“Hell, yes . . . To my knowledge, she has never been in my bedroom or my house except that one time . . . wait a minute.” He stared at Rivers. “What you’re saying is that you think because you have pictures of her in my bed with the gun that she and I . . .” To his credit, he seemed disbelieving, his mouth falling open. “No . . . just no! This—whatever it is, is nuts!” And then it appeared to have dawned on him. “You’ve been in my house again,” he charged.

Rivers gave a curt nod. “We checked.” And then Rivers laid it out, explaining that they’d checked his house again, found a long black hair in his bed, presumably from the dead woman. To be certain, they’d stripped his bedding and taken it, probably looking for semen or blood . . . or whatever.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Cahill came out of his chair. “I had nothing to do with any of this! Nothing!”

“And yet your name keeps coming up, and you are at the center of it all.”

“No way, I—”

Mendoza cut him off. “What was your relationship with Charity Spritz?”

Cahill’s head snapped around to stare at her. “The reporter. Nothing. . . holy crap, what the fuck are you suggesting?”

“She called you.”

“Well, yeah! Constantly. Ever since Megan went missing. She wanted to interview me, but I wasn’t into it. I mean she was a real pain in the butt.” He explained that Charity Spritz’s calls were insistent, nearly to the point of harassment, that she’d shown up on his porch, and that he’d finally decided to call her, only to have her not respond. “. . . I guess now that I know what happened to her, that explains it. Wait a minute. Don’t tell me—was she killed with . . .” He glanced at the Glock again.

“No,” Rivers said. “Strangled.”

“Jesus . . . and you think . . . ?” Cahill looked sick. “As I said, this is freakin’ nuts!”

Rivers had just seen the official autopsy report, where he’d noted that Spritz’s larynx had been crushed, the hyoid bone broken, along with injuries sustained in a severe beating. Hopefully, though, the scrapings under her fingernails would help ID her killer.

The interview lasted over an hour, but in the end, Rivers and Mendoza didn’t learn anything more. When Mendoza asked why he was with Rebecca Travers, James reacted a little, bristling.

“I don’t see it’s any of your business, but she and I want to find out what happened to Megan.”

“So you’re not involved with her romantically?” Mendoza persisted.

“No.” But his eyes had flashed a little.

“You were.”

“Yes.”

“And you dumped her for her sister.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I made a mistake. I broke up with her based on a lie.”

“That Megan Travers perpetrated.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “As I said, it was a mistake.”

“So you aren’t taking up with her again?”