Ten o'clock.
The studio sat in a row of dead storefronts on Brighton Avenue. The window said Forever Photography in Comic Sans flaked half off the glass.
Aiden didn't want me to go.
I said, "You don't get to manage me anymore."
He stood in front of the door.
"This is a setup."
"I know."
"Knowing and going."
"Lena doesn't have time."
He grabbed my wrist.
"Iris. I can take that you hate me. I can't take you walking into a kill room."
I pulled away.
"You should have said that the night you walked me into Hayes."
He didn't answer.
Liam pressed a pen recorder into my coat pocket.
"Don't be a hero. Get the originals, get out."
I clipped it.
Aiden, behind me:
"I'm coming."
I looked back.
"L said only me."
"I'm not going in."
He hesitated.
"I'll be in the lot."
The studio was full of dead wedding props. Half-finished plaster columns. A backdrop painted with a Tuscan sunset. A tulle-dressed mannequin missing one arm. The lights had been pulled out years ago.
I walked up to the second floor. My phone lit.
Back room.
I pushed the rear door.
A woman sat in a folding chair under a single bare bulb. She wore a Patagonia fleece zipped to the chin, no jewelry. She'd dyed her hair since the last time I'd seen her on the news.
I knew her face the second the bulb caught it.
Hannah Cho. Lena's court-appointed defense attorney.
She raised her chin.
"Halloran. You got here faster than I thought."
I closed the door.
"L is you."
"Yes."
"Why hand me the Sokolov job."
She smiled.
"Because only you could scrub it clean enough."
I closed my hand.
"You're Pavel's people."
"Used to be."
She stood up.
"Now I'm whoever pays."
I shoved the rage back.
"The originals."
She lifted a small Pelican case off the floor.
"Right here."
I reached.
She pulled it back.
"Let's negotiate price first."
"How much."
"It isn't money."
She tossed a printed document onto the prop table.
"A signed statement. You'll testify your evidence destruction was directed by Aiden Halloran, AUSA. That he used his position to interfere with the prosecution of his wife's clients."
I looked at the page.
"You want to bury him."
"He's been in the way for too long."
"And Lena."
Hannah shrugged.
"A woman who killed her husband. Who's going to miss her."
I slapped her.
She turned with it. Then she smiled.
"That's a good one. Got that on tape, boys?"
The back door opened.
Two men walked in fast. They had me from both sides before I could move. One pulled the pen recorder out of my coat pocket and ground it under his heel.
Hannah held up her phone.
A live cell-phone feed: Aiden in the parking lot, in the Camry. A windowless box truck pulled up a hundred meters behind him.
"You don't sign, he's in a car accident on the way home."
I stared at the feed.
The truck didn't move yet.
Hannah pressed the pen into my hand. The man on my right had my wrist locked at an angle that hurt.
"Iris Halloran. You've hurt so many people. What's one husband."
I took the pen.
The pressure on the wrist went up.
I asked,
"The originals. They're real?"
She opened the case.
Inside: the microSD, two USB sticks, and a single 4x6 photograph paper-clipped to the lid.
The photo was a freeze-frame from a Ring camera.
Pavel was on his knees. Lena had a kitchen knife in her right hand. In the corner of the frame: Mira, eyes shut, pressed flat to the wall, blood on her lip.
It wasn't the murder.
It was the moment before. Pavel had been holding a knife to the kid's throat. Lena had wrenched it off him.
Self-defense.
Enough to overturn the indictment.
I lowered my head and put the pen down on the page.
I drew the first letter.
Outside, sirens.
Hannah's face changed.
"Who called those?"
I looked up.
"You guess."
She lunged for the case. I twisted, kicked the folding chair sideways, and went down on top of the case.
Both men got my hair.
The door blew open.
Aiden came through it without slowing down.
A goon swung a length of pipe at my head. Aiden took the blow in the back of the shoulder and shoved me sideways.
The crack of the pipe hitting his shoulder was loud in my ear.
I got my hands under the case, scrabbled it under my chest.
Hannah tried to bolt for the rear stairwell. Two of Liam's contractors — plainclothes, off-the-books — had her at the landing.
Aiden was on his feet, bracing on the prop table.
I crossed to him.
"You weren't in the car?"
He held the phone out at me.
The feed was a loop. Last night's footage of him in his own driveway, stitched.
"Decoy."
I stared a second, then hit him in the chest with the flat of my hand.
"Aiden. You lied to me?"
He winced.
"You also lied to me."
The plainclothes started walking Hannah out.
She twisted at the doorway and threw it loud over her shoulder.
"You think this stops at me? Pavel's people are in this city. Look in your office."
She fixed her eyes on Aiden.
"Your father didn't fall down those stairs by accident. You really don't know that yet?"
His hand on the prop table tightened.
The Pelican case under my chest gave a high, ugly whine.
The case got hot under my chest.
Liam yelled from the doorway, "Off it! Now!"
I didn't move.
The case had Lena's life in it.
The tech officer who'd come up with Liam pushed through, wrapped the case in a thermal-insulator bag, and pulled it clear.
The microSD survived.
One of the USB sticks burned to slag.
Hannah, going past me into the cruiser, was still smiling.
"Your backup's incomplete. Court won't accept it."
I looked at her.
"You forgot I'm K."
The smile fell off.
I hadn't attacked anything.
I'd done one thing.
Six hours before the meet, I'd planted a UE Boom speaker, paid for in cash and registered to my own iCloud, behind a busted softbox light in the corner of the studio. It had been live-streaming to my own account ever since.
Every word Hannah had said in that room — including what's one husband — was in my drive.
Not an intrusion.
My device.
Liam exported the audio cleanly.
Aiden was leaning against the side of the cruiser, white at the mouth.
I came over.
"Hospital."
"Office first."
"Are you concussed."
"Evidence has to be logged."
"I'm gonna pass out for spite."
Liam, deadpan: "He doesn't go to a hospital, you can fake a faint right here."
Aiden looked at me.
I put a hand to my forehead immediately.
"Light-headed."
He set his jaw.
"Iris."
I clutched my chest.
"My heart hurts."
Liam, expressionless: "Solid performance, Halloran."
Aiden got in the cruiser.
The shoulder had a four-inch contusion the color of an eggplant. The doctor said another two inches over and the rib would have gone.
He sat on the gurney. He couldn't lift his right arm above the elbow.
I stood by the bed.
"Serves you right."
"Yeah."
"Who told you to charge in there?"
"Couldn't help it."
"AUSA Halloran. The procedure guy."
"Suspended."
I had nothing.
The door opened.
Maureen.
She was carrying a thermos. She saw me and her face stiffened.
Aiden swung his legs off the bed.
"Ma. Out."
Maureen's eyes filled.
"Aidy. I didn't mean to — that little girl — I just wanted her mother away from you — "
He didn't help her.
"Who introduced Howard Chen."
Maureen wouldn't.
He braced on the bed rail.
"Ma. Don't make me run you."
She broke down.
"Marty. Marty Connolly."
Aiden closed his eyes.
I logged the name.
Sergeant (retired) Martin Connolly. Boston PD homicide. Aiden's father's shift partner from 2002 to 2018.
Aiden asked,
"My father's stairwell. Connolly?"
She shook her head, weeping.
"I don't know. I don't know. Your father had been working some — kid-porn ring. Something like that. After he died, Marty came over. Marty said, don't make noise, Maureen, the boy's got a future."
The veins in the back of Aiden's hand stood up.
"And you've been trying to keep me on the safer road since."
She nodded, hard.
"I was scared you'd die."
The room hurt with the silence.
He looked at me.
"Pavel's ring. They're the same line my father was on."
I asked Maureen,
"You traded Lena's daughter to keep your son out of a hard case?"
She put her hands over her face.
"I'm sorry."
I wasn't soft.
"Tell that to Lena's daughter."
She left, crying.
The next day, the supplemental investigation reopened the Sokolov file.
The microSD video came back partially recovered. The footage cut between Pavel raising the knife to Mira's throat and Lena tackling him sideways. Pavel had taken his second wound from his own bodyweight onto the blade.
The charge was reframed from murder two to a contested self-defense.
The internet flipped a notch.
Some people started defending Lena.
Some kept gunning for me.
Hacker getting whitewashed.
A felony's a felony.
I read the comments. I didn't reply.
Liam asked, "It get to you?"
"They're right to."
The night before opening arguments, Lena agreed to see me.
The visitors' room at the Suffolk County jail had a partition the color of school cafeteria milk and a phone receiver that smelled like other people's mouths.
She'd lost weight.
I sat down.
She spoke first.
"I'm not going to forgive you."
I nodded.
"I know."
She slid a single sheet of paper through the slot.
It was in pencil.
Miss. Thank you for saving me.
Below it, a wobbly smiley face.
I held it. My throat tightened.
Lena said,
"I hate you. And thank you."
I looked up.
Her eyes were red.
"Iris. If I get out, I'm taking my daughter and going. North Shore, maybe further. I want her to start somewhere where my last name isn't that one."
"You will."
"What about you."
I didn't answer.
Lena's smile was bitter.
"You should pay something."
I said, "Yeah."
Right before the visit ended she asked,
"Does the Counselor love you."
I didn't answer.
Through the glass, at the end of the corridor: Aiden. Far back. Not coming closer.
Lena said,
"He's filed a recusal request. Won't testify. Said it'd taint the case. He's left every piece on this table that could save me, though."
I stood up.
Lena's voice came after me.
"Iris. Stop being K."
I stopped at the door.
"Yeah."
Outside the jail, Aiden held an umbrella out to me.
It was raining again.
I didn't take it.
"Aiden. Let's get a divorce."