“Oh no,” she blurted. “Liam. What happened?”

“Emilia Washington?” Carver said softly, showing her his badge. “I’m Detective Carver from the NYPD. Can we come in?”

She stood aside, let them in, her lips already trembling. He stepped inside carefully, as if the sound of his footsteps would be inappropriate right now. Turner followed, saying nothing. They’d agreed beforehand that Carver would handle the death notification. Carver had suggested it; Turner hadn’t argued, hadn’t insisted that it was his case.

“Please,” Emilia said, shutting the door. “Just tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Washington,” Carver said. “The police found Liam’s car in a parking lot on Staten Island this evening. We found the body of a man matching your husband’s description inside.”

Carver had been a detective for six years, and he’d been a patrol cop before that. He’d done dozens of death notifications. Early on, he’d counted them. But he’d lost count at some point—or more accurately had made the conscious decision to stop counting. These moments stayed with him. A mother finding out that her son had overdosed, showing him a trophy the boy had won when he was eleven. A husband who wept uncontrollably at the loss of his wife, each sob sounding like the gurgle of a drowning man. People had cried, or stared at him in shock, or yelled at him, or fainted, or asked questions, or made accusations. A litany of hurt.

“In a parking lot?” Emilia whispered. “How did he die?”

“It seems like he might have been attacked,” Carver said, his tone gentle. He kept his eyes on the woman, gauging her reaction.

“Attacked?” She blinked. “Who . . . ?”

“We don’t know yet,” Carver said.

“And are you sure . . . he wasn’t even supposed to be on Staten Island . . . are you sure it’s him?”

“The face matches the photo on his driver’s license, and we have a positive ID on his car.” Carver didn’t add that the man they’d found in the trunk was identical to the one in the photo hanging on the wall behind her. The man who was hugging Emilia, a wide smile on his face, the Statue of Liberty in the background. “We’ll probably have a positive ID in the morning, but it’s definitely him. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

He wasn’t about to badger her for her husband’s dental records or toothbrush for identification purposes right now. That, at least, could wait until morning.

She seemed to waver, as if about to fall. Carver delicately placed a hand on her arm and guided her to the couch. She sat down, her face pale.

“I thought he had an accident,” she mumbled. “He always drives so fast at late hours. On those crappy side roads just to avoid the tolls.”

Carver and Turner had talked to a cop from the Albany Police Department, finding out that Emilia Washington had called early the previous morning to report that her husband hadn’t come home and that his phone was offline. She must have been waiting for her husband the whole day, minutes trickling by, constantly trying to get him on the phone, stuck in the limbo of not knowing.

“Detective Turner, would you mind getting Mrs. Washington a glass of water?” Carver asked.

“Sure,” Turner said, already hurrying out of the room.

Carver glanced at an armchair in front of the couch, almost sat in it. But a sudden instinct told him that this was Liam’s armchair. Instead, he sat down on the couch beside Emilia.

“Mrs. Washington, when was the last time you saw your husband?”

“Yesterday, around noon. He had a wedding he had to go to.”

“A wedding?”

“Liam is a wedding photographer. He had a wedding in Manhattan on Saturday night.”

“Isn’t that a long way to drive for an evening gig?”

Emilia nodded, wiping her eyes. “I thought so. But his business was struggling. He accepted jobs all over. Manhattan, Long Island, Albany . . . he even drove to Boston a few weeks ago. He spent most days on the road.”

Carver let her talk, his mind casually translating the details into motive, opportunity. A struggling business meant an urgent need for money. Going out more could mean that he was busy doing something his wife shouldn’t know about. When he investigated a murder, every tiny detail got a dark, twisted tint.

She let out a long shuddering breath. “I only realized he was missing yesterday morning. He’d said he would be getting home late, so I didn’t wait up for him. I should have waited up. But I was tired. I get tired in the evenings.”

“Do you have his schedule?” Carver asked. “Maybe a list of clients?”

“I can look. I think he has a weekly planner somewhere on his desk.”

“Did your husband seem troubled lately?”

“Like I said, his business wasn’t doing well. He was worried about—how was he killed?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said he was attacked. Was he shot?”

“The autopsy will be performed tomorrow, and we’ll have the details by—”

“How do I get the body? Do I need to fill out a form or something? I need to plan the funeral. I need to call his brother. Is there a way to see him? Is he on Staten Island? You need to tell them to send him here. Will they send him here?” Emilia fired off the words without giving him an opportunity to answer, her eyes wide, desperate.