He’d told her about the case. Janine Snow. Jay Ferris. The investigation and trial. They’d talked about old cases before, but not that one. Typically, he only told her about cases that were unsolved, but the murder of Jay Ferris had been open-and-shut from the beginning. He’d never doubted what happened. There was only one loose end from the entire investigation – the missing gun – but even that detail hadn’t stopped a jury from convicting Janine Snow.

Except now the gun had been found. Serena had found it.

She slid her hand across the bed and laced his fingers. ‘Question,’ she murmured.

‘Okay.’

‘You said there were two hits on the gun. How come the ballistics database didn’t pick this up years ago during the original investigation?’

Jonny pushed himself up in bed. He reached over and switched on his nightstand lamp. A moth tapped against the glass. There were shadows on Jonny’s face and in his eyes.

‘It’s the usual backlog bureaucracy. The bullet from the Chicago shooting didn’t get logged for years, and when it did, they didn’t do a cross-region search. Just Illinois. Somebody didn’t want to bother sifting through false hits.’

‘Chicago,’ Serena said. ‘What’s the connection?’

‘There is no obvious connection that I can see. A jewelry store near Calumet Park on the south side of Chicago was robbed at gunpoint on December 20 almost nine years ago. That was just over a month before Jay Ferris was killed. A security guard tried to intervene and took a bullet in the thigh. The guard ID’d the perp from mug shots, and Chicago police found him a week later living with his aunt not far from Wrigley Field. He was wearing a Rolex watch he’d grabbed at the store. Real smart.’

‘But no gun.’

‘No gun. They didn’t need it to make a case. They had the guard’s ID and jewelry from the store. The shooter took a plea. In his statement, he said he’d sold the gun for cash the day after he hit the store. He didn’t know the buyer and couldn’t describe him. It was just one more gun on the Chicago streets. No one tried to track it down.’

‘And yet a month later that same gun was here in Duluth being used to shoot Jay Ferris,’ Serena said.

‘Exactly.’

‘Can you find the Chicago perp to get more details on the sale?’

‘He’s off the grid,’ Jonny replied. ‘He did three years, got out, never even bothered with a single parole meeting. There’s an outstanding warrant, but the police don’t think he’s anywhere near Chicago.’