“No problem.” Tomasetti signed his name and filled in the date, leaving off the part about his being with BCI, and shoved the clipboard back to the officer.

The man glanced at it, looked at Tomasetti, and then picked up the phone. “Have a seat,” he said, and motioned toward a row of waiting-room chairs that lined the opposite wall.

Tomasetti took the nearest chair, using the time to check his e-mail and voice mail—none of which were from Kate. Two minutes later, a buzzer sounded. He looked up to see his old academy mate, Stan McCaskill, standing at the door, looking at him as if he wasn’t quite sure who he was.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “John Tomasetti.”

“Hey, Stan.” Tomasetti rose and crossed to him, extended his hand. “It’s been a while.”

“Twenty years, give or take.” He opened the door wider, ushering Tomasetti inside. “What are you doing these days?”

“I’m with BCI.”

He nodded approvingly. “So what’s your business with Kinnamon?”

“Cold case I’m about to close.” Tomasetti tapped the file at his side. “Just need to ask a few questions, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

They went through a windowless steel door, down a tiled hall, and then reached the cage, a glassed-in office where two corrections officers controlled the door locks and access to the interior of the jail. McCaskill set a blue form on the security transaction tray and shoved it toward the other man.

The man inside looked down at it and then gave Tomasetti a quick once-over. “You’ll need to check your firearm here.”

“Sure.” Once again, he placed his badge in the tray. Then he removed his weapon from his shoulder holster and set it in the tray as well.

The officer tore off a ticket and sent it back to him. The locks on the door across the room snicked open.

“Here we go.” McCaskill took him through it and motioned Tomasetti into a small interview room. “You need audio? Escort?”

Tomasetti shook his head. “Just Kinnamon.”

“I’ll get him for you.”

The room was like a hundred other interview rooms Tomasetti had been in over the years. Twelve feet square. Gray walls. Windowless. Not even an observation window. Institutional tile floor. Air temp hovering somewhere around sixty-two degrees. Discomfort helped to thwart stonewalling. The table was four feet long and a couple of feet wide with an off-white Formica surface that was etched with scratches from lawyer’s briefcases. A single Fuck You was carved into the corner. Three cheap blue sled chairs covered with stain-resistant fabric that wasn’t that stain resistant surrounded the table.

There was a camera mounted in the corner, just below ceiling level. No glowing eye, but that didn’t mean someone didn’t have video running. But there was no intercom. No phone. No visible wires. None of those things guaranteed the conversation he was about to have with Vince Kinnamon was private or wouldn’t be secretly recorded. Tomasetti wasn’t exactly the trusting type, but there was no way around the risk.

McCaskill didn’t keep him waiting. Tomasetti had barely settled in when the door opened and the corrections officer produced Kinnamon. “Step inside,” he said.

Tomasetti took the other man’s measure as he shuffled in. Orange prison jumpsuit. Off-brand sneakers. No chains or restraints. Tomasetti had met him a couple of times over the years, but if it hadn’t been for the name tag embroidered into the fabric, he would have been hard-pressed to recognize him. The inmate shuffling into the interview room looked nothing like the man who’d once owned a five-thousand-square-foot house in Edgewater. Three months in jail had taken a heavy toll. He’d dropped sixty pounds. His once-tanned face had the telltale prison pallor. The only thing that was the same were his eyes. They were black as tar and radiated a cunning that could raise the hairs on the necks of even the most seasoned cops. Today, those eyes revealed nothing of what he was thinking as they latched on to Tomasetti.

Up until his arrest, Vince Kinnamon had been a dangerous man. A killer with a weakness for hard drugs, a penchant for violence, and no conscience to keep him from acting on the most primal of urges. The Cleveland PD suspected him in a plethora of crimes ranging from heroin distribution to murder. Kinnamon’s luck ran out three months ago, when he’d been busted by the feds for laundering money through his Downtown Cleveland bar, The Red Monkey. He’d been put before a federal grand jury, which had quickly handed down an indictment. He’d been incarcerated and, deemed a flight risk, denied bail while he awaited trial. Rumor had it that even in prison, Kinnamon was still connected. Still powerful. Tomasetti was counting on both those things.

McCaskill gestured toward the chair on the opposite side of the table from where Tomasetti was sitting. “Kinnamon. Sit down. There.” He turned his attention to Tomasetti. “How much time you need?”

“Ten minutes max.”

The corrections officer pointed at a button that resembled a doorbell set into the wall. “Just hit the buzzer when you’re through, and we’ll come get him.”

“Thanks again.”

The door clicked shut. Without looking at Kinnamon, Tomasetti opened the file and looked down at the blur of black and white that had nothing to do with the purpose of his visit today.

“You don’t look like a fed,” Kinnamon said.

“They treating you okay here at County?” Tomasetti asked the question without looking up.

“Fucking hacks. They treat all the inmates like shit. What’s it to you?”

“When’s your trial?” Tomasetti flipped a paper. “May?”

“June.”

He looked away from the file, made eye contact with Kinnamon. “Looks like the feds have you by the balls this time, Vince. Money laundering. They take that shit seriously.”

Kinnamon regarded him across the table, saying nothing.

“How did they get you, anyway?” he asked.

“Some fucking rat.” Kinnamon waved off the question. “I still don’t know who you are.”

“Let’s just say I’m the bearer of interesting news.”

Kinnamon stared at him, saying nothing at first, but he wasn’t doing a very good job of concealing his interest. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You heard Joey Ferguson’s conviction was overturned, didn’t you?”

“I heard. Good for him. What does that have to do with me?”

“How do you think he managed that?”

“The Cleveland cops are a bunch of fuckups.”

For the span of a full minute, neither man spoke. The only sound came from the jiggle of Kinnamon’s foot against the chair. Tomasetti could feel the other man’s curiosity, his misery, his desperation.

“Official word is he got off on a technicality,” Tomasetti said. “But I heard Joey Ferguson walked because he turned over on you. He ratted you out. Fucked you over.” He leaned back in his chair and contemplated Kinnamon. “That means he gets the house on the lake. A pretty wife. The kids. And a boat. You get life in a six-by-six-foot cell.”

The other man said nothing. But Tomasetti didn’t miss the color that climbed up his neck or the way the muscles in his jaws quivered with tension. “Who the fuck are you? And why would you come in here and tell me that shit? You got some beef with Ferguson?”

Tomasetti closed the file and got to his feet. “Good luck with your trial.”

Kinnamon hissed something, but Tomasetti pressed the call button, shutting him out. When the door opened, he left the room without looking back.

CHAPTER 21

Half an hour later, I’m standing twenty feet from the bank of a raging Painters Creek, watching a volunteer firefighter retrieve McCullough’s body from the water. Next to me, Skid slurps at an extra-large McDonald’s coffee, watching the scene as if he’s sitting cross-legged in front of the television watching an old episode of Jonny Quest. Behind us, two paramedics from Pomerene Hospital stand beneath the branches of a black walnut tree that does little to shield them from the rain.