“It was,” I said.

“It’s a cool enough first name to stick in my memory,” Abe said. “Like after we raided that cabin, down in Three Barrels.”

I blinked. “Tarticoft’s cabin?”

This was the house of the hitman we’d been hunting. Tarticoft. The same man hired to drive my wife and son off the road. The one who Remy shot. “You told me months ago that there was no mention of Lena there in any of his files,” I said.

“There wasn’t,” Abe said. “And Tarticoft kept so much data on the folks he took out. Cash he sorted in envelopes. Research. The folks he killed—he tracked them for months.”

“So . . . ?”

“So one of those envelopes,” Abe said, “it just had a single Post-it inside. It said ‘Cash from Steel.’ No e on the end. Never knew what to make of it.”

“Tell me you’re not lying,” I said.

“Nope.” Abe shook his head. “The cash with it was a little light relative to what the others paid for a hired kill. Only five grand.”

And there it was. Nearly twenty-one months after the worst day of my life, I had the last piece of evidence.

“It wasn’t supposed to be a hit if you believe what Steele told me tonight,” I said. “Just a little bump. A car accident.”

Remy sat down next to Abe, and I thought about the robbery at the Golden Oaks in December 2017. I had gone into that liquor store one too many times and disrupted Vankle’s Oxy operation.

I stared at Abe. “Did Marvin get released?”

“Back home a half hour ago,” Abe said. “There’ll be questions, but he’ll come out the other side. No jail time.”

Abe stood up then, his eyes still on the crime scene. He had been a great partner to me for years. Always analytical on a scene.

“So I assume you’re headed to Marvin’s house?” He ran his hands through his hair, which he’d cut short recently and looked patchy. “This is an active crime scene, P.T. You can’t be walking in here.”

“I was gonna shower.” I pointed toward the back of the house. “I know it’s not protocol, but—”

“Go.” Abe nodded. “Then be off to Marvin’s.”

I nodded, but didn’t leave the room just yet.

The body was already taken, but someone had drawn white chalk marks on my wood floors.

“I think if you test-fire that .45,” I said, “you’re gonna see it goes with that injury to the skull found under the apartment in North Heights.”

“Christian Pelo?” Abe asked. “His mom’s been waiting in the lobby for a day now.”

“He worked at the Golden Oaks,” I said. “Back in 2017. If my theory holds, John Adrian killed Pelo with that gun. And then Vankle killed Adrian with an overdose, to close the loop.”

“You’re gonna need to testify against Hartley,” Abe said. “You know that, right?”

“I’ll be ready,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Not on this case,” Abe said. “This old case . . . is finally closed. Just a lotta paperwork to do.”