CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Ambrose took a seat on the edge of the bed, his mind returning to that studio where he’d answered questions, fidgeting and suffering, so long ago. Something had crossed through his mind while they’d sat eating sandwiches and brainstorming about the case in Lennon’s sunlit kitchen, and he was trying to retrieve it. Lennon exited the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her curves, her hair in a twist on top of her head. She smiled, and time slowed, and he knew he wanted to see this very vision for the rest of his life. It was ... surreal, and in some ways, it was a full-circle moment for him. He hadn’t planned for this; in fact, he’d sworn off it. Love. A relationship. And he’d lived with the belief that he’d never have those things—that he didn’t want those things—for so long that adjusting the vision of his own future felt like both a small miracle and the riskiest thing he’d ever faced.

She approached him, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body into his. He sighed, embracing her slim body and inhaling her shower-fresh fragrance. He felt the blood move more swiftly, and then more slowly, in his veins, his muscles loosening, even though he’d thought he’d been relaxed a few minutes before.

This. Human touch. It was medicine. His shoulders lowered, his thoughts drifted, as she stroked his hair. “The cameraman,” he murmured.

She leaned back. “What?”

“Oh my God, the cameraman. There was a cameraman filming. Jamal sat with me and asked questions. But there was a man behind the camera.”

She blinked, stepped back. “Call Jamal,” she said, handing him her phone and scrolling to the number.

Ambrose stood and dialed the number as Lennon dropped her towel and began pulling on clothes, late-afternoon light caressing her skin and making it glow. Jamal answered on the second ring, sounding distracted. “This is Ambrose DeMarce. I hope I’m not disturbing you, but we had a few questions based on the videos you gave us yesterday.”

“The people who didn’t want their interviews aired? Sure. What’s up?”

“You told us no one else has or had access to the videos you didn’t post, right?”

“Correct. I can’t imagine how anyone would have access unless my Dropbox was hacked. But there’s never been any evidence of that.”

“Not even your cameraman?”

“Franco? No. There’s no need.”

“Can you tell me a little about him? Franco?”

“Sure. He’s a nice guy. Quiet but very dependable. Serious, does his job well. He’s generally in and out, not big on small talk. I hired him about five or six years ago, after my original cameraman moved out of town.”

Ambrose felt a small tremble move across his nerve endings, the same one he felt when he was hot on the heels of a criminal he’d been sent to hunt down. He knew he was close; he felt it. “What’s Franco’s last name?”

“Girone.” Jamal spelled it for him, and Ambrose nodded to Lennon, who had run into the living room, grabbed her laptop, and now had it open on the dresser.

“Can you tell me anything else about him?”

Jamal paused for a moment. “Let’s see. Franco’s mom was a big advocate for the homeless. She ran a program ... I can’t think of the name now. Tragically, she was murdered. I don’t know all the details. I think I learned about it from someone I interviewed, but I’d already heard her name. To this day, she’s often honored at events. When Franco applied to be my cameraman, he said he wanted to carry on in her tradition but he doesn’t have her outgoing personality. He prefers to stay in the shadows and help tell the stories of the Tenderloin streets from behind a lens.”

Ambrose thanked Jamal and hung up, then joined Lennon where she was bent over the screen of her laptop. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to a news article. “Zeta Girone was murdered in her home.” She picked up the laptop, turned, and climbed into bed, where she sat against the pillows. She propped the computer on her lap. Ambrose sat down on the edge of the bed and faced her. She took a minute to scan the article, obviously speed-reading. “Zeta Girone was the foster parent of four teens she’d taken in when they were relinquished to the system by clients of her foundation, Rays of Hope, located in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.”

Rays of Hope. Where had he heard that name? Had he passed by it when he was in the Tenderloin? He must have. He waited as Lennon clicked for a few minutes.

“‘The goal of Rays of Hope is to abolish family homelessness in San Francisco. Until that time, we offer assistance with housing, financial, and addiction services,’” she said, obviously reading off the website she must have opened in another browser.

“So it’s still open?”

Lennon nodded, scanning the screen. “Okay, so Zeta Girone fostered these four teens who then murdered her in her home and were apparently collecting the checks she was getting for housing and caring for them. Before they killed her, however, they kept her confined in her own basement for almost a year.” Lennon shook her head. “Holy shit,” she muttered, scrolling down the screen. “She’d taken a hiatus from work to put all her effort into helping the teens readjust and catch up on their education, since they were so far behind and still experiencing effects of their diagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder.” She glanced up at Ambrose and then back to the screen, pausing as she read for a few moments and then continued to summarize. “Instead, the teens tied her up, tortured, and taunted her for eleven and a half months, according to those familiar with the case. Eventually they stabbed her because the checks stopped coming, a consequence of unfiled necessary paperwork and missed home visits. Her body was found by her son, Franco, who was in college on the East Coast at the time of her captivity and eventual murder.” She looked up at Ambrose. “A chemistry major. Franco was a chemistry major.”

“Oh Christ.” He ran a finger under his lip. “Let me text Doc and see if Franco’s name rings a bell with him.” He grabbed his phone and shot Doc a quick text and then looked back to Lennon, who was still reading the screen.

“Money was tight, and so Franco worked summer and Christmas breaks to afford tuition,” she said. “Correspondence with his mother grew sparse, texts only answered with one or two words. He thought she was angry at him for going so far away. Apparently, they’d argued about it. When he arrived home, he discovered her mutilated corpse.”

Sickness swelled inside Ambrose. God, the heinous things humans were capable of.

Lennon turned the screen around, and Ambrose looked at the picture there, of a dark-haired boy and a woman with orangey-red hair. A mother with her arm around her son as they both smiled happily at the camera, a window behind them with a logo that had sunrays fanned out around it. Rays of Hope. His eyes moved to Franco. A good-looking kid, his smile close lipped but sincere. Was he the man collecting drug addicts and those living or working on the streets and triggering their trauma in horrific ways, encouraging them to bludgeon and stab each other to death?

“Do you think ... is he exacting revenge for his mother?” Lennon asked. “Getting even with those he considers irredeemable?” She paused. “God, she took them into her home, and they tortured and killed her. For a few thousand dollars. It’s sick.”

“If we’re right, so is what he’s doing.”

“I know. I know. It’s all sick.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she took in a breath. “I need to update Lieutenant Byrd about all of this.” He took the laptop from her and then watched as she called her boss, explaining what she’d found out about the podcast and Franco Girone. To his credit, the man didn’t waste time asking her how and when she’d done all the research and footwork that had gone into the discovery when she was supposed to be off duty. Instead, he took the information and said he’d put out an APB immediately.

Lennon hung up and looked at Ambrose. “If Franco knows chemistry, and is the man responsible for these crimes, he probably has some makeshift lab set up in his house. That’s the first place the police will go.” She looked to the side for a moment, obviously thinking. “So, if it’s him, we know how he targets his victims and has so much information about their triggers. But the thing that I don’t understand is how he might know about the pills. At the first scenes, the pills were the same recipe as Dr. Sweeton’s. Our killer’s obviously been experimenting since then, like we said. But initially, he started with those. How? How did he get one of those pills to use to produce more, if any extras are immediately destroyed?”

Ambrose ran his hand over his jaw, something occurring to him. “He doesn’t need a pill, though. Just the formula.”

“Right,” Lennon said, looking away and chewing at her lip. “In fact, that would make it easier than having to reverse engineer. So where might Dr. Sweeton keep that type of information?”

“He has all the files pertaining to Project Bluebird in his home office,” he said. “I’m positive that means the formula for the drug he uses too. His office is under lock and key, though. The man doesn’t even allow his housekeeper in there. I trust him, Lennon.”

“I know,” she said. “I do too. But what about his wife?”

“No. She doesn’t have a key either. We went over all this with him when the pills first showed up.”

“But even if he didn’t give a key to her, his wife could find a way into his office, right? If she really wanted to?”

“Why are you asking about Brittany Sweeton?”

“Just spitballing,” she said with a smile. He smiled back. The question troubled him, though, and that small tremble he’d come to know as instinct rattled inside. He’d witnessed a few terse phone calls between the doctor and his wife in the last week. He’d sensed some marital trouble but dismissed it as temporary and likely related to the current stress the doctor was under. But murder? Or participating in murder? That didn’t sound like the Brittany he’d known for many years. Sure, she was materialistic and somewhat shallow. And she’d made some suggestive comments to Ambrose over the years that were inappropriate, considering she was married. But he’d brushed her off, and she’d let it go. So yeah, personally he wasn’t her biggest fan. But what if? Lennon’s instincts were good—and they weren’t muddled by preconceived views because of familiarity.

What if the marital trouble he’d witnessed had been going on for longer than he knew? What if Brittany had done something, either knowingly or not, that had begun this whole cascade of murder and revenge?

He looked back at the laptop, scrolling down the page of photos posted by Rays of Hope, his gaze shifting distractedly over the images. They appeared mostly to be shots from functions either at the foundation or other locations, the outfits and hairstyles of those in the pictures indicating the rewinding years. He froze near the bottom of the page, his heart giving a strong jolt. “Holy shit.”

“What?” she asked, leaning forward to get a better view of the screen.

He turned it toward her and brought his index finger to the photo of an obviously younger Franco sitting at a table with Doc and someone he recognized from an old photo he’d seen in Doc’s office. “It’s Doc and his ex-wife, Gwendolyn.”

“Doc and Franco know each other?”

“Either that or they just attended the same event.”

She studied the photo for a moment before her eyes met his. “This might be nothing but a coincidence, and that photo is obviously many years old. It wouldn’t be surprising if everyone in the TL was connected in some way. But ... Ambrose, do you think ...” She looked away, biting at her lip, obviously at a loss for exactly what this meant.

He set the computer aside and then picked up his phone again, this time dialing Doc’s number rather than just leaving a text. It went straight to voicemail, and Ambrose hung up with a frustrated huff. “I think we should go talk to Doc,” Ambrose said. Lennon nodded, getting up off the bed and putting on her shoes.

He had a deep feeling Franco and Dr. Sweeton being at very least acquainted at some point was anything but a coincidence. He just had no idea what the connection was.