Diesel cleared his throat, feeling helpless. He wanted to assure the child that it would all be fine. That Michael would be all right. But he didn’t know that for sure.

“Fine. I’ll be outside this door.” He moved back as Maddie stepped forward to sit at the table with a scowling Joshua.

Closing the door behind him, he blew out a breath. “Shit.”

Adam clasped his shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze. “You did good, Diesel. It’s hard for all of us when kids are involved. We’ll try to make this quick.”

“Thanks. What do you need to know?”

“Everything you know about these two kids,” Deacon said.

Diesel frowned. “I don’t think Michael killed anyone, for starters.”

Adam and Deacon shared a glance. “Neither do we,” Adam murmured softly.

Something in Diesel settled. “Why not?”

Seeming to hesitate, Deacon ran a hand through his spiky white hair. “Off the record? I don’t want to see this on the front page of the Ledger.”

“Off the record,” Diesel promised and was filled with a kind of pride when Deacon took him at his word.

“Okay,” Deacon said. “A fisherman pulled a head out of the river this morning. That started the investigation.”

Diesel recoiled. “God. You said a body.”

“Actually, we said remains,” Deacon corrected. “We found John Brewer’s remains.”

Adam grimaced. “We think we have all that body’s parts.”

Diesel swallowed against the images in his mind. He’d seen headless bodies. He’d seen disembodied heads. He’d seen bodies in all kinds of pieces. Because war fucking sucked and his brain never forgot anything he’d seen. “There were more?” he forced himself to ask.

Adam nodded. “The divers pulled out two heads, but a number of arms and legs—enough for more than two men. So definitely more than one victim. They’re still searching. So far, none of the parts have gunshot wounds, so Michael having a gun under his pillow isn’t a definitive connection. We’ll do DNA testing to match up the parts, to make sure we have all of Brewer’s remains. The ME will issue cause of death at that point.”

Diesel swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat. “Jesus. Poor fisherman.”

“Yeah.” Adam shook his head. “Not anything that he’s likely to forget.”

No, it wasn’t. For the fisherman or the divers or the cops forced to watch. “How do you know it was Brewer?” Diesel asked.

Deacon lowered his voice even further. “His is the only body part we’ve ID’d so far. He had a plate in his head, we’re assuming from an earlier injury. It was . . . visible.” He made a face. “Fish.”

Diesel choked back his need to gag at the image of the fish consuming the man’s flesh. “Fuck.”