Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

“So you’ll be happy to hear that we also have this,” Ziegler said. He opened the envelope again and dumped out a chunk of metal. It was a hard drive. It looked like the one that was taken from my security system the night Colleen was killed.

I stopped breathing.

“What’s this?” Caine asked.

“It’s Jack’s hard drive, with video evidence that Clay Harris carried Colleen Molloy into Jack’s house. It’s time-stamped with the date and hour that approximate Molloy’s time of death. We found it in Clay Harris’s shack of junk. And that indicates that he took it from Morgan’s house and brought it home. This, along with the bite mark…”

Clay Harris had killed Colleen, but he didn’t have the ingenuity to have done it on his own. And he didn’t have a motive either.

Tommy had a motive—to put me in a hole for the rest of my life. But he didn’t have to do the killing himself. Harris had been willing to do it for a year’s salary, which he’d spent on a car.

It just made sense that Tommy had directed the action from the beach outside my bedroom window and that Harris had called him as soon as Colleen was dead.

Caine said, “My client is cleared of the murder charge.”

“We’ve spoken to ADA Eddie Savino,” Tandy said. “He’s meeting with the DA tonight. I think Morgan is going to be free of Molloy’s murder, but here’s the thing, Mr. Caine…”

I saw something I didn’t like in Tandy’s eyes, a flash, a warning.

“We’ve got another dead body,” he continued. “Clay Harris was shot dead, and Jack, if he killed your girlfriend, that’s classic motive to kill him.”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Are you charging Jack with Clay Harris’s murder?” Caine snapped.

“Not yet,” said Tandy. “We’re watching you, Morgan. You and your brother.”

CHAPTER 122

TANDY’S RELUCTANCE WAS palpable as he gathered himself to give me evidence about Clay Harris’s murder. If Tandy was looking at Tommy for the crime, I had reason to hope that Tommy had left some trace of himself behind.

It got real quiet inside the interrogation room, except for the soft thwacks of Len Ziegler snapping the rubber band on his wrist. Tandy sat back in his seat, feigning nonchalance.

Finally he spoke.

“Tommy was pulled over for speeding on the night Clay Harris was killed. He was driving a new Lexus LX 570 that belonged to the victim. He’d been drinking.

“He couldn’t explain to the patrol officers why he had Harris’s car. He also couldn’t say where he’d been for the previous few hours or what he was doing in Canyon Country.”

Last time I saw Tommy, he was outside Harris’s house. Cops were on the way. He had to have gone back inside Harris’s house to get the keys to the Lexus. Dumb move, Tommy. Very dumb.

“We’re holding Tommy on a DUI and possession of a stolen vehicle for now,” Tandy said. “We’re not done yet.”

For a slim moment, Tandy’s expression was open and I could read his mind as if it were a newspaper headline. Tandy felt sick that he had nothing against me.

Maybe he could read my expression too.

He had nothing on me. He had nothing.

There was a big celebration going on inside my head. I grinned my face off and did the touchdown dance all over the end zone. Champagne corks blew and bubbly ran down my face. The fans stood up in the stands and cheered, and I was lifted into the air.

Caine wore serenity like a custom-made suit, but his right eyelid twitched. It was a wink, just for me.

I stood up and said, “It’s been a pleasure, detectives. I’m late for a meeting.”

I walked out of the police station with my lawyer. I could stop worrying about going back to the Twin Towers, spending a year or two in court being humiliated before being locked away at Lompoc for twenty-five to life.

I was free, again.