Page 40 of Lion & Lamb

“Yeah, whaddya got?” Mickey said.

“I found a text to Archie Hughes. Something you probably haven’t seen before.”

“I doubt that, DeNardo. We seized all of his devices, remember? We’ve had techs all over his cell phone, his laptop, his tablet—”

“True, but I guarantee you haven’t seen this.”

Thisturned out to be a PlayStation 5 hooked up to a flat-screen TV that took up half the wall. This was Archie’s toy; the kids weren’t allowed to play video games—Mom’s rules, no ifs, ands, or buts. Right now, a game was on-screen. Looked like elves with machine guns…or something. Mickey wasn’t a gamer.

“What’s this, DeNardo? You think one of the pistol-packin’ little people did it?”

“Ha-ha, no. This is Worlds of Wrath—the shared-world FPS game?”

“You’re speaking Latin, only dorkier,” Mickey said.

“I won’t get into it, but you fight monsters throughout history while you chat with other players. What makes this game unique is the social media component. You can send screenshots and short clips as messages out into the real world, and vice versa.”

Mickey’s blank expression encouraged DeNardo to hurry it up.

“Anyway,” the computer guy said, “at some point, Archie must have sent Francine a clip of an awesome move or something, because she responded via text. He kept that up, and at first it was all playful, but things devolved over the past few weeks. And then, just a few days before the murder…”

DeNardo thumbed the game controller and a series of text messages from Francine to Archie appeared in giant letters on the flat-screen, as if it were evidence presented in court:

I’m tired of this. So, so tired

And:

You can’t hide forever. We have to deal with this

And, most damning of all:

Maybe someone will teach you a lesson someday

Chapter36

8:17 a.m.

“WE’RE TOOlate,” Lisa Marchese said.

“No such thing as too late,” Cooper Lamb replied.

“What are you talking about? This is the textbook definition oftoo late!”

To be fair, this did seem to be the case. The Hughes home was crawling with law enforcement as well as local news teams hoping to capture the perp walk of the century. News vans up and down the street, two—no, nowthreehelicopters circling, live feeds picked up internationally. At this moment, there was no other breaking story in the world.

Word had spread with lightning speed: Francine Pearl Hughes was about to be arrested for the murder of her legendary husband.

Thanks to Victor—who was alerted the minute a Mickey Bernstein–friendly judge signed off on the arrest warrant—Cooper had had a half-hour head start, time enough to pick up Francine’s attorney and start racing to the Main Line.

But reporters still beat them to the house, mostlikely tipped off by their secret sources inside the Philly or Radnor PD. They werenotgoing to miss this shot.

“Why didn’t she call you the moment Bernstein showed up?” Cooper asked Lisa Marchese as they climbed out of his car.

“I don’t know, Lamb. My client said she had her kids to worry about.”

“Well, you find her and make sure she doesn’t say a word to anybody,” Cooper said. “I know she’s Philly’s sweetheart, and she’s going to want to reassure her fans, but—”

“Come on,” Lisa interrupted. “This isn’t my first murder case.”

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