Joe took the file and opened it, glancing at its contents, or at least its title. “Seamus Kyle,” he recited. “What did you find out?”

“Well, that’s the wrinkle,” Fred reported. “There is no such person.”

Joe looked up, his eyebrows raised. “Far out.”

Fred smiled at not just the quaint expression, but the equanimity behind it. “That’s it?”

Joe checked the coffee machine. He began to ready two mugs. “Honestly? There’s less and less about this case that surprises me anymore. In a way, finding out Seamus is an invention is more helpful than not. Seems like everything in Lemuel Shaw’s world is out of whack, so why not his right-hand man?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

A tolerant and forgiving man, Joe was finding his patience tried as he sat watching the oversized flat-screen monitor on the office wall, listening to Willy explain the slideshow illustrating his and Lester’s midnight high jinks.

Sensing his disapproval brewing, Willy concluded by saying, “Messy, unorthodox, and illegal, I know, boss, but investigative only. Not anything we’d move on. I just wanted to get something on the son of a bitch we could use as leverage.”

Joe glanced at Spinney, who wisely stayed silent. As did Sam, whose expression only spoke of concern for her partner and fear that he might have finally pushed their leader too far.

But Joe didn’t react, aside from asking Sam, “You?”

“Right,” she responded. “It’s pretty much what I filed in my report. I linked Seamus to the purchase of a small tank of helium. In and of itself, not much. He could just tell us he has a balloon fetish, but combined with what Willy and Lester got, it does add up to something odd going on.”

“You read what I learned about Shaw from Dr. Glowa?” Joe asked them.

All nodded but Willy—forever the nonconformist.

“Well, add to it that Fred Houston just dropped by with his background check on Seamus.”

“This should be interesting,” Sam said.

“Yes and no,” Joe replied. “He doesn’t exist.”

“No shit,” Lester said excitedly. “Same as what I got from the fusion center. I was going to resubmit because I figured I had something spelled wrong.”

“Apparently not,” Joe reassured him.

“We’ve already asked this question,” Willy said, introducing a change of topic. “But why did Lemuel Shaw kill his wife now—or have her killed?”

The apparent non sequitur prompted a pause before Joe replied, “You have a suggestion?”

“No,” Willy said, an unusual admission from him. “I can’t figure out if we’re right and he’s burning bridges to slow us down, or he did it for reasons we know nothing about. If it’s the first, how the hell did he know we were considering him a person of interest? To my memory, we hadn’t tipped our hand before Lucy was announced dead. We were about to, but not yet.”

Lester suggested, “We showed up in force for that second interview at his house, where we first met Seamus and found out Lucy had died. Could someone have let him know we were coming?”