“I’ve got somebody better than Harold Cummings.”

They shared a smile.

“Can I see my parents?”

“I don’t think so. Not yet.”

A guard approached and whispered something to Shaw, who nodded. He said to Jude, “I have to go. But get some rest. People will be in touch. You’ll be looked after here.”

After Tom Pepper had spoken to a captain at the Ohio State Highway Patrol, he had spoken to the director of the Bureau of Prisons. Jude was now probably the safest prisoner in the Watkins Correctional Facility.

Shaw turned and followed the guard out of the hospital wing, through a half-dozen corridors, as gray as the medical facility was green, and finally out of the lockdown portion of the prison to the general public reception room. The massive door clicked shut behind him. He handed his ID badge to the receptionist and received back his gun.

He turned to Sonya Malloy, who frowned deep furrows into her attractive face and said, “So?”

—

The two of them walked outside into the fine June night. Crickets vied with bullfrogs for attention, with the amphibians winning, hands down—if, Shaw reflected, one could put it that way.

The breeze was a gentle breath, perfumed by jasmine.

Malloy had interesting eyes, in the outdoor overhead light. The pupils black and yellow. Cat’s eyes.

They leaned against her unmarked car. Shaw said, “Something was off. Instincts told me Jude Sterling wasn’t a killer—probably. Oh, he was angry, he’d been in fights. But there’s a Grand Canyon between hurt and kill.

“I put it at fifteen percent he pulled the trigger. How much of a threat to Frank could Williams’ve been? His Glock was still in his waistband. Decided I’d go on the assumption that he was innocent. If he wasn’t the shooter, then who? Rival dealer? Possibility, of course. But, say, thirty percent.”

“You do this percentage thing a lot?”

“I do.”

“Why no more than thirty, with a rival?”

“What you told me yourself: Williams was one of the bigger suppliers of meth in the area. Killing him would be a disruption in the supply chain. Not good for anybody. And even if somebody wanted to take him out, why drive fifty miles on a freezing day all the way to Hanson Valley and kill him in the middle of a deal, with witnesses around?”

“Even with your Throwback Thursday factor?”

Now, a bit of a smile.

“Even with that.”

“That leaves fifty-five percent.”

“What?” Shaw was confused.

Malloy said, “Fifteen percent Jude did it, thirty percent some triggerman from a crew did it. That total’s forty-five. Who’s the fifty-five-percent suspect?”

It took Shaw a moment. “No, the percentages don’t have to add up to a hundred. That’s not how it works.”

“Oh.”