“Already?”
“He called before Mercer even reached the processing room.”
“Who is the lawyer?”
“Graham Pierce.”
Naomi's expression changed.
“That's convenient.”
Lewis placed the laptop down.
“Why?”
“Because Pierce represented Victor Harlan's company.”
Lewis stared.
“You're kidding.”
“No.”
“Are you saying the same attorney represents the contractor and the officer who planted the evidence?”
“I'm saying coincidence has become very expensive.”
Lewis sat down.
“You think Mercer was instructed to target you?”
“I think Mercer was given enough information to believe I was vulnerable.”
“By whom?”
“That's the question.”
Lewis opened the laptop.
“We pulled his phone.”
“And?”
“Encrypted.”
“Expected.”
“But we found a deleted contact.”
“Name?”
Lewis rotated the laptop.
The screen showed one word.
NORTHSTAR.
Naomi stared.
She had seen it before.
Not recently.
Years ago.
Baltimore.
A warehouse.
A red folder.
A photograph.
A man whose face she couldn't remember clearly.
She closed her eyes.
For one second, the conference room disappeared.
She saw rain.
A blue door.
A concrete floor.
Atlas barking.
Daniel shouting.
Then darkness.
She opened her eyes.
Lewis noticed.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
Naomi looked at the screen.
“What date did you recover that contact?”
“Yesterday.”
Her heart slowed.
“That's impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Northstar was shut down six years ago.”
Lewis leaned back.
“Apparently not.”
Naomi stared at the word.
Northstar.
She had spent years trying to understand why certain records disappeared from Baltimore.
Why certain contractors changed names.
Why several officers retired suddenly.
Why Daniel had always refused to talk about the six months before their marriage.
Why Atlas reacted violently to certain scents.
Why she had nightmares she could never fully remember.
Why she had once awakened from a hospital bed and asked a doctor where her memory had gone.
And now Northstar had appeared again.
Inside the phone of a police officer who had tried to plant drugs on her.
Naomi stood.
“Where's Mercer?”
“Processing.”
“I want to see him.”
Lewis frowned.
“Why?”
“Because I want to ask him one question.”
“What question?”
Naomi looked at the screen.
“Who told him my name?”
Mercer sat alone in an interview room.
The cuffs had been removed.
Not because he was free.
Because the investigators wanted him comfortable enough to talk.
He sat beneath fluorescent lights with a paper cup of water.
His uniform jacket was gone.
His badge had been secured in an evidence envelope.
For the first time in twelve years, Daniel Mercer sat in a room where nobody cared that he was a police officer.
The door opened.
Naomi entered.
Mercer looked up.
“You.”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn't be here.”
“Why?”
“Conflict of interest.”
“You don't get to define my conflicts.”
He stared.