Officer Roussos returned to the interrogation room twenty-four hours after his first chat with Adoni Rex. He had some bad news.

"Harry Sotira vanished off the face of the earth," he said, without sitting down.

Tom Dolin and Adoni Rex waited patiently for him to elaborate. The two had the twin expressions of the perfect audience, receptive and mildly surprised.

"There has been no trace of him for six months. He worked on the campaign team for Mayor Zenobia King, but he quit six months ago, and nobody has heard from him since. No forwarding address, no phone calls to old friends and coworkers, no Facebook updates. I called his mother. She has dementia. She thinks she spoke to him yesterday and he said he was getting married on Sunday. Don't get excited, that sounds to me like a fairytale. I asked her where he's getting married, and she said in Akron, Ohio, Harry's childhood home town. The woman thinks she herself is in Akron, Ohio — she's in Carmel, CA, with a view of the ocean out her bedroom window. Maybe she thinks that's Lake Erie. Look, this guy is a goner. He was probably killed without a trace six months ago."

"Or," said Tom Dolin, "he made himself disappear six months ago so he could murder my client's wife and vanish without a trace."

Gregory slowly pulled the chair out on his side of the table and slowly sat down, letting that sentence roll around in his brain with the other marbles.

A big breath welled up in his chest and came back out like a sigh, but a subconscious one, not an intentional one. He rolled his head back and forth on his neck just to make it all come together. It didn't.

Finally, he said, "What did I say about wild goose chases, Mr. Rex?"

Adoni opened his mouth, but he couldn't have known what to say because Roussos was able to steamroll right over his voicelessness. "I said, do not send me on any. I said your lead had better pan out, or you would regret it. This is the best you have to offer me, a ghost did it? This man doesn't exist anymore, Mr. Rex. He's not a lead, he's a phantom. Meanwhile, I have clothes you admitted to be your own that appear in the video footage of your wife's murder. Upon your arrest, you attempted to shoot yourself in the head. We don't get that reaction very often from new widowers, believe it or not — especially not from ones who believed their newly late wife was having an affair. Now, I'm here, sitting across this table from you, for one reason and one reason only. I want the man who killed Athena Rex. If that was you, I want you. If it was someone else, I want him or her."

"Essentially," said Tom Dolin, "you would like my client to somehow do your job for you. Without resources and from behind bars. Well, don't you worry too much, Officer Roussos. We have a detective on the case who will solve this thing. You don't need to sit at this table any longer. Go back to your cushy Richmond Police Department antique desk and put your feet up, take a nap. We don't need to sit around and listen to this." Tom stood up as if to go.

"That's not how I work," said Officer Roussos. "You had one shot to solve the mystery on your own, and you botched it with this wild Harry Sotira chase. Now it's over. Time to confess. Start with how the idea got into your head to kill your wife and finish with who put you up to it so I can at least put some mafiosos away while we're here."

"You're not after mafiosos," said Tom Dolin. "You're after my client, and that's it. I know that tactic, and I can smell mafia money all over you and all over your Armani suit and your precious hero of the force, employee of the month setup. The idea that my client is innocent doesn't enter your mind for a second, or if it does, you don't care because you're not here to put criminals away, except the expendable ones they hand you over. We're done in here. I brought Mr. Rex some newspapers to read in his cell; this bullshit isn't worth it for the entertainment value."

"The interview is over when I say it's over," said Roussos. Tom Dolin moved past him to the door anyway.

Without looking back, Tom said, "My client isn't saying another word to you. I hope you'll let him go back to his cell." He walked right out the door with no further instruction to Adoni Rex.

The suspect sat with his mouth shut on the other side of the table for an hour, no matter what Officer Roussos said to him.

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. The story continues now. Please drop me a star as you pass on through, and enjoy the next chapter, fam!