“Is something wrong?” Tish asked.

“What did you want to see me about?” Stride said.

Tish took a deep breath. “He confessed.”

“Who?”

“Finn,” Tish said. “I went to see him yesterday.”

“I thought I told you not to play cop,” Stride snapped.

“I felt responsible for his suicide attempt. I wanted to find out why he did it. We wound up talking about Laura’s murder, and that’s when he blurted it out.”

“Exactly what did he say?”

“He talked about dreams he has. About seeing the blood all over her and about the bat going up and down. And then he just said it. He said it flat out. I killed her.”

“Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Tish asked.

“Did he use Laura’s name?” Stride asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s a simple question, Tish. Did Finn say he killed Laura?”

“No, but who else would he mean?” Tish said. “What is going on?”

“I think we’re done here,” Stride said. “Thanks for coming in.”

Behind her, Maggie opened the office door and stood beside it.

“We’re done? That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Are you going to arrest him?” Tish asked.

“No.”

“No? What more do you need? I mean, look, this isn’t what I expected. I admit that I was wrong. I was convinced Peter Stanhope was involved. But now you can match Finn’s DNA to the crime scene. He told me he was there. He told me that he killed her. This is the break we’ve needed.”

“For your book?”

“Not just for the book. To solve the case.”

“The confession is useless,” Stride told her.

“Useless? How can you say that?”

Stride held up his hand and counted on his fingers. “One, Rikke hired a lawyer. The law says we can’t talk to Finn anymore without his lawyer present. Because I was stupid enough to talk to you about this case, a defense attorney can make a persuasive argument that you were acting as an instrument of the police in questioning Finn. Result? The confession gets tossed. Two, Finn was recently discharged from the hospital and was almost certainly under the influence of painkillers when you talked to him. So his attorneys will argue that he was not in full possession of his faculties. The confession gets tossed. Three, the fact that Finn did not use Laura’s name leaves doubt about who he was talking about. The confession gets tossed.”

“That’s crazy.”

Stride gestured to Maggie. “Tell her.”

Maggie closed the door again and sat on the edge of Stride’s desk. “Serena and I did some digging into Finn’s past. His mother abused him. The cops think Finn snapped and bludgeoned his mother to death. With a baseball bat. They let him walk because they couldn’t prove it, and frankly, no one wanted to see him put away. Getting rid of that woman was a community service, they figured.”

“Poor Finn,” Tish said softly.

“You get the picture?” Maggie said. “Regardless of whether Finn said Laura’s name or not, his attorney will argue that it’s memory transference from the death of his mother. I mean, hell, he said this came to him in a dream? Who knows what his brain has concocted after years of drug and alcohol abuse?”