Kerri went around to the passenger side of the vehicle and opened the door. With her gloved fingers she picked up a key from the console. She held up the single key on the clasp, the Chrysler logo impossible to miss. “What you want to bet this belonged to the car flattened in that compactor?”

The car was now at the lab in hopes of finding some damned clue about what Sela Abbott had been doing while the vehicle was in her possession. The expectations for results were dim, but they had to try.

“That’s a bet you would win.”

“Let’s check his pockets.”

The two front pockets of his jeans had the usual. Loose change and a lighter. Nothing in the back pockets since Officer Brashier had already removed the wallet. Falco pulled a pack of Marlboros from the shirt pocket, tucked his fingers deeper inside.

“Wait. Got something here.”

He fished out what looked like a gold chain of some sort. He spread it in the palm of his gloved hand. “Bracelet.”

The S charm on the bracelet had Kerri’s anticipation climbing to the next level. There was dirt or something on part of the chain. “What’s that? Dirt or blood?”

They both looked closer.

“Looks like blood to me,” Falco said, confirming her suspicions.

While Falco bagged the bracelet, Kerri checked Keaton’s cell phone. He or the shooter had meticulously erased his call and text logs. She checked the map app in hopes it would give her something. Bingo.

“When he called me,” she said to her partner, “he had just taken a trip to this location.” She held the screen up where Falco could see it. “Maybe that’s where the Plymouth was picked up.”

She sure as hell didn’t believe the story the old men at the salvage yard had given her. Keaton would not have called to tell her about the car if he’d been trying to hide it.

“I say we take a ride, Devlin.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” She wasn’t holding her breath, but she could hope.

The crime scene investigator arrived and started his work. As soon as the ME—not Moore, but another of his associates—was on the scene, Kerri asked about time of death. He estimated time of death at between five and eight last evening, which meant he had taken the bullet not long after leaving that voice mail for Kerri.

Once the ME had taken the body away, she and Falco left the scene in the hands of Brashier and the forensic investigator.

They dropped the bracelet at the lab and headed for Canyon Lane. The shooter hadn’t bothered going very far to drop his victim. Shades Crest Road snaked its way up the mountain and right past Canyon Lane.

The address led to a cabin in the woods. The long narrow drive cut through the trees as if it had been designed to disappear. The cabin was not your run-of-the-mill rustic getaway either. This was a nice cabin.

Best of all, according to county records, the property belonged to one Lewis York. Kerri resisted the urge to jump for joy. That news was like Christmas and her birthday all rolled into one. They were getting closer.

Since no one was home, Kerri and her partner did some looking around. The doors were locked. The windows weren’t shuttered or curtained, making seeing inside as simple as pressing her face to the glass. Nothing inside looked suspicious, taking the possibility of exigent circumstances off the table.

There was a shed in back. It wasn’t locked, but there was nothing inside, not even a lawn mower. Odds were, York had a service that took care of that sort of thing.

“Keaton came here, looked around,” she said, “and that put him on York’s radar.”

“The question is”—Falco turned all the way around, surveying the yard—“unless York was home, how did he know Keaton was here?”

“There have to be cameras somewhere.”

A new search began. This one to find any sort of surveillance York might have installed.

It took a few minutes, but they found them. The cameras were well hidden—camouflaged, really.

It wasn’t until the air suddenly surged into her lungs that Kerri realized she had been holding her breath. She got it now. “He was here.” She turned to Falco.

“What do you mean? Who was here?”

“When Keaton called me, he said he would be waiting to hear from me.” She surveyed the property. “I thought he meant at the salvage yard, but I was wrong. He was waiting here. That’s how York got to him before I could respond to his voice mail. When he drove onto the property, York probably got some sort of notification on his cell or something.”

“I’ll check for a camera close to the road.” Falco hustled off down the driveway.

Kerri stared directly at the camera they’d found at the front of the house. She smiled and then mouthed two words: “Got you.”

Falco found the camera at the Canyon Lane end of the driveway. Kerri’s scenario for what had happened to Keaton was right, even if they couldn’t prove it.

When they loaded up in the Charger, Falco asked, “We going to see York or Thompson?”

“Both, but Thompson is first. He’s scheduled to do a lunch thing at his office, so we know he’ll be there. He’s too hard to catch to risk missing this opportunity to trap him.”

When they reached the end of the driveway, Falco stopped and fished his cell phone from his pocket. He checked the screen and then glanced at Kerri. “It’s Cross.”

“Put it on speaker.” Kerri hoped the woman was as good as Falco thought. They needed something that would push this investigation over the hurdle that had been stalling it for days.

“Hey, Cross, got you on speaker. Devlin is in the car with me, so be nice.”

The woman grumbled something unintelligible, then: “I heard back from my contact in Mexico City.”

Obviously Cross had contacts everywhere. Kerri couldn’t help wondering how she’d managed that feat.

“Did he find anything on Sela Rollins and her mother?”

“Oh yeah,” Cross said. “You were right about Sela taking her mother to Mexico for treatment. The clinic treating her in San Diego said there was nothing more they could do. Sent her home with a bagful of pain meds to die. Sela heard about this so-called miracle clinic, which, according to my contact, is just one of those places that takes money from desperate people.”

“The mother was terminal?” Kerri needed her to get to the point. Adrenaline was pumping through her heart with enough force to launch it out of her chest.

“Yeah,” Cross said. “She died six months later. I don’t know who got shot in the Abbott house, but it wasn’t Sela Rollins Abbott’s mother.”

Holy shit. Kerri asked, “Your contact confirmed this information?”

“I’m looking at the death certificate. He snapped pics of a bunch of records and sent them to me.”

“Damn, Cross, I really appreciate this.” Falco looked to Kerri. “I don’t see how we can view Sela Abbott as anything other than a straight-up suspect now.”

“That ain’t all, Falco.” Cross spoke up.

Kerri braced for more startling news.

“Your MIA vic went a little crazy after her mother died. Ended up spending a few months in a Mexican psychiatric hospital. While she was there, she became good friends with a guy named Oliver Wilmington. He was this big West Coast tech whiz who flamed out early in the game. Mental health issues—bipolar or some such shit. When she finished her gig in the crazy house,” Cross went on, “she moved in with this guy for a while before returning to California and going to work for a law firm.”

“Is there any way to get in touch with this tech wizard?” Falco asked the question on the tip of Kerri’s tongue.

“Nope. He was found dead the day after your missing vic’s departure. Apparently, he decided he couldn’t live without her and took a dive off the third-story balcony of his Mexican palace. The authorities ruled it a suicide, but the autopsy shows his time of death as the day before Sela left Mexico. So maybe he had a little help taking that dive.”

Falco was right. Sela Rollins Abbott couldn’t be called a victim anymore. But would she really kill her husband? The father of her child? Or a former lover? She might not be a victim, but somehow, she had set all this in motion.

The other glaring question was, Who the hell was the woman posing as her mother?

“Did you find anything on the property on Thirty-Third?” Falco asked.

“It’s your lucky day, Falco,” Cross said. “I found something I think your partner is going to love.”

A new wave of tension rolled through Kerri. “What’s that?” Maybe the house belonged to Thompson or York. That news she would love.

“Forty-two years ago Jacqueline Rollins lived in that house, only she wasn’t a Rollins then, and she went by Jackie. Her real last name was Carter. She changed her name to Stevens when she moved to California.”

“So this does go back to the mother.” Kerri wasn’t actually surprised. It made sense now. She had found that photo album that proved the mother had lived in Birmingham when she was young.

How was it that Ben Abbott knew about Janelle and her involvement with Theo Thompson and didn’t know the rest? Not logical. Why would Sela keep that from her husband?

“I’ll give you three guesses who she worked for, and the first two don’t count.”