“We first went to the bank. Pollero called in sick. So we went to his home because we had more questions. He wasn’t there. He lied to me yesterday, and he lied to you three years ago.”

“I know Frank. He’s a good man. Knew his wife, too.” His voice lost some of its angry edge, so Lucy continued.

“He still lied. Denise Albright didn’t go to the bank that Friday. The photo he provided wasn’t her. It could have been, just like the border security photo could have been Glen Albright. But he wasn’t convincing, and today we identified the person as Kitty Fitzpatrick. We came back with a warrant for all of Albright’s records and now our financial experts are going through them and comparing signatures from the Kiefer authorization papers to her personal bank account, which was notarized.”

“I don’t see Frank lying to the police.”

“This morning he called in sick, went to visit his daughter, and is now in the wind. You tell me whether he was lying or just taking an unplanned vacation.”

She and Nate had intentionally not roped Detective Douglas into their investigation because they didn’t know if he was trustworthy. She didn’t want to believe he was party to murder, but she would do everything in her power to protect Ricky, and that meant keeping his location and status secret.

“I’ve been working this case, and if you would have kept me informed we could have helped each other. I could have sat on Frank’s house. I would have talked to him, encouraged him to come clean. I’ve known him for fifteen goddamn years. I don’t see why you’re shutting me out!”

Lucy didn’t want this conversation now. She said, “When we met, you made it clear that this was our case. I need to go into a meeting. I’ll contact you later.”

“I don’t fucking believe this,” he said, then disconnected the call.

Lucy didn’t like confrontation. She mentally reviewed the conversation with the detective the other day, and she didn’t think he cared about the case. He just had his nose out of joint because she hadn’t called him about the warrant. But truly, she had deferred to Nate because he was far more worried about local corruption. After everything they’d gone through locally over the last two years, they had reason to be cautious

And considering that Ricky Albright had witnessed a cop who could have been Douglas or Chavez entering his house and talking about his dead family—that was enough for her. She wanted to hear from Ricky directly, but she didn’t think that Ginny had remembered that conversation wrong. Not something that had such a huge impact on her life.