The most likely person was Mark Sevcik’s killer: Regina Rex.

North stared at the unknown number until the text blurred again. What was he supposed to do now?

The easiest answer, the one that North reached for instinctively, was to wait. Let Matty get hauled off to prison. But North shook off that option for two reasons. First, he wanted to know what was really going on. The need to know the truth had driven North into this business in the first place. The second reason, the one that North couldn’t even name, was just an image: the memory of that landslide demolishing everything in Shaw’s face, the total, unspeakable pain of it. North couldn’t make up for it, couldn’t undo it. But he could try to do something for Shaw. One small, good thing.

North dressed. He went downstairs and had toast with the cold coffee that Tuck had left in the pot. His brain churned through ideas.

From the very beginning, this case had been full of dead ends. Mark Sevcik’s apartment had been a dead end. Lee Brueckmann’s club had been a dead end. Regina Rex had been a dead end. Hog Hollow Hocks had been the ultimate dead end. Part of the reason for the lack of clues, the lack of direction, the lack of momentum had been Matty’s lies. But part had been the layers and folds of secrecy that blackmail entailed. Regina had used that to her own purposes by making herself out as a victim while getting enough information out of them to put her on Mark’s trail.

Everything came back to Mark Sevcik. North wasn’t willing to trust any part of Matty’s story, but he could infer, from the way events had played out, at least part of the truth. Matty had been involved with Mark in some way and had learned about Mark’s lucrative hobby. That was the most likely explanation.

At some point, Matty had decided he wanted to take over Mark’s blackmail business. He had needed help, but help that wouldn’t turn into competition. Approaching Mark’s other victims—if Matty had even known who they were—was too great a risk. No, Matty needed someone he could control.

North felt a brief, cool flicker of pity for Shaw. It wasn’t Shaw’s fault; Matty had used Shaw’s best qualities—his kindness, his innocence, his generosity—against him. Matty had taken the wounds Shaw had suffered in the attack all those years ago, and he had used them to make Shaw vulnerable, open to manipulation. And it had worked. Perfectly. Shaw and North had taken the case. They had hunted down Mark Sevcik, and in doing so, they had somehow tipped off Regina. Regina had found Mark, somehow. And then she had killed him.

Now Regina wanted the recordings.

North sighed. It was conjecture. But it felt mostly solid, and he trusted his gut. The important question, the only question that mattered right now, was where Mark had hidden the recordings. But, of course, that was the question that no one could answer. Mark Sevcik’s apartment had been torn apart by people searching. Barr and Reck, of course, but now North guessed that Regina had been there too—otherwise, how had she managed to track Mark out to a barbeque joint in Chesterfield? Had Matty searched the apartment as well? Would he have some insight into where Mark might have hidden the recordings? No, of course not. If Matty had known, he never would have hired Shaw in the first place.