*

Navigating the station was tricky.

While Dolan took Jerebko to the conference room for an informal, voluntary, not-yet-arrested interview, Murph made sure the coast was clear for Jessie to get through the halls without being seen by anyone who might blab about her presence.

She got the go-ahead. As she walked quickly to the conference room, Jessie couldn’t shake the generalized feeling that even here she was unsafe. After all, Central Station was the one place that both Crutchfield and her father knew to look for her.

She doubted that either could access the facility—the security precautions were impressive even before she got formal Marshal Service protection. But even with all the safety measures the marshals were taking, all it would take was a single slip-up for one or both of them to find out she was here and follow her to her next location.

Frank Corcoran, the supervising agent, had assured her that multiple layers of protection had been put in place around the station which she had been intentionally kept unaware of. He warned that she might somehow inadvertently reveal their procedures with a glance or misplaced word. She found the suggestion borderline insulting but held her tongue, choosing not to fight that battle.

Part of her wondered if the marshals were intentionally putting her at risk, to use her as bait to draw out either killer. Then again, she had to admit that she was the one who’d insisted on coming to the station in the first place, not them.

When she finally entered the conference room, with Murph right behind her, Jerebko was sitting forlornly on a metal folding chair at the small card table in the center of the room. Dolan stood in the corner, scrolling through his phone. She took a long, deep breath and mentally pushed thoughts of any killers except Claire’s from her mind.

“Glad you could join us,” Dolan said when she walked in. “I was worried you got lost.”

She didn’t respond, not wanting to give Jerebko a hint that there was any animosity between his interrogators. Instead she sat down in a folding chair across from Jerebko and stared at him. He looked everywhere but at her.

“Mr. Jerebko,” she finally said, taking the initiative before anyone else did, “I’m not a detective. I’m a criminal profiler. And my profile of you suggests that you were not being forthright about your time in San Diego. But to be honest, a pre-school teacher could have discerned the same thing. Your attempts to come up with an alibi would embarrass a three-year-old. So now that it’s just us here, without your disappointed wife, why don’t you save us all some time and come clean?”

She glanced at Dolan, who was now standing behind the councilman. He didn’t say anything but his half-smile suggested he approved of her tactic. And with good reason, it turned out. Seconds later, Jerebko was spilling his guts.

“I was in San Diego yesterday,” he insisted before admitting, “but I didn’t spend the night there.”