“Every cop on duty is looking for her. If the killer has a pattern, then she might still be alive. Riki wasn’t killed right away. She was tied up and tortured for a few days first.”

Louisa’s head spun. She fought the dizziness. Under her jacket, a chilly line of sweat dripped between her shoulder blades and soaked her blouse.

Ianelli shot Jackson a disturbed glance. Ianelli might want to pursue every lead, but the dynamics of the partnership were easily identifiable. Jackson was in charge, and he appeared to be concentrating his efforts on Conor.

She left the room on wobbly legs, her high heels seeming narrower. A few minutes later, she found herself standing next to her car with no recollection of walking to it. She opened the door and slid behind the wheel. The vehicle still smelled faintly of dog. Although cool, the interior felt suffocating. She lowered the windows and rested her head on the back of the seat.

The police detectives thought she could be collaborating with Conor, as if either of them could do what had been done to Riki. Those images would be forever branded into Louisa’s brain. She would see them until the day she died. To think the police suspected her of collaborating or covering up such a deed was truly abhorrent.

Louisa knew she was innocent, and she couldn’t believe Conor would do anything as horrible as they’d described. How would the police ever find Zoe if they weren’t looking for other suspects?

A uniformed cop led Conor into a small interview room at the police station and locked him inside. He paced the linoleum for a few minutes, then dropped into a metal chair. He propped his elbows on the stainless-steel table and let his head fall into his hands.

His entire body felt like someone had beaten him with a stick. He’d spent the last hour perched on the edge of a metal bunk, staring at the moldy walls of a holding cell. With no empty interview rooms, he’d been briefly caged with two drunks, a couple of gangbangers, and one seriously crazy fucker who sat in the middle of the floor and banged his forehead on the concrete. The single toilet was clogged. Obvious stains covered the floors. The odors of vomit, human waste, and sweaty bodies were permanently infused into his nostrils.

When he got home, he was going to delouse himself. With bleach. His clothes were going directly into the Dumpster. He refused to think of spending the next twenty years of his life in a cinderblock-and-steel tomb. It couldn’t happen.