Carrico rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? No. The guy would barely even talk about my situation. All he wanted to know was about how Glen knew his wife.How the hell am I supposed to know that? All I know is about what’s in here. Glen has his own life.”
This was it. The piece they’d been missing. “Glen knows Dr. Michalski’s wife? How?”
He snorted. “I can’t really keep track of my brother’s whereabouts from in here. But whatever. I think they both work in the courthouse together or something. Both of them do IT computer stuff.”
Which meant Glen could definitely have been the one to hack Dr. Michalski’s files.
“Do you think Glen tried to blackmail Michalski into coming to talk to you?”
The rest of Darin’s tough-guy facade fell away. “Glen has taken care of me since we were kids. He hates that I’m in here. He was helping my ex take care of Sharon, my daughter, sending them money and stuff. Keeping an eye on Sharon and making sure my ex treats her right.”
“He sounds like a good guy.”
“He’s the best. But now with the cancer, he’s...” Darin trailed off, shrugging, obviously unable to say the worddying. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without him. Especially once they send me to max security, he won’t be able to visit because he’s so sick. He didn’t say that, but I could tell. And he’s only got a couple months left anyway.”
It wasn’t difficult to see Glen was pretty damn sick. “So he got Dr. Michalski here to talk to you to see if he would recommend an earlier release for you like he had Newkirk and Anders.”
Darin nodded. “I wasn’t even hoping for early release, just maybe to see if he could get me kept here.”
“Did Dr. Michalski mention an Owen Duquette when you talked to him? Or do you know him?”
There was no light of recognition in Darin’s eyes. “No. Who is he?”
She shook her head. “Nobody important. So you don’t know how Glen finally got Dr. Michalski here to visit?”
“Nope. All I know is that the good doctor sure as hell wasn’t interested in helping me with my situation.”
Bree had been wrong. It wasGlenCarrico they needed to talk to, not Darin. But there was still one thing that didn’t make sense—those emails she’d discovered with the cipher. The more she talked to Darin, the less sense it made.
She decided to come at it from a side angle rather than directly. “How old is Sharon again? Do you get to talk to her a lot right now? Phone? Email?”
Darin rubbed his hand across his face. “She’s four. We talk a little on the phone—twice a week. No email, but that’s probably more me than her.”
“You guys don’t get email in here?”
“No, we do, but computers are Glen’s jive, not mine. I haven’t touched one since I’ve been in here.”
She stared at him. Was he lying? She didn’t think so but couldn’t be sure. What he was saying made more sense than the complexly coded emails that seemed to have come from him. “Never? You’ve never emailed any friends or former associates? Your brother?”
Darin shook his head. “Nah. They know to call me if they want to talk. I can’t type worth a damn.”
It was time to ask him straight up. “So you never sent anyone a message about Anders or Newkirk?”
“Why does everybody care about them so much? I barely knew the guys when they were here, much less now. I can’t even remember what Anders looks like.”
“Everybody cares because they’re both dead.Murdered.” She hoped she wasn’t making a big mistake by telling him this.
Darin’s eyes got wide before he sank back hard against his chair. “They are?” Panic fell over his features. “Wait—do the cops think I had something to do with it?”
She shook her head. “Actually, the cops suspect Tanner did it.”
He relaxed a little. “Oh. Your man does have some pretty big problems, then. Why are you asking me about them?”
Bree believed Darin was legitimately surprised at the news of their deaths. “You’re the only other person who seemed to know them both, besides Dr. Michalski and Tanner. I was hoping you could remember talking to anyone about them.”
“No, only to Glen when we were trying to figure out a way to keep me here, rather than going up to state pen. I just remembered that Anders and Newkirk had both made deals that had gotten them out early.”
Glen again. Time was running out, and they needed to talk to him.
