“Remember Elton Newsome?” she asked, and she got silence from the other end.

“You found him?” Fritz sounded surprised. “I’ve had a search going for a while with nothing.”

“We found him, but he’s not talking.”

“Let me at the asshole, and we’ll see. We’re still having to deal with the fallout from all that shit.”

“He’s dead. Someone drove him over the side of the Causeway as he was on his way in to talk to me. He called and said he had some information that would get him reinstated.” She remembered the report Shelby had written when she’d been called to Hannah Casey’s school. Emma Casey’s mother had walked out with her and had been in town at Elton Newsome’s urging. Why people like Newsome tried stupid things like that to get a rise out of Casey was something she never could understand.

“He went outside the chain of command to bring in some old woman who was supposed to help him do what none of us have been able to do since we were wet behind the ears.” Fritz sneezed three times in a row and cursed. “Muriel Casey has brought a case she can’t win, but hell if it’s not costing us a fortune in defense. The only way he was getting reinstated was if he could tell me all the winning lottery numbers for the next year.”

“He was pretty confident,” Annabel said, “but he wouldn’t tell me where he was. I talked him into coming in, and by the looks of it, that’s what he was doing. Someone stopped him before he reached me.” She studied the picture of the items they’d found in Newsome’s pockets.

“What’s all this got to do with you?” Fritz asked.

“I want to take the investigation off your hands,” she said and waited. “But you know I have to be invited in.”

“If he went off the Causeway, I’m not the one you should be convincing. You know how those guys are.”

“I need you to make some phone calls and explain what you’ve been going through with Muriel. If they smell trouble, they might turn this over with no problem, but Newsome was your guy. If you want, I’ll keep you updated, but there’s a case here, and I want to run with it.”