I met her gaze straight on. “It’s one explanation. Sometimes you’ll find people ganging together to protect a neighborhood, calling themselves vigilantes, when all they really want is an excuse to bust some heads. It’s a more likely explanation than ‘pure’ vigilantism—someone with…an overdeveloped sense of justice.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” Jack said. “Hitmen kill. Don’t need an excuse.”

“Isn’t money an excuse?” Evelyn said. “What if we’re talking about a hitman who got to liking it, then needed to find another reason to keep doing it when no one was paying?”

“There may have also been a precipitating event,” I found myself saying. “If someone close to him was recently the victim of a crime, and went unpunished, that may have set him off.”

“Would it?” Evelyn’s eyes turned my way.

I locked gazes with her. “Yes, it’s one factor.”

“Still not buying this,” Jack said. “Two out of six. What’re you telling me? The other four killed someone? If this guy found them—”

“Then it must be a matter of public record, which rules out more arrests because I haven’t uncovered any. But there are a lot of ways for someone to be responsible for a death.” She paused. “Something someone did. Something he failed to do.”

I could hear my heart thumping, each breath getting harder to take. Was she mocking me?

I focused so hard pain exploded behind my eyes, but I lifted my head to fix her with my calmest, most guileless stare…only she wasn’t looking at me. Her gaze was fixed on Jack.

A look passed between them, but I caught only a glimpse of it before Jack shrugged, face blank once more.

“Maybe,” he said. “Only way to find out? Check it out.”

Jack followed through on his skepticism by heading off to bed. He had another long day coming and little sleep from the night before. If we wanted to research this angle, we could do it without him.

That meant I was left alone with Evelyn. I could have followed Jack, made the same excuse. But if Evelyn had anything to say to me, better to hear it now, and clarify where I stood with this new “partner.”

She sat down at her computer and started flipping through sites, waiting just long enough to ensure Jack wasn’t changing his mind. Then she turned to me.

“I offended you,” she said. “With that vigilante angle.”

I settled back in my seat, notepad on my knee. “I don’t offend easily.” I smiled to underscore my point. “But, yes, I can get a little prickly about the word. Chalk it up to my cop side. ‘Vigilante’ means some yahoo trying to do our job—implying that we can’t handle it—and usually getting in our way.”

“But the underlying concept is a person who takes justice into his own hands. Which I think you’re familiar with?”