“Except Williams sold wholesale too. He had solid suppliers from out west. A retail dealer wouldn’t take him out. They’d need his product—the quality and quantity were too good.”

Shaw said, “What about the just-plain-crazy factor? One druggy takes out another one because it’s Throwback Thursday.”

He thought that might earn a smile.

It didn’t.

“Just one more thing and I’ll leave you to it. Inventory of Williams’s Subaru?”

She hesitated. Then turned and dug a file out of the cabinet behind her. She found a document. “Fast-food wrappers, Burger King sixteen-ounce cup of cola, unwashed socks and a T-shirt. Six dime bags of pot, five one-gram bags of meth. A hoodie.”

“Anything in the trunk?”

“Six-pack of Budweiser. A box of Fiocchi nine-millimeter slugs. Two of Remington three-eighties. Look, sir, from what you know about the case, I assume you read in the transcript that Jude threatened to kill anybody who hurt his brother.”

“It’s an expression. How many times have you heard people say, ‘I’m going to kill so-and-so’?”

“In my line of work, pretty often. And sometimes they mean it. Let me ask you a question: how much is the family offering?”

“That’s for them to tell you.”

“Well, it’s probably more than they can afford. Be a shame if somebody pitched the idea of their boy’s innocence just for the sake of taking their money.”

“Unless he is innocent.”

“Did you know, Mr. Shaw, that when Michael saw Jude in the clearing, he cocked the gun and pointed it at Daryl Williams’s head? He was going to shoot him again.”

Shaw paused. “That wasn’t in the transcript.”

“Judge struck the testimony.”

“But he didn’t pull the trigger, did he?”

“No need to at that point—after he saw he was dead.” The patience was gone. “Now, sir, I have some active cases to get to.”

6.

In the morning, Shaw sipped coffee as he looked over an email from Mack McKenzie, his PI. It contained attachments: a dozen images—surveillance and mug shots—from some of the more powerful organized crime figures in the Canton-Akron area. He transferred these to his phone.

Then, he fired up the camper and went in search of the four students who’d been at the quarry on January 12.

It didn’t take much time to find them. Their names were in the transcript, and Hanson Valley was a small town. He first tracked down Carli Trent and Michael Wilborn, who happened to be together at the place where she worked.