and everybody else down with her.”

Even without the articles, the she narrowed it down to the point of a pin. Grant County had only ever had one female detective in its entire history. Lena Adams had been recruited straight out of the academy. All of her early promise had dissolved into a cesspit of lazy shortcuts and dirty tricks.

Faith knew this because Lena had been investigated by the GBI before. Will had been the agent in charge. When Sara had found out, she had almost left him. And for good reason. Nesbitt wasn’t wrong about Lena Adams destroying everything she touched.

She was the reason that Jeffrey Tolliver had been murdered.

Faith leaned her head into her hand as she read through Daryl Eric Nesbitt’s jacket. The file was as thick as a Bible, most of it filled with treatment notes relating to his amputation. Faith’s eyes blurred over the impenetrable medical jargon. Her back was aching. She was balancing more than sitting in what passed for a pew inside the prison chapel. She glanced up to check on Will. He was doing his usual, leaning against a wall, listening but not listening. Nick was giving Amanda the rundown of what Nesbitt had told them in the cramped office and why he had waited until now to tell her about it.

Faith wondered if he was going to get to the part where he’d laid hands on an inmate, but Nick seemed mostly focused on Nesbitt’s smug demeanor. Later tonight when Faith was trying to sleep, she would go through every single second of the interview and excoriate herself for protecting Nick. It had been instinctual, visceral, like vomiting when you had food poisoning.

And the worst part was that she knew she would do the same thing the next time.

Faith blinked to clear her eyes. She ignored the low rumble of one of Amanda’s pointed questions. She looked around the room, which was set up for all denominations, with every shade of Jesus as well as a metal colander she assumed was for Pastafarians, a religion that, after several lawsuits, was legally recognized by the state. Graffiti was scratched into the pulpit. Colored stickers lent a stained-glass effect to the one sliver of a window. The damp little room was depressing enough to turn the Pope into an atheist.

“Ma’am.” Nick was clearly trying to hold it together. “Tolliver was as solid as they come. You know that. He was one of the best cops—the best men—in the damn state. I put my life in his hands more than once. I’d gladly do it again if he was still with us. Hell, I’d trade places with him right now.”

Faith checked on Will again. It was hard enough to compete with a ghost. Hearing Jeffrey put up there with the saints must’ve been excruciating.

Amanda asked, “There’s no way to extricate one from the other? Throw Adams under the bus, keep Tolliver out of it?”

Nick shook his head.

So did Faith. Daryl Nesbitt seemed determined to drag Jeffrey’s name through the mud right alongside Lena’s. Which was a particular talent of the heinous bitch. She always managed to taint everyone around her.

“All right.” Amanda gave a curt nod. “Nesbitt is offering two things. One, the names of Vasquez’s killers. Two, information on the influx of cell phones into this facility. In exchange, Nesbitt has put a one-week clock on us opening the cases of the dead women from the articles and investigating Grant County. Yes?”

“Yes,” Nick said.

Faith nodded.

Will kept holding up the wall.

Amanda said, “Let’s start with the Vasquez murder. Two suspects. Maduro and who else?”

“My money is on Michael Padilla,” Nick said. “He’s a bone breaker with a side of psychosis. Got transferred here from Gwinnett DOC after biting off another inmate’s finger.”

Faith recognized the name from the stack of jackets she’d read through. “It’s not a stretch to think a finger-biter would be a hand-chopper.”

Amanda said. “Nick, see if you can get Maduro to turn on Padilla. If we can unwind the Vasquez murder, we can cut Nesbitt off at the knees.”

Faith felt a jolt of shock. Amanda didn’t know about Nesbitt’s prosthesis, and Faith could not think of a natural way to bring it up.

Amanda called to Nick, “None of this gets back to Sara. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Nick had a grim set to his mouth. On his way out of the chapel, he patted Will on the shoulder. Faith didn’t know if Nick was offering Will support, thanking him for intervening with Nesbitt, or tapping him in. The least she could do was make sure she said Jeffrey Tolliver’s name as little as possible.

Amanda said, “Faith, nutshell it for me.”

“Okay, this is where it gets tricky. Grant County never charged Nesbitt with murder.”

Amanda raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“The investigation is still technically open and considered unsolved. There was a ton of circumstantial evidence that led them to presume that Nesbitt was the killer. The biggest mark against him was that the bad things stopped happening when Nesbitt was locked up.”

“The Wayne Williams Paradigm.”

“Correct. Nesbitt was arrested and convicted for other, unrelated crimes that were uncovered during the murder investigation, but it’s presumed he committed the underlying crimes.” Faith added, “If I had to use a bad cliché, I’d say Nesbitt is playing chess instead of checkers. He thinks if we can clear him of the murder, that opens up the possibility of his next move, which would be knocking down the other charges.”

“The other charges being?”

“Initially, Grant County caught him with a shit-ton of kiddie porn on his laptop computer. We’re talking tweens, eight to eleven years old.” Faith pushed away thoughts of her own children. “Nesbitt was sentenced to five years with possible probation after three, but it never came to that. The idiot is king of the self-inflicted wound. He started making trouble the minute he walked through the gates. Lots of fighting, holding on to contraband, stealing shit from the wrong people. Finally, he ended up punching out a CO who woke up out of a coma two weeks later. Nesbitt got two dimes tacked onto his initial sentence for attempted murder of a corrections officer.”

“He’s looking at Buck Rogers Time,” Amanda said, using old-timey slang for a release date so far into the future that it felt like a fantasy. “Nesbitt doesn’t have a lot to lose. He has a history of creating trouble. What’s your impression? Does he really think he’s going to walk out of here?”

“He’s a below-the-knee amputee.”