Sully continues. “It was you, Alex, who first told me of the drugs. Did you move them, Alex? And if so, why? Eli Beck came to your apartment, hunting your sister down because she had fled from him. During that visit, you attacked him with a paring knife. I have a sworn statement from him to that effect. Forensics have traced particles of his blood in your entranceway. And yet Ruth and Chase claim to have no knowledge of this encounter.”

“Why are you even here? You’ve been harboring Ruth in your home. What for? When you know that she and Eli are deadbeats, when—”

“He’s here for Ruth.” Minerva keeps her voice level even though her mouth curves slightly. “He said so.”

“And I’m acting in an official capacity. I’ve been working hard, too, Alex,” Sully says. “Protecting the ones I can.” He teases out the remaining two sheets of white paper—lab reports. “When drugs are seized by our department, we run a toxicology report. It’s standard procedure. We’ve had two batches of the same drug seized within a month of each other—one from the Floyd residence, one from the home of Chase Kennedy. I took the two reports. And I compared them.”

I see a flash of disbelief cross Alex’s face. It’s the same look she had as a kid when we played Monopoly, when she knew her empire was crumbling.

“Cocaine is like a fingerprint. Each batch has additives that make it unique. That’s actually helpful to us with investigations as we can often track a batch back to its source.” Sully pushes the sheets of paper across to Morris, who picks them up and scans them. “Benzocaine.” Sully points from one report to the other. “It’s a numbing agent. It’s rare to see it in powder form, rare to see it ever, in fact. But here, it’s in both batches—in the drugs Ruth turned in and in the small amount found at the Floyd residence. So that really stood out to me.”

All the blood drains from Alex’s face.

Morris looks as though he’s just been slapped. “I’m sorry … This is all new to me. Are you saying—”

“I’m saying that the drugs handed over to me by Ruth Van Ness are definitely from the same batch as those found at the Floyds’, the drugs that were cited as the basis of removal of their child.”

“So what? What does that prove? It just means that Eli Beck is their dealer. You already know he’s been in town.”