Everyone was waiting for me when I walked in twenty minutes late. I was met with a stunned hush, pretty much what I expected.

“Sorry about Shelby,” said Del Rio. “She was such a sweetheart. I just can’t fucking believe it, Jack. None of us can.”

Condolences were echoed by the others at the table as Colleen Molloy came in with a Red Bull for me and my call sheet. I’m not sure what it says about me, but apart from Andy, the people I cared about most in the world were all there. They included half a dozen of my investigators, plus our criminalist, Sci, and a fiftyish computer genius, Maureen Roth, whom everybody called Mo-bot.

“Need me for anything else?” Colleen asked. She’d been my assistant for two years, which was how we met, and then it got more complicated than that, a lot more complicated.

“No, thanks, Molloy. I’m good.”

I scanned the call sheet and saw that Andy had phoned twice since I’d left LAPD headquarters a half hour ago. Andy was worried, and for good reason. The cops had only one suspect, and he was it.

I booted up my laptop and punched in the photos I’d taken of the Cushman crime scene. They filled the screens wrapping around the conference room. “I took these last night.”

There were extreme close-ups of the splintered door frame, the trashed bedroom, Shelby’s wounds, and even a shot of Andy sobbing into his bloody hands that was worthy of a newspaper front page.

“I’ve got to tell you all something,” I said to the group. “Shelby and I were once close. This was before she and Andy met. So, whatever you hear out there, Shelby was my friend, a good one.”

The room stayed very somber and silent. Justine stared at me and through me. I knew she was trying to fit Shelby into the time sequence of my checkered past. She had good reason to.

“Take a look at these photos,” I went on. “I’ve studied the images myself, but I’m not seeing much but the obvious so far.”