Or the town crier, I think.

“Belinda was always good at putting two and two together,” I say.

Montrose folds his arms over his burly chest. “Am I the only one in town who didn’t know? I feel kind of like an idiot here, Lee. I don’t like to be made the fool.”

“Not my intent,” I say. “I really am sorry.”

“Don’t you see how this could compromise an investigation?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” I say. “Sure. But it was a long time ago. He only found me. He didn’t do anything. Just found me.”

“Right,” he says. “And that couldn’t possibly give him a pass with you, right?”

“There’s no pass here, Montrose. Yes, I am grateful for what he did then. Very grateful. Seriously, it is something that I don’t think about. But I wouldn’t give the pope a pass when it comes to a case. You, of all people, should know that. I do things by the book.”

Montrose fidgets some. I know this man. He’s thinking. He’s a great partner, and he has my back, but he’s also totally by the book. He has to be. He can’t afford any more slipups, because he hit rock bottom once, and he’s damn sure he’s never going back there.

“Lee, like it or not, he’s someone we need to consider. We don’t know yet where this is going to lead.”

I don’t defend Adam, though part of me truly wants to. I could remind him of Axel Bakker, and he could counter that he’s old and his eyesight is poor and he didn’t really see anything. I could say something about Aubrey being there too, and he could say that she’s only a child and didn’t know what she saw.

But I don’t.

“We always follow the evidence, Montrose. There’s never been a time when we didn’t have a bias about something or someone, but it didn’t get in the way of finding the truth.”

“This is a pretty big bias to overcome, Lee.”

“If my father had molested a neighbor kid, do you think I wouldn’t report it?”

He shakes his head. “Not the same.”

“It is too,” I say. “You know me. You know that I would never protect anyone who’d harmed someone. Not one inch of latitude. Seriously. You know that, right?”

Montrose thinks a moment. I know he knows I’m right. I know that he knows me. It crushes me a little that he’d bring up the past in a way that suggests I could be weak enough to hide the truth about a heinous crime.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know it. It’s just that I’m not the only one around here that will wonder if you’re doing your best work.”

“Sheriff knows me better than that too.”