Merle and I glanced over at Abe. His jaw was set hard, his mouth scrunched up and his cheekbones riding high.

The TV moved on to a story about a progressive candidate named Jerome Bleeker who was running against Toby Monroe for the governor’s seat.

Bleeker came onto the screen. He was in his forties and Black. “It’s pretty clear what happened,” he said to a reporter. “Toby Monroe’s people went out at night and stole all my signs. We had about a thousand on lawns throughout Atlanta. This morning there’s twenty.”

Across the kitchen, Abe raised his voice. “So I took the bedrooms and the front,” he said to the chief. “P.T. had the backhouse and kitchen.”

I shook my head, incredulous that the chief wanted to know who had inspected the backhouse, where the leaked picture was from.

I picked up a bottled water off the kitchen table and began shaking it from left to right, popping my palm against the base, like a smoker prepping a cigarette box.

Abe hung up and kicked at the legs of the kitchen table. The TV moved on to sports, and Merle flicked it off.

“It’s okay,” I said to Abe. “Does the mayor want me off the case?”

“Yeah.” Abe nodded, embarrassed. “And nowhere near the GBI as we hand it off.”

I nodded. Between the photos of the fifty banker’s boxes on the news, the five guns at Harrington’s backhouse, and the excerpts the Register would print tomorrow, the public had some part of their “why”—way ahead of Mayor Stems or Chief Senza having a chance to break it to them first.

And that pissed them off.

But was it really an answer—to say that Harrington was just crazy?

I moved back to my office, not sure where this left me and Remy. Or the case itself.

Would the incident move over to the GBI faster than we originally thought?

At the same time, the anxiety that I’d been carrying around for the last day relaxed just a bit.

Harrington was a crazy man, looking for conspiracies where none existed and ready to take the lives of students. And sure, Mayor Stems and Chief Senza would’ve liked to make that announcement instead of the media breaking it. But I’d gotten it right, taking him down.

Thirty minutes later, Chief Senza sent a group text, informing us that Abe and Merle would finish the investigation on the school shooting, with Remy and me assisting only as requested. Come end of day Friday, every detail about Falls Magnet would be turned over to the state and Feds.

I wasn’t sure if the chief was pissed, especially after seeing the picture of the backhouse on the news.

I started my own text chain. Just me and Senza.

How’s Avis?

A text came back:

Everything A-OK. She’s with her mother and has stopped crying.

I wrote back:

Are you and I okay? I don’t know how those pictures got out.

A text came back fast: