“I’ve thought about that. Who do you use?”

He didn’t answer.

“That would be a great name to have,” Paz said in her ear.

“Maybe I should go if you don’t want to talk,” Izabel said, leaning forward, going up on her toes.

“No,” he said. “I want to talk.”

She sat back down.

Patrick said, “What would you even do with yourself—if you didn’t have to clean either?”

“That’s a shitty thing to say,” she said, and he hung his head a little. She asked, “What was your dad sick with?”

“Cancer.”

“Is he okay? Is he in remission now?”

This time Patrick was the one who hesitated. “Yeah,” he said.

“That’s lucky,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Paz said, “Take a break. Ask him if he wants food.”

“Do you want something to eat? I’m getting hungry.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

Izabel got up to leave and Andy followed her. Paz and Opa met them outside the room.

“That was good,” Paz said. “I’m going to find out more about his father. And someone’s already digging up records from Pratt. Just give us ten more minutes.”

“His father is definitely a pressure point,” Opa said.

“What do you want to eat?” Paz asked.

Izabel shrugged. She could barely think about food.

“Order something,” Paz said. She walked off one way and Opa went another.

“What do you want?” Izabel asked Andy.

“Something that doesn’t need utensils,” Andy said.

“Are you that scared of him?”

“Aren’t you? He freaks me out.”

“Yeah,” Izabel said, but actually she felt fine. “Maybe falafel?”

“Okay.”

Izabel opened the door again. “You like falafel?”

“Yeah,” Patrick said.

When she closed the door, Andy said, “Who cares what he likes?”

Izabel made an excuse: “I’m building rapport.” But she wasn’t sure why she had asked him.

Paz thought Patrick was lying about his father, but she didn’t know about what exactly. Officer Evans found which doctor Patrick’s father had been seeing and got her on the phone. She sent over the list of medicines he was taking, and the address they had on file for where to send them. It was Patrick’s address. And oxygen tanks were on the list. The next one was scheduled to arrive in a few days.

Paz sent officers back to the house to look for any signs of the father.

“I think he’s dead,” Paz told Izabel.

“Why would he lie about that?”

“Opa?” Paz said.

“Denial? Which could range from not wanting to tell you about it, to not having accepted it himself.”

“I think he died right before the murders began,” Paz said. “And Patrick’s been using his father’s oxygen tanks to do the murders.”

“So we can connect him to the murders then?” Izabel said.

“That’d be circumstantial,” Andy said.