Connor reached for a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, both of which had been hanging neatly on evenly spaced hangers in the closet. He perched on the edge of the bed and slipped one long leg into the jeans and then the other. He winced as the neck of the T-shirt brushed against his swollen jaw as he pulled it over his head. The tiny bubble of sympathy Jessica felt was quickly crushed like a bug under her shoe.

“Start talking,” she said coldly.

Connor looked up at her. “It’s really not as bad as it seems. You were going to find out about me sooner or later. Things just became more complicated than they should have.”

He tried the lopsided grin thing. It didn’t work this time.

“Who are you working for?” she asked.

“Bill Geersen.”

“You said he was retired.”

“He is—that’s the point. The guy should be playing golf, spending time with the grandkids. But he can’t draw a line under the job and enjoy his retirement without knowing what happened the night your mother was murdered. You know what it’s like with some cops. The cases they were never able to solve, they eat away at them. They don’t ever give up hope of cracking them one day.”

“So Geersen isn’t on a cruise? I want to see him. You need to set up a meet.”

“He is on a cruise. Hawaii. Probably lounging by the pool with a tequila sunrise waiting for me to check in with an update for him. Sorry—I lied about him not having his cell phone.”

The lopsided grin again.

“How long has he been your client?” Jessica asked.

“Around eighteen months. He’s spent a fair amount of his retirement fund on my fees. He was determined to find you.”

“How did he know I was even still alive? I could have been buried up in the Eagle Rock hills for decades for all he knew, while he was throwing his money at a case he wasn’t good enough to solve first time around.”

“Bill always figured there were three possible scenarios to explain what had happened to you,” Connor said. “The first was you’d died the night Eleanor Lavelle was murdered, as you said, and the body would likely never be found. But he was convinced you were still alive. Cop instinct, he called it. Said he could feel it in his gut.”

“Yeah? Probably a bad case of gas. His gut wasn’t much help twenty-five years ago. What was the second option?”