Josh had no idea how much time had passed since his arrest. He paced the tiled floor of the interrogation room, trying to make sense of everything that had happened. He’d been arrested, but he still had no idea if Caitlyn had managed to escape detection or if they’d arrested her as well. But his arrest wasn’t the worst thing that had happened. Quinton was dead. Shot in the back of the head execution style. His partner’s death had been a trap to catch him.
He stopped in front of the mirrored wall, desperate for a plan that would get him out of this. He still had dozens of questions, but the pieces of the puzzle were slowly beginning to come together. And the emerging picture terrified him.
How well did people—including the officers in this department—really know each other? After all, one of them was a traitor. One of them wanted him dead.
Still, whoever was behind this didn’t have control over the entire precinct. That would be impossible. He still had a chance to talk to whoever was going to come in and question him. He had to find a way to protect Caitlyn.
He started pacing again. The worry was back, full force. He wasn’t sure anymore that this was something he could fix. Like Olivia’s murder. And now Quinton’s. No matter what he’d done, he hadn’t been able to save them. What if he couldn’t save Caitlyn?
God, I’ve got to find a way out of this . . .
With options limited, and circumstantial evidence in abundance, the only way out was to convince them he’d been set up. But was that even possible? He drew in a breath, needing to slow down his heart rate. Whoever came through the door, he’d appeal to them as fellow officers. Hopefully they would know him enough to at least question the evidence.
He turned around when the door to the interrogation room finally opened and Adams and Sanchez walked into the room.
“Detectives . . . I’m not sure what’s going on here, but you need to know—”
“Sit down.” Adams’s frown deepened. “Because here’s what you need to know. You’re not in charge here anymore.”
Josh started to respond, then stopped himself as he sat down. The walls started to spin and press in around him. His chest felt heavy and his brow was sweating. He’d just been put in his place. So that was it? This wasn’t going to be a discussion between colleagues. He wasn’t just a person of interest. From the look in their eyes, they were two detectives looking at a suspect they were convinced had murdered two people.
“Detective Solomon.” Adams dropped a file folder onto the table, then pulled back one of the chairs and sat down. “I hardly know where to begin. When we pulled you over, we wanted to talk to you because we were concerned about a fellow officer. But now . . . Let’s just say I never thought I’d see the day when you’d be sitting on the other side of the table. You were always at the top of your game. Dozens, if not hundreds, of convictions over the past decade, and even a couple commendations. And now you’re facing double-murder charges.”
Josh’s jaw tensed at the stark reminder of why he was sitting in the suspect’s spot. “Nothing’s changed. I didn’t kill Quinton, and I certainly didn’t kill my wife. You of all people should know that. Someone is trying to frame me.”
“You think you’re being framed?” Detective Adams glanced at his partner and let out a low laugh. “Even for you that seems a bit of a stretch. I’d hate to be your defense attorney, because coming up with a defense to get you off with the evidence we have is going to be complicated, if not impossible . . . We’re not just talking about a cop killing his wife, but a cop killing another cop. You know as well as I do that neither will go down well with a jury.”
Josh ran through his limited options. He could argue with them, or he could lay all his cards on the table, but at the moment, he didn’t like the odds of either option. More than likely, Adams and Sanchez were nothing more than pawns in this case, doing exactly what they were told, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.
“I need you to listen to me,” Josh said. “Please. I didn’t kill them, but you need to understand that something bigger is going on here. And if you let me, I can prove it.”
“I’m not sure—”
“Just give me the benefit of the doubt for a minute.” He fought to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Sanchez, three months ago, I was at your daughter’s birthday party, and Adams . . . I watched your son receive his high school diploma at his graduation last spring. Don’t tell me you’re going to put everything you know about me aside and buy into these lies.”
“Trust me, I don’t want to.” Adams braced his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “But here’s what we know is true. They found your wife’s murder weapon stashed in your attic with your fingerprints on it. We also know you were filing for a divorce. Is that why you and your girlfriend killed her? Because she refused to sign the papers?”
“No.”
Adams sat back in his chair. “We have one more thing. Caitlyn Lindsey is in custody, and she just hung you out to dry.”
Josh’s jaw tensed. Someone had already convinced them that he was guilty and had been ordered to find out what he knew and take him down, and now they’d found Caitlyn? He wasn’t sure he believed him. Because even if they had found her, she wouldn’t have turned on him. He’d bet his life on that.
He also knew all the tricks of an interrogation. He’d used them every time he walked into this room with a suspect. He’d used them because they worked. He looked for signs of deception, nonverbal clues. He would leverage personal connections to get a confession.
This had become a game of chess for both sides, and he was going to have to watch every word. For a suspect, the goal was to appear innocent and cooperative, as if there was nothing to hide, while at the same time not offer up anything that would be incriminating. For the detectives, the goal was to sow doubts and uncover inconsistencies that gave the suspect enough rope to eventually hang himself.
He needed to prove to them that he was innocent without saying something they could twist and use against him. Not reacting to their claim about Caitlyn seemed the better option at the moment.
“Nothing to say?” Detective Adams tapped his fingers on the table. “Well, I have plenty I can say. You had an affair with your wife’s coworker, and when Olivia wouldn’t grant you a divorce, you killed her.”
Josh fought to stuff down the anger bubbling in his gut. “I’ve already told you, I didn’t kill my wife.”
“You were smart about it though. You thought you’d get away with murder by tying it to a string of burglaries.” Adams pointed at him. “And you know what? That actually worked. For a while. But not anymore.”
“You’re wrong. And besides, none of this makes sense. If I killed my wife and someone else was convicted for the murder, why would I have started asking questions again? Why would I do anything to draw attention to myself? Why would I do anything at all to try and prove that the men convicted of my wife’s murder were innocent?”
“It doesn’t make sense . . . unless perhaps your partner discovered the truth and decided he wasn’t going to keep your dirty little secret.”
Josh tugged on the collar of his shirt. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t believe what they were saying. He tried to calm down. He couldn’t forget that their plan was to spin him in circles until he couldn’t stand up anymore. He couldn’t let that happen.
“What you’re saying isn’t possible,” he said.
But the panic refused to let go. When the detectives had first walked in, he believed he’d have a chance of convincing them he was being set up. Had thought they’d believe him, or at least give him a chance and listen to a fellow officer. But none of that was true.
And how was that even possible? He’d worked with these guys for years. Surely someone would give him the benefit of the doubt. Surely someone would walk through that door and realize that things weren’t adding up. But instead, they were coming at him like they actually believed he was guilty.
“I’ve known both of you for years,” he said. “You can’t actually think I could have killed Olivia. And Quinton . . . he is . . . was . . . my partner.”
“Then tell me why you were there.”
“I was there because he asked me to meet him.” Josh leaned forward and caught Detective Adams’s gaze. “Think about it. You know I didn’t do this, Adams.”
Adams opened the folder and pulled out a photo of him and Caitlyn laughing and pushed it across the table at him. “You say you weren’t having an affair, but this was taken from security footage at Bistro 17 three weeks before your wife was murdered. The two of you look pretty cozy.”
Josh shook his head. That wasn’t possible. Or was it? He worked to place the photo. “There were four of us. Olivia and I went out with Caitlyn and her date. Dinner and then some event at a museum. You can talk to her date. Gary . . . Greg . . . I don’t remember. He’d just told a joke, I think.”
“You have an explanation for everything, don’t you?” Adams pulled out another photo and pushed it across the table, this time of Olivia’s body at the crime scene. “Looking back, I’m actually shocked that you never were on the suspect list after she was killed. Of course, you’re smart. Just not smart enough. Because we know now what happened. You and Caitlyn Lindsey were having an affair and decided to murder your wife. When your partner found out, you killed him as well. It will take very little to convince a jury of that.”
Josh looked straight ahead, avoiding the image of Olivia’s dead body that was already forever imprinted in his mind. “We don’t have to go over it again. I’ve told you what happened.”
“We’ll go over it until you tell us the truth,” Detective Adams said. “Because here’s the thing, Solomon. Everything you’ve told the authorities so far has been a lie. You didn’t return home that night to burglars ransacking your house. No, you killed your wife, then called 911. The neighborhood burglars were the perfect scapegoats, weren’t they? Everyone immediately had their eyes focused on them instead of you. And all you had to do was say you’d seen them fleeing your house. You even went as far as to say you chased them down the road and lost them, and then returned so you could be there as your wife took her last breath. The grieving husband, with his bloodstained shirt from trying to save her would—just as you thought—make for the perfect alibi. It was quite a performance.”
“Except none of that really happened, did it?” Detective Sanchez took his turn. “You killed your wife and watched her bleed to death in your bed.”
“And then I hid the murder weapon in my attic?” Josh shoved the photos back across the table. “Do you actually think I’d be that stupid?”
“Then how would you do it?”
“How would I do it?” Josh drew in a deep breath. “That’s the point. I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.”
He stared at the wall behind the detectives. Fatigue and emotion were starting to play tricks on his mind. He was going to back himself into a hole if he wasn’t careful. After pinning his wife’s murder on him, they could easily guarantee his silence. It wouldn’t be hard to pay someone to kill him behind bars.
The perfect murder.
He shifted his gaze to the one-way window, wondering who was standing on the other side. Wondering if Caitlyn really was sitting in another room right now, like him, being interrogated. He had no way of knowing whether she was here or still on the run. Either way, she was in trouble. Whoever was behind this had long arms. And he’d played right into their hands.
“There’s more behind this than you realize,” he said, needing them to understand what had really happened. “It’s true that the wrong people were convicted for Olivia’s murder. I know that. But I didn’t do it. There was something going on at her lab . . . they were working on a killer virus worth millions of dollars . . . and Olivia wasn’t the only one killed for it.”
Adams glanced at Detective Sanchez and chuckled. “So now you’re actually going to spout off some crazy killer virus conspiracy theory.”
It did sound crazy. He sounded crazy.
“Are you done?” Adams asked. “We know there was no robbery. No armed men who entered your house that night. And definitely no conspiracy at your wife’s lab. Your fingerprints were on the gun that killed her. You killed her.”
“No!”
Josh pressed his hands on the table. He was getting caught up in their game. Playing the hand they wanted. He’d been set up. All the evidence pointed at him, and even the truth he’d discovered had been twisted. Somehow, he’d thought because they were friends he could explain the truth. But the truth was that it didn’t matter what he said. They were planning to take him down no matter what he did.
“I’ve said enough. I want a lawyer.”
“Fine.” Adams scooted back his chair. “You can call your lawyer, but in the meantime, you might want to start praying for your soul. Because according to rumors out of the DA’s office, they’re planning on going for the death penalty.”