CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thomas Brennan sat at the metal table in the interrogation room with his hands folded in front of him, looking at nothing in particular.
He had been sitting that way for twenty minutes.
Miles had tried three different approaches to make the man speak in that time, and Vic had tried two.
All had failed. Direct questions about his whereabouts during the murders.
Softer inquiries about his relationship with Claudia Ashford and how the bankruptcy had affected him.
An appeal to professional pride, asking about his platinum expertise and whether he knew of anyone else with similar skills.
Brennan had responded to exactly none of it.
He was either used to this sort of situation or was just very good at not letting anything get under his skin.
"I want my lawyer," he'd said once more, when Miles had finished the last attempt. He said it as if chanting it, in a soft, flat tone.
Vic was leaning against the wall near the door with her arms crossed.
She had stopped participating ten minutes ago, letting Miles try to find the angle that would open Brennan up.
But there wasn't an angle. Brennan had made his decision and was sticking to it with the kind of resolve that came from either guilt or experience or both.
Miles stood up from the table. He knew if he stayed here and confronted nothing but silence, he was going to lose his cool. "We'll wait for your lawyer then."
Brennan said nothing. He didn’t even offer a sly smile or defeated frown. The man was totally emotionless.
Miles left the room and Vic followed, closing the door behind them. They stood in the corridor outside and Miles exhaled slowly, pushing his frustration down to where it wouldn't interfere with his thinking.
"He's not going to talk," Vic said.
"I know."
"So, what do you want to do?"
Miles thought about it. The man had run, which was significant.
But running didn't always mean guilt in the specific crime you were investigating.
Sometimes it meant something else entirely.
Outstanding warrants, probation violations, a history with law enforcement that created an instinct to avoid it whenever possible.
Brennan had the skills and the grievance, but he hadn't given them anything that confirmed he was their killer, and the silence itself could mean a dozen different things.
Miles looked at the closed door of the interrogation room. He felt his frustration bubbling up and he knew that the decision he’d just made had been a direct result of that. But for right now, he was fine with that. "Give me a minute."
He walked down the corridor to the conference room they'd been using and found the file folders Detective Linhart had compiled for them.
He picked up the one with the crime scene photographs from both murders, pulling out four images: Diane Rothschild's face, the platinum visible in her mouth and throat.
A close-up of the coating itself, showing the precision of the application.
Michael Williams in the hotel room, similarly treated.
The platinum watch on the bathroom counter.
He took the photographs back to the interrogation room. As he passed Vic in the hallway, her eyes went wide. Miles barely heard her utter “Oh, shit,” before he walked inside.
Brennan looked up when the door opened. His expression shifted slightly when he saw Miles had something in his hand. Miles sat down across from him and set the photographs face-down on the table between them.
"I want to try something different," he said. "You've made it clear you're not going to answer questions as a suspect. I respect that. But I'm going to ask you to look at these as a craftsman. As someone who knows platinum work better than most people in this city."
Brennan was quiet. In his silence, Vic entered the room behind them. Miles was slightly surprised when she didn’t object to what he clearly had in mind.
"You don't have to say anything about yourself," Miles continued.
"But I need your expertise. If you aren’t guilty—which I still find unlikely seeing as how you ran from us the moment we called out your name—I need your help.
I need to understand what I'm looking at here, because the technical aspects of these crimes are beyond my knowledge.
" He tapped the photographs with one finger. "Will you look at them?"
Brennan hesitated as a look of doubt crept across his face—the first real emotion he’d shod since. Then he gave a small, reluctant nod.
Miles turned the first photograph over.
Brennan's eyes went to it immediately. He stared at the image of Diane Rothschild for several seconds, his expression unreadable at first. Then something shifted.
His mouth opened slightly and he leaned back from the table as if the photograph itself had pushed him.
He looked disgusted one moment, scared the next, and then his body seemed to settle on baffled.
"Jesus Christ," he said quietly.
Miles turned over the second photograph. This one showed the close-up of the platinum coating.
Brennan looked at it and his face went pale. He brought one hand up to cover his mouth and turned his head away, looking at the wall instead of the table. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse. "What the hell is this?"
"This is what we're investigating," Miles said. "Two people dead. Both of them were killed this way."
"Why are you showing me this?" Brennan's voice had gone up slightly, anger or shock or both breaking through the careful composure he'd maintained since his arrest. "You think I did this? You think I…Jesus…"
Miles turned over the third photograph. This time, it showed what the killer had done to Michael Williams.
Brennan pushed his chair back from the table with a scrape of metal on tile. "I didn't do this. I couldn't. I wouldn't."
Miles watched him carefully. The reaction was too immediate, too visceral.
This was not a man looking at his own work.
This was a man looking at something that horrified him.
He was so affected by it that it literally looked like he was seconds away from trying to claw his way through the walls to get away from the pictures.
"Tell me about the technique," Miles said.
"What?"
"The platinum coating. Tell me what I'm looking at."
Brennan shook his head, still staring at the photographs. "This isn't jewelry work. This isn't electroplating the way we did it at Ashford."
"What is it then?"
Brennan looked at the close-up again, leaning forward now despite his obvious revulsion. His professional instinct seemed to be overriding his shock. "This is messed up is what it is.”
“I agree. But we need to know how it was done. How does this differ from jewelry work?”
Brenna licked at his lips for a second, as if trying to will them to form words.
With a slight tremor in his voice, he was finally able to start.
“First of all, look at the uniformity of the coating.
The thickness. This is a medical-grade application.
The kind of process used for surgical implants and medical instruments.
It requires specialized equipment and a very specific understanding of how platinum bonds to organic material.
" He looked up at Miles. "Whoever did this wasn't trained in jewelry. They were trained in something else."
"Medical or scientific backgrounds, maybe?"
"Yeah, probably. But even then…why?"
"That’s what we’re trying to find out. Was there anyone at Ashford who had that kind of background when you were working at Ashford? Anyone who left jewelry work to go into medical applications?"
Brennan was quiet for a moment. Then his expression changed again, this time into something closer to horror as a connection was made. "Daniel Hartley."
The name hung in the air between them…a familiar one to Miles and Vic. He had been next on the list until their trails had been turned in the direction of Brennan.
"Hartley left Ashford five years ago, just before things went belly-up," Brennan said slowly, as if he were assembling the pieces even as he spoke.
"He went to work at a medical device laboratory.
He specialized in platinum coatings for implants.
I remember because we all thought it was a strange career move, but he said the money was better and the work was more stable.
" Brennan looked at the photographs again.
"He would know how to do this. He would have the equipment, the training, everything. "
Miles gathered the photographs and stood up. "Thank you, Mr. Brennan."
"I didn't do this," Brennan said again, quieter now. “I swear to God. This is, is…this is just sick.”
"I believe you," Miles said, not sure if it was proper protocol to admit such a thing in front of a witness or not.
Miles turned to leave the room and found Vic standing by the door. She nodded to him, a slightly impressed look on her face. Together, they walked back out into the corridor, Miles still holding the crime scene photos.
"Hartley," Vic said. “Do you think Brennan is telling the truth or just trying to get the attention off of him?”
“I think he’s innocent. I don’t think you can fake that sort of reaction…no matter how good of an actor you might be.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
"So…Hartley," Miles confirmed. He pulled out his phone and dialed Sarah Kim's number. They walked away from the interrogation room, further down the corridor, as the phone began to ring in his ear.
Kim answered on the second ring. “This is Agent Sarah Kim.”
"Hey, it's Miles. Did you run background checks on the other names from the Ashford employee list? The ones besides Brennan?"
"I did," Kim said. "Pulled everything I could find on all eight names you flagged. I thought I’d sent them over in that data dump."
"What did you get on Daniel Hartley?"
"One second…" He heard her typing on the other end and, and less than ten seconds later, her voice was back on the line.
"Hartley, Daniel. Age forty-seven. Worked at Ashford Fine Jewelers for fifteen years, but he left five years ago.
It looks like he went to work at a medical device company called BioMed Solutions in Lower Manhattan, where he specialized in platinum applications for surgical equipment.
" She paused. "He was let go from BioMed two years ago.
And after that, there's no employment records that I can find. "
"What happened two years ago?"
“Well, let’s see,” she said over the sounds of even more typing.
In a strange way, it warmed his heart to think of her hard at work, always ready to answer their questions.
She really was the backbone of this whole operation sometimes.
"His wife died,” she said. “Cancer...I've got the death certificate here.
She passed away after a fourteen-month illness.
" Kim's voice softened slightly. "The medical bills were significant.
According to public records, Hartley filed for bankruptcy eighteen months ago.
He lost his apartment, had to relocate to somewhere cheaper in the Lower East Side. "
"Anything else?" Miles asked. They’d come to the break room and walk inside. He habitually grabbed a donut from a box that was sitting on the counter, not even thinking about it. As he absorbed all of this information on Hartley, he felt like he was moving on autopilot.
"That's all I've got so far. You want me to dig deeper?"
"Yes. Everything you can find. Social media, known associates, anything that might even slightly connect him to Gabriel Kane or his network."
"I'm on it."
“Thanks, Sarah.”
Miles ended the call and looked at Vic. "Hartley's wife died of cancer two years ago. The medical debt destroyed him financially. He filed for bankruptcy and lost his home."
Vic was already putting it together. "The wealthy elite are wearing platinum jewelry while he's drowning in medical bills, trying to save his wife.
He lost his wife and his home in such a short amount of time.
Sure, as hell seems like enough to push someone to take extreme measure to find some sort of justice, don't you think? "
"It broke him," Miles said. "The grief, the debt, the unfairness of it all. And somewhere in that, Kane's philosophy gave him a framework—a way to make sense of the anger and redirect it into something that felt like justice."
"That's a lot of assumptions," Vic said.
"It is," Miles admitted. "But it fits. The technical skill, the timeline, the motive. And Claudia Ashford said Hartley was a good man who deserved success. People don't just become killers overnight. Something has to break them first."
Vic pulled out her phone and opened the file they'd compiled on the Ashford employees. She scrolled through until she found Hartley's information. "Last known address is in the Lower East Side. Apartment 3C on Rivington Street."
Miles checked his watch. It was coming up on 4:30 in the afternoon. If they left now, they could probably beat the surge of five o’clock traffic as everyone was going home from work. "Let's go. No point in waiting, right?”
"What about Brennan?"
"Let him wait for his lawyer. We'll cut him loose once the paperwork's done.
" Miles grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair. "But right now, we need to find Daniel Hartley. Because even if by some chance he’s not the killer, we know he has the expertise to answer just about every question we have.”
“But…I know that look in your eyes, Miles. You think he’s the killer?”
Miles nodded as he felt urgency building in his chest “Yeah, I do.”
They left the conference room and headed for the elevators. Miles could feel the investigation tightening around a single point, the way it sometimes did when all the disparate threads finally started pulling in the same direction. They had a name, a motive, a technical profile that matched.
What they didn't have was time.
The elevator doors opened and they stepped inside, heading to what he hoped was the last stop of this grueling case.