Anne had been right. Who could be so selfish as to bring a little girl into all of this? William wondered why his mother ever had the poor sense to give his own father a child. As the inheritor of that dysfunction, William believed less and less that he would be that much better. At least he never would’ve had Evie stabbed. And, of course, she would’ve wanted for nothing…
William cut off the thought and laughed at Egerton’s joke. There was no point dwelling on it. William had his suspicions, given how old Evie was, but if Anne wanted nothing to do with him, he couldn’t force their relationship now. He could be a patient man, if he tried.
Just now, he was exercising all the patience he had in him to deal with Egerton.
“Hullo, Daddy,” Clary said as she walked in. She touched her father’s shoulder and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
***
Anne sat in the evidence room looking carefully through each piece they’d found related to the case so far. It was tedious, but after a truly mediocre effort at being a secondary, Jeffers seemed to have fallen off the Earth. She didn’t trust his eye, anyway. She’d called DeWinters to head down here and go over it with her. They needed something that would definitively connect Egerton to the murders, or they’d be back to trying to find a hit man who had managed to stay hidden for the better part of a decade.
Opening up the sleeve with the ring in it one more time, Anne looked over it carefully. Having seen William’s ring again up close, she could tell the difference. William’s had been worn much more often. The gem was brighter. With a frown, Anne rose to check the evidence out and headed upstairs to look something up on her computer.
“Sorry!” DeWinters spotted her returning to her desk. “I had to finish up with the mugging from last night.”
“The world continues to turn, even in the face of a case that won’t crack.” Anne sat at her desk, and DeWinters came up behind her.
“What do you have there?”
“The ring we found at the crime scene. Spencer has one almost exactly like it, which is what led us to him from the beginning.”
“Ah.” DeWinters pulled up Jeffers chair. “What are you looking for?”
“The night of the gala, Wil-Spencer said that maybe his mother had given a ring, similar to his, to someone she mentored. I thought at the time that might be the case, but the worn spots on the original got me thinking. Even if his mother had given her own ring to a protégée, it wouldn’t look this new. Natural oils of the hand would have broken down some part of it.” Anne started searching. “I need a picture of Mrs. Spencer’s hands.”
DeWinters nodded and rolled back over to Jeffers’ computer to help search. A few minutes later, he called, “Got one.”
“I thought my generation was supposed to be the digital natives.” Anne walked over to look.
There she was. Pamela Spencer. Tall, blonde, and strong. Her features were softer, so it was clear that William gained much from his father, but those axe blade cheekbones of his seemed to be a maternal trait. Anne wouldn’t have wanted to cross Mrs. Spencer. Not as an MI6 agent, and not as a mother.
This picture had a clear view of her left hand. As Anne suspected, the ring wasn’t worn on her index or ring finger, but on her thumb. The fading on the right side was from when she had worn it on her thumb, the fading on the left was from when William wore it on his index finger and rubbed it compulsively. The evidence they had wasn’t connected to Pamela Spencer because she had given her ring directly to William as a family heirloom.
“So, what does that mean?” Anne murmured.
“Mrs. Spencer had big hands?” DeWinters suggested. He looked at the ring. “As did our perp.”
Anne blinked at the picture. Both William’s father and Harrold Egerton were there, as well as a tiny blond William, and a shining head of reddish-gold hair. She looked between William, Anthony Spencer, and Harrold Egerton. Then, she looked between Mrs. Spencer and the girl.
“Oh no. I know who the hit man is.”
“You do?” DeWinters looked up. “From big hands?”
Anne shook her head. This was hard. She’d liked her.
But Clary—tall, warm, redheaded Clary who had her mother’s cheekbones—was an assassin, and probably a sociopath. She’d smiled at William like an old friend (like a sister, hissed part of Anne), but Anne would’ve bet her own life that Clary had been the one to sink that knife into his side. It was hard to look at a picture of a small child and know, without a doubt, that her parents had somehow made a monster of her.
“Where’s Jeffers? We need to get a warrant for Clary Egerton as soon as possible,” Anne said.