Suddenly, Hudson had a flashback to Morgan sitting on the back of his couch, eating pizza and swinging her stockinged feet moments before she showed them the footage from The Ruins. How he missed her now that she was no longer in his orbit. Her disappearance felt like another death.

“Let’s dial this back, huh,” said Kasper after a beat. “So, when Morgan Mori showed up to photograph the Christmas party, did you believe that Bennett hired her on purpose?”

“One hundred percent,” said Christopher. It was the most direct answer he’d given since entering the interview room.

“To fuck with you, or what?”

Christopher cracked open the water bottle on the table and took a drink. “Everything Bennett did was by design. He always had the ability to think light-years ahead.” The words came easier now. It was as though each one he spoke was a weight lifted from his chest.

“Good quality for a private equity guy,” noted Kasper. “And once you recognized Morgan, you told Eleanor. Who got on the phone with Officer Garrison.”

Christopher nodded.

“You said earlier that Garrison knew too much. What do you mean, exactly?”

“Everything,” said Christopher. “The Porsche, how it got in the lake…”

“How did Clive Reynolds’s Porsche end up in the lake?” asked Kasper.

Hudson listened, then, as Christopher Reynolds confirmed Muntz’s story—omitting the detail of the young girl’s underwear. It began with insurance fraud. Clive needed money to pay off his mistress, Ava, but he didn’t want to leave a paper trail and he’d already embezzled enough from his own business. So, he turned to his brother, Christopher, for help.

Christopher, who despised him.

Christopher, who wanted everything Clive had: wealth, status, Eleanor.

“He asked me to make it disappear,” said Christopher, “while he went up north with Eleanor and the kids for the Fourth of July weekend.” He dragged a nail at the label that had been softened by condensation, and began to peel it off the water bottle.

They all knew what happened afterward. “You could have burned it,” said Kasper. “All your DNA and fingerprints would have been scorched off by the time anyone showed up to investigate.”

A light smile tugged at Christopher’s mouth. His whiskers bristled. “I could have.”

“But you got greedy.”

Christopher shrugged, but as Kasper went on to give details about Christopher’s escapade in the Porsche, his face reddened. Hudson watched the old man’s pulse beat in his ruined neck. “You took the Porsche for a ride,” said Kasper. “Enticed some young female to ride shotgun, according to her story, anyway.” When a pair of vertical creases appeared between Christopher’s brows, Kasper added: “The victim’s come forward. She saw on the news that you were in custody and she came down to the station. She was fifteen at the time. Fifteen when some dude pulled up to the curb in a black Porsche and offered her fifty dollars for a hand job and to sniff her panties.”