IT WAS SIX in the evening before Asa came out of it. Woody had slept some, but worry for Abby kept him awake. If Rollins was the impetus behind the Triple Seven killing, he had money and resources now to go to any lengths to keep it quiet, buried, and forever cold. And motive to stop anyone from trying to prove it.

But Buck Morgan being alive?

I can’t get my old gray head around that.

As Asa stirred, Woody turned on the coffeemaker. If his friend did know something, Woody planned to get it out of him if it was the last thing he did.

When Asa could walk, Woody threw him into the shower screaming and cursing. He left him a towel and a robe and told him to come into the kitchen when he was ready.

About twenty minutes later, red-faced and angry, Asa entered the kitchen, and Woody shoved a cup of coffee at him.

Asa sniffed it and cursed. “I need a drink, not coffee.”

“Coffee only, until you tell me what you know.” He pushed his friend into a chair, ignoring the spilled coffee. After Asa stopped protesting and had half a cup of coffee in him, Woody told him what Abby had shared. It didn’t surprise him that Asa was not surprised.

“You know more than you’ve ever said. Tell me what’s going on.”

Asa drained the coffee cup and Woody refilled it.

“What goes around comes around —wasn’t that what we always used to say?” Asa said after minutes of silence. “Some puke would do a crime and get off, and we’d say, ‘What goes around comes around; he’ll get his.’ Ha! Doesn’t always happen that way. Some pukes turn their crimes into solid gold.”

“What are you saying? Is Sanders telling the truth?” Woody felt anger that his partner could have held such a piece of information all this time and shame that he’d never guessed or pried.

Asa looked at him with bleary, bloodshot eyes. “It was a couple months after the place burned. You were away on one of your honeymoons. I was working solo and drinking with Rollins and his crowd from time to time.”

This surprised Woody, but he said nothing. Back in the day, Rollins didn’t hang with the common folk, at least not when Alyssa was around.

“One night Louis comes to the party later than the rest of us and he’s scared. I didn’t understand what he was babbling about. I caught snatches of ‘Buck Morgan and kid,’ but Kent grabbed ahold of him and beat the snot out of him. I tried to break it up, but Kent got in my mug and told me to mind my own business or I’d be sorry.” He paused and sipped the coffee, grimacing.

“You knew me back then. I told him he’d be the sorry one; I’d put his butt in jail. Later, I pieced together what Louis had rambled about. He said that Buck came to him and told him he needed to go to the police and tell the truth about the Triple Seven. I rolled it over and over, wondering what it could mean. Buck was dead as far as I knew. I planned on asking Louis, but two nights later he was dead in a hit-and-run.”

“Did Kent have something to do with that?”

“I don’t know. But I planned on going to the Puffs with what I’d heard and see if they could make sense of it. Tell them maybe they should look Kent’s way.”

Woody whistled. “That would have been a whole new avenue of investigation.”

“Don’t I know it. Twenty-five years ago a little pressure on two-bit Kent would have broken the case wide-open.” He cursed and held his head in his hands. For a brief minute Woody feared he would begin sobbing.

But Asa shuddered and looked up. “Then I got something in the mail. You know what went on at those parties before you straightened up.”

Woody nodded. He knew all too well. Besides the drinking, there were women and a lot of juvenile high jinks. More than one officer had been fired during the course of his career because of something directly related to an after-shift party at a cop bar.

“Someone took pictures of me with a woman.” He inhaled deeply. “At least I thought she was a woman. Turned out she was underage. With the picture of us was a copy of her high school ID. The note said that if I said or did anything related to the Triple Seven, the pictures would go straight to the girl’s parents and to IA.”

Woody felt like he was going to be sick. He’d stopped partying with Asa after the fire. Buck and Patricia were people he liked and respected, and seeing them burnt up like that made him throw everything up. Ever since that night, he couldn’t stand the smell of alcohol or even think about taking a drink. Staying sober for twenty-seven years hadn’t helped him save three marriages, but it had kept him from the type of trouble Asa just described.

“So you stayed quiet.”

“I did. Did what I’d heard even make sense? Buck was dead, memorialized, and everyone moved on. I wanted my career, my name. You know I even managed to sober up for a time.”

Woody nodded. “You started in again after Miriam died. But it got worse after you began working with Abby.”

Asa gave a mirthless chuckle. “Yeah, it did. That girl brought back so many memories. Maybe I should have retired as soon as she came back. Life is made up of maybes, isn’t it? She is such a good cop, better than I ever was. When I saw how smart she was, I thought she deserved to know the truth. But what truth? After all this time, I just don’t know what it is anymore.”

Now Asa did cry, not a sob, but tears running down his face. For something to do, Woody poured him some more coffee.

“There’s no evidence now,” Woody said, half to himself. “Even if you’d recorded what Louis said, there’s no evidence to convict anyone of anything.”