Slowly, Kole straightened up. He rolled his neck from one shoulder to the other, working out a kink. Still not looking at Hudson, but staring outside where the snow came down in fat flakes, he said, “Look. You and I both know that Ronald Muntz is a lying piece of shit.”

The statement felt like a splash of cold water. “We do?”

“If he’s saying Hades shot Garrison and you’re saying he didn’t…” He turned his palms over and lifted them like he was weighing both options.

“He didn’t,” Hudson confirmed.

Kole turned his chair around with his jacket draped over it and sat backward, making good on his intentions to stay awhile. “Okay. Then tell me who did.”

Suddenly, Hudson was back in the Fast Mart, staring at Garrison’s body on the floor. Shards of potato chips were littered everywhere like shrapnel. Morgan was to his right, rocking back and forth against the candy rack, talking to Devine about the shooter’s red treads. Bursts of blinding light popped from camera flashes. Yellow placards marked the location of casings. Fingerprint powder coated the countertop, the door handle. He was back there wiping the vomit from his chin, his eyes watering, weeping, his tears frozen to his face. He was crouching down, sliding the faded red ticket out of Garrison’s trauma plate pocket, tucking it out of sight when the medical examiner arrived.

The Ruins. The ticket. How Garrison had come by it was still a question mark, but it led to Morgan. What had Kole just said, he’d worked backward to find out Hudson’s connection to Tobias? Hudson had to work backward from Morgan, and as he did, like a game of Tetris, everything started clicking into place. And then Morgan, bless her blackened little soul, spoke two words that would derail everything. “I lied.”

31 MORGAN

“Lied about what?” said Hudson.

Both men stared at her. Morgan dug her nails into her forearm and scratched. “On Wednesday when you interviewed me in your car, you asked if Garrison had said anything to me.”

From her peripheral vision, she saw Nik shoot Hudson a disapproving look at the mention of an under-the-radar interview. “And you said he didn’t,” Hudson reminded her.

Morgan sat still. She was painfully cold all of a sudden. The tip of her nose, her lips, her fingertips. Her toes felt wooden as she pressed them into the floor. Her jaw tightened. She was clamming up. It used to happen to her as a child, when the detectives would talk to her about the things that happened at the house on Winslow Street.

“Morgan.”

She couldn’t tell which one of them said her name. Only that it sounded far away. Like she was locked in a box and they weren’t.

The weight of a hand on her shoulder. She startled.