I really hated interrogation rooms. This one was smaller than the last. It was as if the chief had a running joke with the rest of the department: how small of a box could they stick us in before we ran out of air? Next, I expected to be sent into an Amazon delivery box, with holes poked through the sides for ventilation. This was a huge contrast compared to the massive, open backyard I was lounging in just hours earlier before Zane called me telling me to get to the station ASAP. My parents weren’t the happiest of campers, but they also understood how high the stakes were. I promised I’d fly back to them when I got the chance.

We sat at the table, Ricardo practically on top of me from how little space there was for our chair. Zane was sitting across from me. He was looking good, even under the terrible fluorescent lighting. He hadn’t given me many details over the phone, only telling me that things weren’t where he wanted them to be. He had more questions for Ricardo. That worried me. With Herberto falling through, the last thing I needed was the attention turning back to Ricardo, who still had zero in terms of an alibi.

“Well, what’s the news?” Ricardo asked, looking between Zane and me. He looked like a scared little tropical bird in his orange jumpsuit.

“I had a meeting,” Zane said. He was looking at Ricardo. I noticed he’d been mostly avoiding my gaze since he came in. “It was with Tito, the head of the Blood Scarabs.”

Both Ricardo and I made some kind of sounds, akin to “wha the fuh?” between the both of us. “Wait, seriously?” Ricardo asked after the shock had washed over the both of us.

“Yes. I managed to set up an interview. He was under the impression that I was there filming a documentary. I wanted him to open up to me about Luanne before we started ‘filming,’ and he did. He told me that he was seeing her and that he had been over that time you saw him.”

“Great! So that’s it! And you got this all on camera? Jesus, you’re good. Your—what? Why does your face still look like that? Why aren’t you both smiling?”

I was looking at Zane, realizing what was happening. The last thing I wanted to do was smile. I clicked into defense attorney mode. “Zane, what else did you find? Nothing to incriminate Ricardo, right?”

Zane looked at me then, one of the first times since we’d started this. His eyes were pools of chaos. Something was troubling him, and that troubled me. “Ricardo, did you ask Tito for drugs? Did you offer him oral sex for them?”

My eyeballs almost dropped out of my skull. I looked to Ricardo, who I expected to spit out a flat denial, but he was turning beet red and was fumbling for his words. “I… uh, well, I…”

“Ricky,” I said, shaking my head. “Cazzo.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want anyone finding out I was on drugs again—that’s why I kept quiet about Tito.”

Zane sat up in his chair. “Ricardo, I need you to be honest with us. Did you get in a fight with Luanne? On the same day you saw Tito leaving the apartment?”

“What? No! The only time I ever fought—and it wasn’t even a fight, it was a heated argument—it was when it was caught on camera. I’d never fight with Luanne. Just that asshole Oscar.”

“Which brings me to my next question.”

Great, what the hell was next? That Ricardo was sleeping with Oscar?

“Were you sleeping with Oscar?”

“Cazzo,” I said, almost to myself this time.

Ricardo was a terrible liar. He was redder than a baboon's ass, which was coincidentally how I was starting to feel. “Ricky, why weren’t you honest with us from the start?”

“It sounded bad, okay? Even to me, it sounded bad. But it wasn’t even a big deal! Me and Oscar were a one-night thing,” Ricardo said. The hope that had been in his eyes when he’d first sat down was now replaced by a sense of defeat. “It was the same day as the fight we had.” Ricardo dropped his head, his cheeks burning like they were set on fire. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I saw Luanne had left the house, and I couldn’t help it. I went over and knocked. I wanted Oscar to apologize to me. To personally say he was sorry for what he said to me.”

“He apologized all right,” Zane said, massaging the bridge of his nose. I looked to him, trying to read his expression. He was in detective mode, and that meant everything on him was a blank slate. He wasn’t giving any indication as to whether or not he was believing Ricardo, and that made me nervous. I definitely believed him, but that wouldn’t matter at the end of the day. If Zane couldn’t find anything, then all that mattered was what the jury believed, and he had a feeling they would lean toward Zane’s train of thought.

If only Tito had confessed. Then we would have had a slam dunk case…

Tito.

This entire whirlwind of a situation stopped me from realizing just how much danger Zane had put himself in. But that wasn’t all. Zane had lied to me. He could have died, and I would have been thinking he was in his office googling shit the entire time. I would have found out from a call or a knock on my door, never guessing that Zane was even in danger in the first place. Why didn’t he just tell me he was meeting with Tito? It wasn’t like I’d follow him and mess shit up somehow. Cazzo, I was a grown-ass fucking man; I could handle it. I just couldn’t handle lies, even if they were roundabout lies through omission. I didn’t like feeling a lack of trust. It made me angry. It sparked a resentment in me that was left behind from the implosion of my last relationship.

“Well, Tito said that Luanne looked as if she’d just gotten back from fight club that night he went over. She was in an altercation with someone.” Zane’s gaze was pinned on Ricardo. I tamped down my growing anger and focused on the issue at hand. We’d deal with the trust thing later. “Are you sure she didn’t find out about you and Oscar? She didn’t maybe come over and get into a fight with you?”

“No,” Ricardo said, shaking his head. He seemed confident in his answer, but now there was an unshakable fog of questions hanging over everyone’s heads. Doubt. It was a cruel spectre. “I swear. I didn’t do it. You guys have to believe me. Enzo, you’re my lawyer—you believe me, right?”

“Ricky, I will craft the best defense for you as I can, regardless of the circumstances.” I didn’t want to give him an affirmation; I wanted to give him the truth.

“It’s still not over,” Zane said. He must have read the despair written across Ricardo’s forehead. He looked like he had nothing left. “If Tito isn’t lying, then maybe whoever got into a fight with Luanne could be the one responsible.”

“The only people I ever see going to that house are mailmen, food delivery men, and their families. I’ve seen one of their parents, I think Oscar’s, stay there for at least a month. Luanne’s sister visits a lot, too. Her car’s always parked half in my spot—it’s like she does it on purpose. Those are the only connections I know they have, and I don’t see any of them beating up Luanne.”

I sighed. The fact that I felt like we were being held inside of a cat’s litter box didn’t help. This place stank and it was tiny and there were zero windows. I was feeling anxious, but I had to control it. My confidence needed to override. I was an award-winning defense attorney. I was going to get Ricardo off even before I hired Zane’s help; I’d be able to make him a free man without it, too.

“All right,” I said, feeling upset with Zane and worried for Ricardo. “To wrap things up: we still have no clue who did it. All we know is Ricardo had a one-night angry, self-hating gay fuck with Oscar, and Luanne was in a secret fight club. Two things the jury is going to looove.”

Zane looked to me. This was the first time that our eyes locked for a substantial amount of time. He was piecing things together, I could tell. He was realizing where my mood was heading. “Enzo, I’m going to find out who did this. Don’t worry.”

I wanted to trust him, but that was hard to find at the moment. I put a reassuring hand on Ricardo’s back, as he was currently slumped forward with his head inside the cave created by his arms. “You’ll be okay. There’s no way the prosecution can prove anything beyond reasonable doubt.”

“I didn’t do it,” he said, the sound of his voice bouncing off the table and echoing in his cave.