“Okay. Keep me in the loop.”

“Pumpkin,” he said, then hesitated a moment before saying, “you know I love you, right?”

My chest tightened. That was beyond weird. “Of course, Uncle Bob. Tell me what’s going on.” Fear spiked within me like the percussion of a nuclear blast.

“I’ll explain later.”

I hung up so I could answer the other incoming call.

“I wanted to call you,” the woman on the other end said. “I figured it out. I know who’s writing the suicide notes and kidnapping people.”

“Mrs. Chandler?” I asked, recognizing her slightly Texan accent. She was the widow of one of the “suicide” victims. “What do you mean?”

“I called the police this morning, and now they have someone in custody. I got him. I got that bastard.”

“Mrs. Chandler, tell me what happened. How do you know who it is?”

“Okay, well, I don’t watch a lot of TV. Hardly ever, really. But my son was home, and he had the TV on. It was that woman. That newswoman from Channel 7 who goes out and interviews people in Albuquerque? Ted always said she was dumb as a box of rocks.”

“Okay.” I couldn’t argue that. “Sylvia Starr.”

“Yes! But I didn’t know he’d been released. It’s him. He’s the kidnapper.”

“Who, Mrs. Chandler? I don’t understand.”

“That Reyes Farrow boy.”

My vision blurred and darkened around the edges. Osh must have sensed my distress. He pulled over to the side of the road. Horns honked behind us, but they could have been a million miles away, for all the attention I gave them.

“The guy she did the story on. Said he was innocent and the state let him go after ten years in prison. That’s how I knew. My husband was on the jury. I called and told them to look into it, and they said I was right. Said all the victims were on the jury.”

Osh put Misery in park. Mrs. Chandler was practically screaming into the phone. He couldn’t have missed a word she said.

“Mrs. Chandler,” I said, swallowing back the acrid taste of bile in my throat, “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

“It’s him, I tell you!” She was growing frantic. “I wanted to let you know I figured it out. I have to call Betty back. She’s not picking up. I’m calling everyone.”

Another false accusation against Reyes Farrow. If they investigated him or questioned him in any way, he would never trust cops again.

“How did you come to this conclusion?”

“I remembered where I saw that other victim. She was a juror. It didn’t hit me till I saw that news story. He’d been accused of killing his father, and both my husband and that other one, that Anna girl, were on the jury that sent him to prison. But he’s been released! Now he’s coming back for revenge!”

“Your husband was on the jury that wrongfully convicted Reyes?”

“Yes! No! The evidence was overwhelming. I understand now it was a setup, that his father was still alive, but they didn’t know that. Now Farrow is exacting his revenge. Ten years in prison changes a man. I have to try Betty again.”

She hung up before I could say any more. I turned to Osh, his image blurry through the wetness gathered between my lashes. “This can’t happen to him again, Osh.”

He nodded in understanding. “He got a call this morning before he left,” he said, putting Misery in drive and making a U-turn. “It… upset him. I think it was your uncle asking him to go down to the station to answer a few questions.”

“No,” I said, anger welling up inside me. Uncle Bob didn’t even have the guts to tell me. “That’s why he sent you with me.”

“That’s my guess.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, looking around.

“To the station. Where else?”

We pulled up to the APD station where Uncle Bob worked fifteen minutes later – to a media frenzy. Cameramen and reporters lined the front of the glass building. A podium had been set up. Someone was about to make a statement.

I jumped out of Misery before Osh had turned off her engine and hurried up the steps, until an officer held me back.

Uncle Bob rushed out to let me through.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked, growing more volatile by the second. We pushed through the front doors. “You knew this was about Reyes’s trial.”

“We just found out, pumpkin,” he said, leading me back to his office.

“Just?”

“Yesterday afternoon. One of the guys ran the names in a court-system database and got a hit.”

“And when were you going to tell me?”

“It was my idea to wait.”

I turned around. Captain Eckert was trailing behind us. “Well, then you’re an ass**le.”

He frowned. “You can’t call me an ass**le.”

“If the sphincter fits.”

“And you wonder why we didn’t tell you straightaway,” he said, urging me into Ubie’s office. “Can you get her some water?” he asked Ubie.

“I don’t need water. I need to see my fiancé.”

“We’re holding him for the time being,” he said.

I gaped at Uncle Bob. He, of all people, should know how very thin the ice was on which they walked. “You cannot be serious. You know he didn’t do this, Uncle Bob.”