Emily couldn’t hold back. “I don’t care what you think those surveillance images show, that is not me.”

Stanley collected the photographs and struck the stack on the table to straighten them, then slapped them back in the folder. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Our officers won’t find the original padlock to that storage unit in your house, will they? Because that’s where they are right now, executing a search warrant.”

Emily left Sergeant Stanley’s office, her stomach in a knot. Frank was waiting for her in the lobby. He jumped to his feet and followed her out the door. She didn’t break down until she got out to the parking lot, where Frank had parked her car alongside his.

Emily was expecting a big Told-you-so. Instead Frank opened his arms. Emily collapsed against him and sobbed, surrendering for a few moments as anger and frustration filled her. But this was no time to fall apart. That creep Stanley was probably watching out the window while his goons were searching her house.

She pulled away from Frank, wiping her eyes with the heel of her hand. “We need to get home. The police are probably already there, searching our house.”

“Shit,” Frank said. “What are they looking for?”

Emily glanced back at the police station and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The padlock to the Murphys’ storage unit.”

Frank gave her a long look. “Are they going to find it?”

“Frank!”

“Just asking. You’re sure they won’t?”

Emily didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure of anything after seeing the picture of a car that looked like hers pulled up to the storage unit. She opened her car’s back door. The police had left the backseat folded forward. She touched the dark carpeting that lined the hatchback’s empty cargo bay. It was damp, and when she smelled her fingertips, she gagged on the whiff of sulfur, like decaying plant matter.

“What?” Frank said.

“Stanley said they found carpet fibers back here. Walter Newell was rolled up in a rug.”

Frank gave her a pitying look. “Emmy, they’d find carpet fibers in the back of my car. They’d find them in your mom’s car. It’s like saying they found hair in your bathroom. They say it to freak you out.”

Emily pushed the seat upright. There was her gear bag on the floor where she’d left it. Surely the police had searched it. She opened the bag. Everything seemed to be in order—her face masks and cleaning agents, rubber gloves, all present and accounted for. The only thing that wasn’t there that should have been was the key to the old padlock on Mrs. Murphy’s storage unit. It wasn’t at the bottom of the bag or inside any of the side pockets. The police had probably taken it.

“What did he tell you?” Frank asked.