I racked my brain for a way out of the mess that I’d made. It didn’t take me long to seize on it—the only way that I could keep my job and my marriage.

Lauren would have to die.

PART FOUR

PART FOUR

33. ELLA BRODEN

33.

ELLA BRODEN

Gabriel looks as if he’s seen a ghost. I’ve never seen him shaken before, and it’s more than a little disconcerting.

I had come to One PP this morning with him to review some old case files. The police brass still thought it was possible that Lauren was murdered by someone she had prosecuted, and wanted to expand the search beyond Donald Chesterman. Gabriel thought it was a waste of time, given that the murder weapon had come from Detective Papamichael, which meant whoever murdered Lauren had to have some connection to him, and an ex-con wouldn’t fit that bill. Still, an order is an order. Gabriel thought I’d be better than Dana at recognizing which of the rather lengthy list of people Lauren sent to prison during my tenure as her deputy, and who had since been released, might have sought revenge. As soon as we arrived, however, Gabriel was summoned by Calhoun Johnson. He hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes, but it was obvious that something monumental occurred during that time.

“What happened?”

“They arrested Dana for Lauren’s murder,” he says.

“What?”

“I just left the Commissioner’s office. It was quite the scene. All the brass was there, and far more uniforms than needed. They arrested her. Handcuffed her right in front of me and led her out of the room.”

I’m still having trouble processing. It doesn’t make any sense.

“They got into Lauren’s phone,” Gabriel continues. “Dana sent Lauren a text at 1:03 in the morning, asking her to meet in Central Park. Lauren was dead less than a half hour later.”

It still doesn’t make any sense. “Why would Dana kill Lauren?”

“Dana was the one Lauren was having the affair with,” Gabriel says, as if this information would clarify things for me rather than confuse me even more. “I literally begged Lucian to hold off on the arrest. I asked him to let me go back to Richard with proof of the affair to see how he’d react, or to let me wear a wire with Dana to see if I could get a confession out of her. He said it was above his pay grade. Drake McKenney apparently wanted the headline—today.”

As I’m listening to Gabriel suggest that something is wrong here, I can’t get my head around the one fact that Gabriel doesn’t contest: Lauren and Dana were lovers. Aside from the obvious—that both were married to men—I couldn’t imagine Lauren being so reckless as to have an affair with her deputy.