“—for the murder of William Baldwine. Anything you say can and will be used against you—”

“Edward!” Lane rushed forward, but Ramsey caught him and held him back. “Edward, what the hell is going on!”

Even though he knew. Goddamn it, he knew.

“You can stop with the Miranda rights,” Edward said impatiently. “I did it. I killed him. Take me down, book me, and don’t bother getting me a defense attorney. I’m pleading guilty right now.”

Annnnnnd that was how you turned the volume of the entire universe down: Lane literally went deaf as Merrimack said something further, and Edward replied, and there was more conversation—

A blond woman entered the cottage in the same way Lane had, in a panic.

But unlike him, no one had to drag her back. She stopped on her own and, after she got a gander at everyone, she crossed her arms over her chest and kept silent.

“Edward …” Lane was not consciously aware of speaking. “Edward, no.”

“I’ll tell you how I did it,” his brother said as he looked over. “So you can have your peace about this. But after I’m finished speaking … Lane, you don’t come to see me down there. You keep going about your life. You marry that good woman of yours. You take care of the family. You do not look back.”

Merrimack opened his mouth, and Edward turned on the guy. “And you just shut up, okay. Get your pad out. Take notes. Or wait for me to do this again a hundred times down at the station, I don’t care. But he deserves to hear the story.”

Edward refocused on Lane. “I acted alone. They’re going to try to say I had help. I didn’t. You know what Father did to me. You know that he had me kidnapped and tortured.” Edward indicated his body. “These scars … this pain … it’s all because of him. He arranged for it all and then didn’t pay the ransom so he’d look like the victim. I have hated him all my life … and then this happened and … let’s just say I had a lot of time to think about ways to kill him as I lay in agony, unable to sleep or eat, because I’m ruined.”

“Edward,” Lane whispered.

“I snapped the night I killed him. I went to our house to confront him because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I parked in the back and waited for him to come out of the business center from his having worked late as usual. I didn’t think I was going to murder him at the time, but then, just as I was getting out of the truck, he lurched, fell down to the ground, and rolled over onto his back like something was wrong.” Edward’s face assumed a faraway expression. “I approached him and stood over him. I know the signs of a stroke, the symptoms, and he was having one. He was wincing and motioning to his head … and then his left side didn’t seem to work, his arm and leg flopping as if he couldn’t move them.”

“The autopsy did show evidence of a stroke,” the detective broke in. “Because of the brain tumor.”

Edward nodded. “I watched him suffer. I don’t have a cell phone, and I thought about going into the house and calling nine-one-one, but you know what? I decided not to. It was funny … the way he contorted up like he did?” Edward curled one of his hands into a claw. “It was like what I do. When I’m really hurting and the pain meds haven’t kicked in yet … it felt good to see him like that. Fair. Right. And I can’t tell you when exactly I came to the decision that I really was going to kill him—I guess when it became apparent he wasn’t going to die right then and there.”

Edward shrugged. “Anyway, I went over to the Red & Black truck I’d driven in—it’s the one that’s parked behind Barn B right now. The keys are in it, and I figure you boys in blue are going to want to take the thing with you. So … yes, I went over and backed the truck up. There’s a winch attached to the outside of the cab. There was some rope, and I hog-tied him, attached the hook, and dragged him into the bed because I knew I wasn’t going to be strong enough to lift him myself. Then I drove down to the shores of the Ohio. That was the hard part. I got him out of the truck, but pulling him along the ground? I hurt my ankle badly—to the point where a couple of days later, she”—Edward pointed to the blonde—“had to call Dr. Qalbi out to see about it.”

Lane frowned as the blonde seemed to recoil, but then he refocused on his brother.

“But wait,” Lane interjected. “He fell off the bridge.”

“No,” Merrimack said. “He didn’t. Or at least, there is no footage indicating whether he did or he didn’t. The security cameras that were supposed to be operational weren’t on that night—part of a number of glitches the city has had since the thing newly opened. So we have no footage—and given the poor condition of the body, extended time in the river would account for the extent of the damage to the extremities and torso.”

Edward nodded. “So I got him over to the edge of the water. We’d had so much rain, the current was strong. I found a big stick and started to push him in … but then I went back to the truck, got a hunting knife, and cut off his finger. I wanted the ring. He screamed when I did it, so he was clearly alive, but he could barely move so he couldn’t fight me. Then one last shove with the stick and he was gone. I threw the knife in after him, kept hold of the finger, and drove back. I buried it underneath my mother’s bedroom window because he had treated her with disrespect their entire marriage—he’d had at least one child out of wedlock that we know about, and he fucked your soon-to-be-ex-wife and got her pregnant! I just … so yes, I did that thing in the ivy bed, and then came back here. I live alone, so no one knew I’d even been gone, and no one knew I’d waited for him, either.”

“But then the finger was found,” Merrimack said.

“That was when I knew I had to do something. I came to the visitation hours and snuck away to the business center. I went to the security room, signed into the system, erased the footage from that night, and waited to see if you guys would figure it out.”

“And we did.” Merrimack looked around at the other officers and nodded. “We got you.”

“So take me down and let’s get this over with.”

There was a lull, and Lane couldn’t believe it, but he thought he heard his phone ringing out in the car—no, wait, it was in his pocket. He silenced the thing without looking at it.