“No!” Andy said. “And I wanted to stay. I wanted to be at the press conference, too, but Paz said you needed to appear to be alone. You know you’re not alone, right?”

“Yeah,” Izabel said. If she were alone, she wouldn’t be in this position. No one would care about her and she wouldn’t care about anyone else, and she could’ve died in her bed one night in a torn-up house, or not.

“What are you going to do?” Andy asked.

Before Izabel could respond, Paz came out to them. “I thought you two would come back. You don’t know your way around here yet?” She waved for them to follow her. “Here’s the deal. He told us where he lived pretty quickly, which we knew wasn’t a good sign, meant he’d cleaned up.”

“Where does he live? To the south?” Andy said.

“Yeah. How’d you know that?”

“It just explains why the elm tree couldn’t see which house he was going home to.”

“Okay, you’re gonna have to cut it out with all that.”

Andy didn’t say anything.

“So we need the knife. Oxygen tanks. Anything to connect him to the murders.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Izabel asked.

“He says he’ll talk to you.”

“Shit,” Izabel said. “Maybe lead with that, Paz.”

“Why else would I call you in?”

“What about the suit?” Andy said.

“We found pieces that could have been put together to be the suit, but none of them are so unusual for a person to own nowadays. And it’s smart that he didn’t hide it. He can’t get rid of all of the DNA that’s probably on it. It’s easier to explain away why he owns those things.” She looked at Izabel the way that she used to, when she was considering whether Izabel was guilty. “How do you know him anyway?”

“The privacy pods. We ended up waiting for them together sometimes.”

“Small town,” she said, satisfied. “So will you talk to him?”

Izabel looked at Andy. She tried not to react. All she wanted in the world was to go in there with him. But she didn’t know if it was to talk to him or strangle him or slam his head into the table. What would I do if given the chance? she thought.

Andy said, “If she wants to, then as long as nothing can be held against her—I want to amend the deal we had, to extend to this interview.” Andy pulled out her tablet.

“Yeah, sure,” Paz said. Then she turned to Izabel. “Well?”

“I’ll do it,” she said.

“Okay. I have to give you some more details of the case then. And I’ve got an NDA for you to sign.”