The station was a madhouse. The Feds had shown up, two agents Bentz had known in L.A., but so far they weren’t taking charge, just going over the case to date. The newspeople were camped outside, hoping for more information. Tips were coming into a hotline at a phenomenal rate, and then there was Clifton Sharkey, one of the new front-runners in the suspect race.

Montoya was pumped, going over the information at his desk, talking to other detectives in the lunchroom or task force area. He barely paused for lunch as he double-checked information, read his e-mails, finished reports, and all the while hoped to hell that they could nail Clifton Sharkey as the killer and get him off the streets.

He wouldn’t lie to himself. He’d love it if somehow O’Toole was proven innocent of anything but breaking his vow of celibacy. It was just too damned hard to imagine the boy he’d known in high school, the athlete who had taken him under his wing, to be a killer.

As much as he wanted to be objective, he was hoping someone else would be proven to be the monster.

It was afternoon before he walked into Bentz’s office and saw the information on Sharkey spread upon his partner’s desk. The guy had already been hauled in, and they wanted to discuss how they were going to handle the interrogation.

“The charge is ten years old,” Bentz reminded him, as they’d spoken briefly earlier on the phone. “Assault charge. But dropped. A domestic violence case. The wife.” Seated at his desk, his eyebrows slammed together, his shirt already unbuttoned at the neck, tie askew, reading glasses on the end of his nose, Bentz was looking through copies of old reports. “Looks like he broke her wrist. She went to the hospital, but when it came time to press charges, she refused to testify against him.”

“Typical.” Montoya had seen it over and over again, the cycle of abuse that kept rolling through the generations.

Bentz looked up over the tops of his reading glasses. “So he and the wife have six kids, a couple of grandkids, and they’re still married but separated. Have been since this.” He pointed to the report on Henrietta Sharkey’s injuries. “They’ve had separate residences.”

“No divorce?”

“Catholic to the bone.” Bentz scratched the side of his face as he thought. “No other incidents. And ever since, he’s been sending her the lion’s share of his paychecks.”

“Atonement,” Montoya said.

“Could be.” But Bentz didn’t seem convinced. “Hard to say.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, his alibi didn’t hold up. For the night of Camille Renard’s murder. He claimed he was with son number two, watching the game, but when I called the son this morning, pressed him a little, he admitted that old Cliffie Boy was at home that night, watching the Astros getting their clock cleaned.”