Marta sighed. “I’ll need a list of everybody you talked to in regard to Darby.”

I shook my head. “I can give you what I know of him, but the rest is my client’s business, until that point when it becomes police business.”

Marta’s three-mile stare would have withered the gonads of any ordinary criminal, but I’d seen it before. She didn’t scare me.

“A man’s dead body is lying not ten feet from us. That’s homicide. That’s police business.”

“Yes, I saw. It’s serious and someone’s going to pay. Maybe Darby was into something he shouldn’t have been, but no one deserves to end up the way he did. It’s cruel. It’s sick. When I prove Tim was murdered, and I will, I believe I’ll know who killed Darby.”

“This is not a time for you to go lone wolf,” Marta said. “This is what we do.”

“It’s also what I do.”

“I should take you in for obstruction.”

“That’d be a bonehead move, and you know it.”

We stood in silence for a time, my mind reeling. I had nothing. I’d been running around chasing threads for days, finding nothing that led to anything else. Darby’s death elevated things, sped the clock up. Someone out there, someone I’d approached, felt threatened enough to start cutting ties with loose ends. Was that his boss, Spada? Was it Ganz? Leon? Someone else?

“I’ll give you a head start,” I said. “Darby likely had enemies, unrelated to his association with Ayers. He’s an ex-con with an extensive record, fraud, mostly. He was a scam artist not above bilking the vulnerable. Maybe that’s why he latched onto Ayers, I don’t know. Who’s more vulnerable than a dying man hoping to get the last bit of happiness out of the time he’s got left?” I blew out a long breath. “Or maybe I’ve pegged Darby wrong and he’d gone completely straight. Maybe he lied to me because he’s spent his entire life lying to cops and he hadn’t found a way to break the habit. I’ve got bits of information, a handful of people with stories to tell, but no proof, no straight line. The work’s not done.”

Marta stared back, her eyes intense. “You didn’t get any of that from us, did you?”

“I’ve got resources outside of the department, thank you. Are you going to take the information I have about Darby, or not? Maybe his troubles stemmed from his job. I talked to Spada. He seemed harmless enough, though he’s a bit narcissistic, but when there’s money involved, people get greedy. I looked him up. He came back clean, but I’m getting a feeling. You might want to check him out on your end. Maybe you’ll get something on him I didn’t.”