“So this receptionist, Emily Fielding, says this woman named Vicky Lanier and Nick were getting it on in his office,” says Andy. “And that was the last time she saw Vicky. So let’s say they’ve hooked up, they’re sleeping together. How does that fit in? If Simon’s behind all this, if he’s the puppet master, where does Vicky Lanier fit in? Why does she need to get close to Nick Caracci? How does that help Simon with his ultimate goal of killing Lauren Betancourt?”

“Well, Nick’s the patsy, right?”

“Sure, so the theory goes, but why does Vicky have to get close to him?”

“Well, to get inside his apartment to steal half his toiletry kit, if for no other reason. Maybe to get him to kill Lauren—maybe Nick did that. I don’t know all the details yet.” She wags her finger. “Yet. But you agree, we’re onto something here.”

“Oh, shit, I don’t know, Janey. I mean, Nick Caracci was probably a player, right? Good-looking guy. Rich, or at least pretending to be rich. The fact that he bangs some woman in his office? I mean, that would never happen to me, but it’s not a total shock he’d have success with the ladies. It could be that and nothing more.”

Jane looks at Andy. He’s being practical, reasonable. He might well be right. With all the evidence piled up against Nick, Jane won’t be able to hold off the chief and the Village president much longer. “If it’s that and nothing more,” she says, “why did Simon react like that in there when we mentioned the name Vicky Lanier?”

“No, you’re right about that. He did.” He groans. “This case is giving me a stomachache.”

“Why?”

“Because we have a slam dunk on Nick Caracci, Jane, that’s why.”

“Yeah, but what does your gut tell you?”

Andy makes a noise, taps his fingers on the steering wheel. He pulls their car into the parking lot outside the police station, kills the engine, and turns to her.

“My gut tells me he knows Vicky Lanier,” he says.

“For sure.”

“But we know nothing about her. I mean, if she’s in on this with Simon, if she was part of some plan to lure Nick Caracci into this plot, I highly doubt ‘Vicky Lanier’ is even her real name.”

“Probably not. The name itself is almost surely a dead end. We’ll run a background just in case, but you’re right—her name probably isn’t Vicky Lanier.”

“So we don’t know squat.”

“Not yet,” she says. “You processed all the prints from Lauren’s crime scene, right?”

“Yep. Sent them to AFIS yesterday. If there’s a hit on anything, we’ll know hopefully today or tomorrow at the latest.”

“And Cheronis sent prints from Nick Caracci’s apartment,” says Jane. “Maybe we’ll get lucky on a fingerprint. Forensics may be our only saving grace here. Simon can manipulate all he wants, but he can’t manipulate a fingerprint.”

97

Jane

In an interview room, one hour later. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Lemoyne,” says Jane. “I hope your flight was okay.”

Albert Lemoyne, age sixty-nine, is a big, weathered guy with a full, ruddy face and deep-set, bloodshot eyes. A union man, a Teamster, with rough hands to show for it. He is overweight and aging, but Jane sees a man inside there who would have caught a woman’s eye back in his day. His skin is bronzed from the sun; he now lives in Scottsdale. “I flew home to bury my daughter,” he says, “so no, it wasn’t that great.”

“Of course. That was—”

“Did you find him? Did you figure out who did it?”

“We think we may be close, Mr. Lemoyne.”

“Shit, call me Al, everyone else does.”

“Okay. I need to ask you some questions about your daughter, Al.”

“You didn’t ask me enough questions when you called me on Tuesday?”

“Just a few more, sir,” says Jane.

—

“I knew they were getting a divorce,” he says. “She kept telling me she was fine, she’d be okay. She didn’t—she didn’t share a lot with her old man. She was much closer to her mother.”

Her mother, Amy Lemoyne, died four years ago from cancer. Al has since lived alone in the house Lauren bought them in Arizona.

“Do you know, Al, if Lauren had begun another relationship?”

He shakes his head no. “But I doubt she’d mention it to me unless it was serious.”

“Do you recognize the name Christian Newsome?”

“No, uh-uh.”

“Nick Caracci? Vicky Lanier?”

Same answer for each one.

“What about Simon Dobias?”

His eyes flicker, like a flinch. “The boy,” he says. “The son. The one accused her a stealing.”

“Yes.”

“He still live around here?”

“Why do you ask?”

He makes a fist with his hand, gently thumps it on the table. “I told her, I said, ‘You sure you wanna move back close to where they live?’ She said it wouldn’t be an issue. I mean, when she moved back to Chicago, I said okay, it’s a big place. But then she meets Conrad and moves to Grace Village and I said to her, I said, ‘You sure, honey? Being just the town over?’ But she said it was the father who worried her, and he was dead. She didn’t worry about the boy.”

Jane puts up her hands. “I need to unpack that. When Lauren married Conrad and moved to Grace Village three years ago, you were worried, because she was moving so close to Grace Park, where the Dobias family lived?”