she called over to the man, who squinted at her in the sunlight. “I am so sorry to bother you, but are you the manager?”

“I am,” he said, checking her out slightly.

“I was wondering if you have any places for rent?” she asked, still smiling.

“I do,” he said hesitantly, “but I don’t think this would be a good fit for you.”

“Why not? What’s the rent?” With her peripheral vision, she could see Andrea clicking her way down the stairs. She just needed to stall him a little longer.

“I don’t think the element here would be your kind,” he said.

“What do you mean?” she said. Andrea was on the ground floor, out of Lucy’s peripheral sight, but Lucy could hear the clacking of the woman’s heels on the pavement as she made her way to the car.

“This place can get a little rough,” he said. Almost as a punctuation to his sentence, she heard Andrea slam the car door shut. They were in the clear.

“Well, okay,” she said. “I appreciate the heads-up.”

She joined Andrea in the car and said, “Well?”

“Okay,” Andrea said excitedly, “so all the cars weren’t stolen. They were actually taken away by a tow company.”

“Then ended up getting burned?” Lucy said. “I didn’t expect that. Maybe it’s something against the tow company?”

“No, no,” Andrea said quickly. “The tow company is the one burning them.”

Gil sat on the metal chair in the interview room, leaning forward in a show of concern—but it was a show, plain and simple.

“Every father wants to protect his daughter,” Gil said. “You know, I would kill anyone who ever touched my daughter. She’s sixteen and just so beautiful.” He would never mention his own daughters to this man. So he made up a fictitious daughter on the spot. “Being a father is all about love.”

“I’ve loved Ashley since the day she was born,” Rodriguez said.

“Sometimes,” Gil said, “people don’t respect how hard it is to be a dad. I think in a lot of ways that it’s harder to be a father than it is to be a mother.”

“They have it so much easier than us,” Rodriguez said.

“Exactly. They don’t have to put the food on the table,” Gil said, as Rodriguez nodded vigorously. “They don’t know about how a father always is thinking of his children, especially his daughters.”

“I think of Ashley every second of every day,” Rodriguez said.

“Right. I mean, sometimes I feel that my daughter is there for me more than my wife is. And my daughter is just there for me, not nagging, not wanting to know when I’m coming home. She is so easy to be with.”

“Ashley and me are exactly like that,” Rodriguez said with a satisfied smile.

“Like two peas in a pod,” Gil said.

“Right, just like that,” Rodriguez said.

Gil nodded. Inside, he was preparing for what came next.

There were levels to interrogation, and Gil rarely had to delve deep. Usually, he would just present the facts of the case in a certain order, tell a few small lies, and then explain that he understood why the suspect committed the crime, and he would have a confession. It was amazing how often that worked.

Gil had lines that he wouldn’t cross during the interrogation process even when other investigators did. He wouldn’t blame the victim to get a confession. He wouldn’t tell a murderer, “I know why you shot your girlfriend. She deserved it.” He wouldn’t say that because he saw the danger it posed to himself. He worried that if he went to that place of blaming the victim one too many times, he would forget his own morals. He would lose his way. He would become indifferent. He would start to blame the victims as much as the suspects. That way led to burnout. He had seen too many cops hit that point, and Gil had steered well clear of it so far. The burnout rate for interrogators was high—higher than for regular police officers. Gil wondered if that was because interrogators lost a piece of their humanity every time they blamed an innocent victim just to get a confession.

Gil could keep working on Rodriguez, and later today, possibly tonight, he would finally admit what Gil already knew—that he had sexually abused Ashley and could be Brianna’s father. Now, though, Gil didn’t have time for the long, slow conversations that process would require. He needed that information fast.

The only way to get it was to step over the line he had rarely crossed before.

He would do it.