Chapter 55
“You’ve been practicing for years, yeah, I know I get it, but still …”
It had been three weeks since they had arrested Jason Crawford on seven murder and one attempted murder charges.
Conor had gotten Jojo to explain to him maybe half a dozen times how she had been able to hold her breath for what he figured must have been almost four minutes.
Everything she said made perfect sense. Except not.
The total was waaaaay bigger than the sum of the parts.
The two of them were in his office—which was a for-real office now, boxes removed, belongings put away, diplomas on the wall, the desk cleared so you could see the nameplate: Lieutenant Conor McCaffrey.
The one on his door had been altered slightly to designate him the ranking officer in the Somerset barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police.
Trident lay on the floor in front of his desk.
Conor’s mind flashed to rigging up a sling to lower the dog back to the ground out of the silo that night.
It had been miraculous that he could—and would—climb that high up those steep steps.
But it would have been absolutely impossible for the dog to reverse course and make it back down on his own.
“I know you’re wondering why I just decided to drop in today,” Jojo said, and he thought he caught a touch of pink in her cheeks.
“Hey, you’re always welcome in this office.” He lifted the Styrofoam cup with stylized lettering that spelled out Coffa Cupee. “Especially when you bring one of these.”
The first time Conor had met Jojo’s best friend, Ali, she had pronounced over him—with all the solemnity of naming a godfather at a christening—that his drink of choice should be a blonde vanilla latte.
It had tasted like he’d dumped half a cup of creamer into black coffee, and he loved it!
He could continue to indulge in the fiction of taking his coffee black and still drink coffee he actually liked now and then.
This morning’s was a seasonal offering: pumpkin spice caramel br?lée—so thick his grandmother would have said, “you could trot a mouse across” it. He sat sipping contentedly.
“I’ve made a decision and I’m going to need your help,” Jojo said.
“What exactly have you decided to do?”
“I’ve decided to find out what happened to my brother, Liam.”