“Then there’s a mistake. We’ll get Matty out here, we’ll figure it out. It’s a mistake. Maybe the church changed names, or maybe Matty—”

“He’s a fucking liar,” North yelled. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you listening to me? Did you hit your head?”

“He’s not. He wouldn’t—he wouldn’t lie. There’s just been some kind of misunderstanding.”

“This whole case has been a fucking setup from the start. He came in here with that bullshit story, batting his eyes, crying about the mean man who had taken his virginity. And we swallowed it like the fucking tripe it was. We went after Mark Sevcik just like he wanted—”

“Why? Tell me that. Why would he even care about Mark if it was all a lie?”

That pressure inside North’s head, the frozen clarity that had crystallized everything in the manager’s office at Hog Hollow Hocks, was making it so much easier to see clearly. He could see the red around Shaw’s eyes. He could see the tremble in Shaw’s lower lip. He could see the curve of Shaw’s body, the way his fingers curled over his hip, his posture suggesting a pain that was only minimally physical and had much more to do with the devastation being worked inside him. In that winter clearness, North’s satisfaction was the color of dawn. Good. Good, good, good. Let it hurt. Let it hurt so much he never, ever fucking dared to look at another—

North derailed the train of thought before it could reach completion, but hearing it inside his head, even imperfectly, shook him. Was that really what he wanted? Was that really what he felt?

“You can’t explain it, can you?” Shaw hobbled forward. “You can’t because it doesn’t make any sense.”

“There are a lot of reasons,” North said, shaking himself out of the shock that had followed his own thoughts. “Mark might have been blackmailing him. Or maybe he was working for Regina or Brueckmann or for any of the other people Mark was blackmailing. Christ, Shaw, for all we know, Matty helped kill Mark last night. Maybe he just needed us for an alibi.”

“You said you saw Regina. You said Regina killed Mark. Video footage, that’s what you told me.”

“Yeah, and maybe Matty helped. They walked off screen, Shaw. Anybody could have been there. Anybody could have pulled the trigger and killed Mark.”

“He couldn’t have. He was with me—”

“When?”

“I don’t—”

“Mark was killed sometime between twelve and twenty-four hours ago. Regina intercepted him at 11:37 pm outside Hog Hollow Hocks.”

“Matty was at the office with me yesterday afternoon. He went home. I took him home.”

“When? Seven? Eight? Nine? Ten? He still had plenty of time to drive out to Chesterfield and help Regina kill Mark.”

“Why? How would he even know where Mark was?”

“A million different reasons. We don’t know because he’s a fucking liar, Shaw. He could have jumped in his car, driven out there—”