Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) by J. Mark Bertrand

guiding, the only question is where. I have to follow it. I have to think. It all fits together if I can only figure out how.

CHAPTER 8
    Camped in Brandon Ford’s office , I tell Jerry everything: the early morning meeting with the FBI , my suspicions about the match on Ford, the ex-wife’s description of Bea. He listens silently and doesn’t ask any questions. When I’m done, he just looks at me.
    “Well?” I ask.
    “I feel like you just showed me your psycho wall. No offense. It just sounds a little crazy, that’s all.” He cocks his head toward the clippings. “And this is crazy enough.”
    “This doesn’t make the hair on the back of your neck stand up?”
    He smiles. “It does now. Look—are you hungry? ’Cause I’m starving. I skipped lunch coming out here.”
    “Jerry, will you stop and think a minute? I need your help putting all this together. This Agent Kuykendahl, my gut tells me she’s trying to hide something big.”
    “Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. I can’t do this on an empty stomach. Lemme run down the street and pick us something up, okay? I think there’s a Five Guys—”
    “Not again.”
    “Come on,” he says. “You can choose the next place.”
    There’s no chance of getting him to focus, so I let him go. He promises not to take long, and I can hear him chuckling to himself as he heads down the hall. Like he’s happy to get away. It occurs to me he hasn’t had a sit-down with Hedges yet. He doesn’t know there’s already a cloud over the day.
    The door shuts behind him and I get down to work. I left my briefcase at the office, so I have to use my new phone to take pictures of the wall. They come out good, better than my three-year-old point-and-shoot, in fact. Maybe it’s time to upgrade.
    With that done, I start pulling the clippings down one at a time. I read through the content, especially where Ford underlined and highlighted things, then stack pieces on the desk. Lorenz had called this a psycho wall, but it’s really a mind map, a visual scheme illustrating Brandon Ford’s obsession. Or to be more precise, his investigation. He was compiling information about the Nesbitt shooting, about the man’s alleged background—but why? Whatever his motives, this inquiry of his must have led to his death. Which means that if I can understand the wall, it might lead me to his killer or killers.
    Once the wall is dismantled and stacked, I go to the computer. We have an excellent forensic computer specialist named Hanford, and he’d probably want me to leave this to him. I take a look anyway. The screen comes to life with a shake of the mouse. In Ford’s email inbox, there are more than fifty unopened messages. I scan them quickly. Mostly junk. Nothing from Bea Kuykendahl.
    There is, however, an email from Sam Dearborn, sent after my visit to him, asking Ford to give him a call. Strange, since he already knew that Ford was dead. Reviewing the conversation in my head, though, I realize I never made my interest in Ford clear to Dearborn. A sign of my misgivings about the case? Perhaps.
    The door opens down the hall.
    I check my watch and call out: “I thought you were coming right back.”
    Silence.
    I wheel around in Brandon Ford’s chair, my hand moving to my holster.
    “Don’t,” a voice says.
    The only things visible in the doorframe are part of a man’s head—mostly hidden by a black balaclava, only an eye showing—and the barrel of a pump shotgun.
    “Draw that gun and you’re dead,” he says.
    My hand wants to move. My heart’s racing, my vision tunneling, my aim fixing on him. The voice in my head saying Go, go, go .
    But he’s holding that shotgun steady, using cover like he knows what he’s doing. I will my hand to relax. I move it away from my side arm.
    He leans further into the doorway. The fluorescents raise a shine on his synthetic mask.
    “Stay calm,” he says. “Lift your hands. Put them flat on the desk in front of you.”
    As he speaks,