“Well, I imagine there’s no refuting the charge on your part.  You supplied Tony Lewis with the cocaine he overdosed on.”

“You want me to admit to handing over the cocaine to him, so you have someone behind bars to take the fall for a hotshot’s death?” I ask him sarcastically, seamlessly hiding how my nerves want to crack and how my blood pounds in my ears.  I let out an uneasy huff of a laugh and shake my head.  Leaning back in my seat, I look him in the eyes with a smile as I say, “That’s not happening, Detective.”

“Well, someone is going to go down for murder, yes.” He sucks his teeth as he stands up and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’d only be sentenced for your part and we’re willing to cut you a deal.  Whoever laced it with fentanyl intended for it to kill.  There’s no doubt in the DA’s mind that it’s murder, Mr. Thompson.  I’d take the deal if I were you.”

He waits for a reaction, but I use every ounce of energy in me to not give him anything.  I won’t say a word.  Inside, I’m denying it.  No fucking way.  There’s no way James would give a client something that would kill him.  They’re wrong.  If it wasn’t James … then who?

“We know it’s someone within the firm.  It’s not the first time one of New York Stride Public Relation’s clients have turned up dead.”  He leans back and adds, “As I’m sure you’re aware.”

As he talks, he half pushes, half tosses the manila folder that was sitting on his end of the table my way.  It lands with a heavy thud in front of me and I open it, feigning disinterest.

“Nothing points to that person being you, but this was intentional.  Someone wanted whoever was going to be taking this coke to die.  It was laced with enough fentanyl to kill instantly.”

I don’t say anything as he pauses, opening the manila folder when I don’t and pulling out a page with charts and shit I don’t know anything about.  He points his finger to a graph, then taps it far too hard, turning his knuckles white.  “Whoever did it wanted even the smallest dose to kill.”

Silence.  All I do is stare at the man and then force my gaze back down, to the photos of Tony, dead on the floor of that hotel room.

“If you have any information on how we’d go about finding the killer, that’d be useful, and we’d certainly be grateful for that.”