John slipped away to quietly text Nate and ask him to look into the location of the missing accountant. It was probably nothing more than a coincidence, but there were four of them and from what Ava said, they were desperate for money. One was missing-in-action like he’d fallen out with the others, the same way their jewelry store robbers had. And John had just watched the remaining two argue through a large portion of their friend’s funeral service.

It was a stretch, but it couldn’t hurt for Nate and Zaragoza to look into the whereabouts of the other partner in the accounting company.

When he made it back to the group milling at the burial site, Ava was just approaching the two men, who had stopped arguing but still looked like hell.

John joined her, standing with one hand on her lower back.

“How are you guys holding up?” she asked.

They mumbled replies.

Ava looked to John. “John, this is Tom and Corey. This is John.”

She didn’t offer any explanation as to who John was, and he was glad for it. He didn’t want them closing up around him. If they weren’t in custody, and he wasn’t here as an officer, he could talk to them all he wanted without any Miranda rights.

“I’m sorry to be meeting you under these circumstances,” John said, offering his hand. “Ava tells me you and another friend had an accounting business with—” he almost said the deceased, but stopped himself and substituted the victim’s name instead. “With Josh.”

The two men nodded as they shook his hand in turns.

“Where’s your other partner?” John said, making a show of looking around in mild curiosity. The victim’s mother was watching as her son’s coffin was being covered with soil, her quiet sobs shaking her shoulders. Her husband looked hopeless as he patted her back. John knew that kind of hopelessness.

“Uh, he um, wasn’t up to being here,” the one named Corey offered. Tommy only looked at his shoe as he scuffed the ground, swinging his foot back and forth.

“He’s taking it really hard?” Ava asked, her voice all concern. John hadn’t told her his wild theory. Chances were, this was nothing, and he was seeing connections that weren’t really here.

“Adam knew Josh a lot longer than us. They were friends when they were kids,” Corey said.

John almost said something about longtime friends usually wanting to pay their respects, but the parents walked up just then.

“We’re going to go back to the house so Sheila can lay down,” the man said to Tommy and Corey.

Ava and John stepped back to let them talk. John stood nearby to see what he could overhear of their conversation, but they didn’t say more before walking away. He needed to drop Ava off at her house and get to the precinct.

He hadn’t been cleared by the doctor to go to work for two more days, but he could tell the captain he was stopping by to get something out of his locker.

If he happened to swing into the war room and look over the videos from the robberies to see if the build of the men he’d just talked to matched their suspects, his captain could hardly complain about a little thing like that.