“Addicts blame everyone else for their problems,” Lyons replied evenly. “Ask my wife. I told her all about it, and she can vouch for my time, both when Brian is home and when he’s not home. We don’t have secrets between us.”

“Really? Then why didn’t you tell us this sooner?” D.D. said. “Instead, I recall this whole little spiel on how you weren’t too involved with Brian and Tessa’s marriage. Now, twenty-four hours later, you’re their personal intervention specialist.”

Lyons flushed. His fists were clenched at his side. D.D. glanced down, then …

“Son of a bitch!”

She grabbed his right hand, yanking it toward the light. Immediately, Lyons raised his left as if to shove her back, and in the next instant he had a loaded Sig Sauer dug into his temple.

“Touch her and die,” Bobby said.

Both men were breathing hard, D.D. sandwiched between them.

The state trooper had a solid fifty pounds on Bobby. He was stronger, and as a patrol officer, more experienced in a street fight. Maybe, if it had been any other officer, he would’ve been tempted to make a move, call the officer’s bluff.

But Bobby had already earned his battle stripes—one shot, one kill. Other officers didn’t ignore that kind of thing.

Lyons eased back, standing passively as D.D. jerked his bruised and battered fist under the overhead light. The knuckles on his right hand were purple and swollen, the skin abraded in several areas.

As Bobby slowly moved his firearm to his side, D.D.’s gaze went to the steel-toed boots on Lyons’s feet. The rounded tip of the boot. The bruise on Tessa’s hip her lawyer wouldn’t let them examine.

“Son of a bitch,” D.D. repeated. “You hit her. You’re the one who beat the shit out of Tessa Leoni.”

“Had to,” Lyons replied in a clipped tone.

“Why?”

“Because she begged me to.”

In Lyons’s new and improved story, Tessa had phoned him, hysterical, at nine a.m. Sunday morning. Sophie was missing, Brian was dead, some mystery man had done it all. She needed help. She wanted Lyons to come, alone, now, now, now.

Lyons had literally run to her place, as his cruiser would be too conspicuous.

When he’d arrived, he’d discovered Brian dead in the kitchen and Tessa, still in her uniform, weeping beside the corpse.

Tessa had told him some preposterous story. She’d arrived home from patrol, depositing her belt on the kitchen table, then walking upstairs to check on Sophie. Sophie’s room had been empty. Tessa had just started getting nervous, when she heard a sound from the kitchen. She’d raced back down, where she’d discovered a man in a black wool trench coat holding Brian at gunpoint.