Sam devoured the info on Price, including the long rap sheet of petty crimes that had escalated to breaking and entering and series of drug charges that landed him in jail. She reached for her portable radio. “I need to get up to Jessup to talk to this guy,” she said, referring to the state prison in Maryland.

“Already done,” Gonzo said.

“You’ve been to see him? And you never said anything?”

“We know you’ve had a lot going on with the wedding and everything,” Cruz said. “We thought if we could, you know, save you some time, it might help you out.”

“Plus,” Gonzo added. “We owe you.”

Touched by their efforts on behalf of her father’s case, she looked at Gonzo. “Owe me? What the hell are you talking about?”

“If we’d waited for the warrant, Gibson would still be in jail,” Gonzo said, his face tight with tension and fatigue. He had a new baby son at home who was keeping him up half the night. Sam had made a huge effort not to be jealous of her friend who’d recently learned that an ex-girlfriend had borne him a son, but it wasn’t easy.

“That’s not on you,” Sam said. “I’ve told you that a hundred times. I knew what you were doing at his place, my dad knew, Captain Malone knew. We all screwed up by not waiting on the warrant. You need to get over it.”

They shrugged her off as they had for weeks since her ex-husband was released on a procedural technicality. The evidence they’d found all over Peter’s apartment had cemented their case against him in the bombing of Sam’s car. Gonzo, Cruz and their colleague, Detective Arnold, blamed themselves for not waiting on the warrant before entering the apartment.

Knowing the dwelling contained bomb-making materials that could clear a city block, Sam wouldn’t have done it any differently herself, but she’d had no luck convincing them of that. They’d probably never get over it.

“So what did Price have to say?” she asked.

“Two years ago, he rented the place to a guy named Trace Simmons.” Gonzo handed Simmons’s rap sheet to Sam, who skimmed the long list of priors that involved significant gang activity. “Price said the place was like a Do-Drop-Inn. Simmons had a bunch of people living there with him, brothers, cousins, fellow gangbangers.”

“All those people in that tiny space?” Sam asked.

“Exactly,” Cruz said. “Price got sick of the complaints from the neighbors and started eviction proceedings. Around that same time, which was about three weeks before your dad’s shooting, one of the cousins, Darius Gardner, was accused of raping a woman in the house.”

“Why didn’t that come up during the Reece investigation?” Sam asked.