Ten points was a full gram. And a gram of heroin was enough to kill two men, especially if it was cut with fentanyl, which we’d been seeing a lot of in Mason Falls these days.

But more than that, my brain was swelling because of the timing.

Last night Hartley had been cornered by Deb Newberry from Fox 11 about that property where Christian Pelo was found.

Hope turned and moved past me to this little yellow Fiat she drives.

“Good luck, partner,” she said. “Do us proud.”

I stood there, feeling nervous and numb.

If Hartley had the kind of nerve to go after my wife, it wouldn’t take much more to kill someone like Adrian on his own crew. Poison him before he could be flipped by a cop.

Had I gotten arrogant? Moved too fast at Hartley last night?

47

Instead of going into the station house, I got back in my truck and drove to Remy’s place.

She buzzed me up, and I took the elevator to three. When I got there, she had left the door ajar and was on the couch in her living room, her foot in a boot.

“You’re not gonna believe this,” I said. “Last night we corner Hartley, right? Connect him to Adrian. Thinking we’ll smoke out Adrian and he’ll give us dirt on Hartley?”

“Yeah.”

“Adrian’s dead, Rem.”

“What?” she said.

“Overdose,” I told her.

“Hartley,” she said. “The fucker got to him.”

I stood up and started pacing, not sure if I’d made the wrong move last night talking to Hartley at the police function.

“I’m not sure what our next play is,” I said. “Adrian was our link back to 2017. Back to the liquor store.”

“Then we find another link.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, moving in circles like a shark around Remy’s dining table. “Except I don’t have any other leads, Rem.”

“P.T.,” Remy said. “Hartley’s like this ghost architect, you know? Moving behind the scenes. The problem is—he’s seeing the whole chessboard, and we’re not.”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing a chair from her dining table. “You got an idea on how we see more?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you mentioned—how Hartley interjected himself in the Meadows lawsuit with the department back in May. Why’d he do that?”

“To take me out,” I said.

“Yeah, but why then?” Remy asked.

“We don’t know.”

“Maybe we do,” she said. “And we just haven’t tied it all together.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“In May, Marvin and his P.I. were stumbling around in Burna,” Remy said. “That’s what you told me, right?”

“Yeah.”

“They met that lady who got her car stolen.”

“Grazia Lauroyan,” I said. “Her car is the Dodge Aries that ended up killing Lena and Jonas.”

“So Marvin’s P.I. tracked that car back to where Lauroyan worked.”

“Check,” I said.

“Then what?” Remy asked.

“The P.I. probably talked to the neighbors. He went next door to Lauroyan’s upholstery shop and ran straight into Kian Tarticoft, our hitman, whose taxidermy business was next to her shop. The P.I. asked her about the car. And inadvertently, he spooked him. Tarticoft up and cleared out.”