Okay. No more talk of hope. He wanted straightforward, he’d get it. “The state is going to offer you a deal. You plea no contest, and they’ll probably take the death penalty off the table. Or some such. Then they’ll give you a certain amount of time to respond. Yada yada. Standard operating procedure. If we have to, we can get them to hold off on even offering the first deal until I can get this sorted out.”

“You’re going to sort this out?” he asked, as skeptical as I was the time a group of boys from the playground told me they’d caught a turtle in the trees. It was a trick to get me to follow them in, and I knew it. He thought he was being duped as well, and I wasn’t sure how to convince him otherwise. I’d just have to get the charges dropped. Maybe he’d trust me then.

“I’m just saying, don’t sign anything until you hear from me.”

“If you believe I didn’t kill Emery, why would you think I’d take their deal in the first place?”

“Once they make that offer, they probably won’t offer again, and this will all go to trial. You could be facing the death penalty. Taking that off the table is a good incentive to take the money and run. Just don’t be tempted.”

“I’ll try to keep my enthusiasm at bay.”

“Okay, first question: How did you find Emery’s car?”

“I told them already, I have an app on my phone. That’s how I found her.”

“So, her phone was at the crime scene?”

“Yes. Plugged in to the charger. And hers is the kind that continues to charge even when the car is off. I found it the same night she disappeared.”

I shuffled through the papers. “Right. So you have the Find a Friend app. The one that lets you know where she is at all times.” When I glanced up from underneath my lashes, his anger soared.

“It was her idea. She wanted me to put it on my phone. Thought it would be fun or something, I don’t know. I didn’t fucking ask.”

Geesh, he was touchy. “Did she have one for you on her phone as well?”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know.”

“But you can see how that looks.”

His gaze snapped back to me. “I don’t give a fuck how it looks. I was not stalking her. It was her fucking idea.”

“Lyle,” I said, trying to calm him down. “I swear to you, I’m on your side. I’m just trying to stay one step ahead of the detective on this case, because he’s good. Make no mistake about that.”

He sat back in his chair, his eyes watering before he squeezed them shut and rubbed them with his thumb and index finger. I could feel the frustration rolling out of him in waves.

“Lyle.” I used my mommy voice. When he looked at me, I said, “I am your best bet of beating these charges. It’s what I do. The people who hired me know that, so cut the bullshit and let me help you.”

His mouth thinned into a straight line, but he scrubbed his face with his fingers, the chains clinking with his every move, then nodded. “I wasn’t even supposed to be in town.”

“That’s right. You were supposed to be at your father’s wedding in Florida, but you decided to stay?”

He took a moment more to calm down, then explained. “I couldn’t go. I went to the airport, parked my truck, caught the shuttle. I had every intention of going, but when I went inside, I just couldn’t. Something didn’t feel right.”

Now we were talking. “What?”

“Emery. She’d been upset maybe? Distant? I don’t know how to describe it, but for about two weeks before she disappeared, she hadn’t been herself. She swore nothing was wrong, but I could feel her pulling away.”

I knew the feeling.

“Besides, that was my dad’s fifth marriage. There comes a time when a son has to put his foot down.”

I grinned. “I agree. Parents,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Now that we were getting somewhere, he let me question him for the next hour with no further outbursts, though he did mention that he was going to strangle me when I cleared him of all charges, just for the principle of it. I did have a tendency to push people to mayhem and violence.

But he explained everything. Everything I could see Detective Joplin throwing at Parker, Fiske could explain. I couldn’t help but feel like Joplin jumped the gun on this one. Open and shut isn’t always wide or tight. There are subtleties in every case. Discrepancies that can sway a jury to one side or the other. I was certain that even with all the circumstantial evidence against Fiske, his lawyer could get him acquitted. But he would definitely need more than a public defender. If Parker was serious about helping his friend, he should have started there.