Chapter 69

“Not really,” I replied. “You see worse shit than this every day. People are crazy, and grief, anger, and hate will fuck with your mind.”

“He just traded in his teen delinquency for possible hard time, if we can catch him and his buds.” Hal cleared his throat. “So how do we catch this guy? And his accomplices?”

“I don’t know. I’m working an angle. Keep digging for stuff on this kid, find out if he has any other things going on, under the table, perhaps. On my end, I’ve found a couple of malcontents on social media who are ex-employees of Forever Safes, and mouthing off about being gypped by the company. Who knows? There could be a connection. I need to get help from a friend of mine with a certain kind of expertise.”

“This is probably something I shouldn’t be hearing about,” Hal said, sounding unhappy.

“You would be right,” I replied.

“I’m the one with the law on my side, okay? Don’t do anything stupid,” he warned.