12.

Once his meeting with Murphy was over, Amaro headed to the elevators immediately, hitting the button for the lowest level. He saw Cassidy right as he stepped out the doors, walking down the hall, his eyes bloodshot. Cassidy saw him as well, opening his mouth to speak, but Amaro didn't give him the chance. He lunged forward, grabbing the other man by the lapels.

"Who the fuck did you tell?" he snarled, shoving him into the wall.

Cassidy looked too surprised to fight back, holding up his hands placatingly. "What are you talking about?"

"A couple weeks ago, you told me guys were giving you shit about Olivia being at my house in middle of the night," Amaro said between gritted teeth. "And now I had a police lieutenant tell me that he heard it was a false alibi right after a bunch of detectives lured her out to the middle of nowhere because they thought she killed Garrett. And I know I didn't tell anyone else, so you better tell me who the fuck you told about it because maybe you just got her killed."

There was a flicker of horror in Cassidy's expression, immediately replaced by defensiveness as he shoved Amaro back. "What makes you so sure it was me? You were the one yelling it all over the parking lot. Maybe you're just a shitty liar."

Amaro stepped back, giving him a tight, humorless smile. "Hey man, I'm not even here to point fingers. I don't care that you've got no idea how to keep your mouth shut. I just want to know who here has it out for her."

Cassidy frowned. "What?"

"Someone here's got to be helping Lewis. Everything was set up too well for Liv to take the fall. I want to know who it is."

Cassidy was shaking his head. "I don't know. Homicide's up to some shit, no question. Doesn't mean they're helping Lewis. I mean, aren't you doing the same thing they are?"

Amaro glared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"It's just that we all turned on each other pretty quick, didn't we? First Homicide so sure that Olivia killed Rollins… and now she disappears and your first thought is that someone on the inside is helping Lewis. If it's really just him, we're not exactly making things hard for him, are we?"

"You're pretty trusting for a guy in IAB."

Cassidy shrugged. "Maybe. All I know is that there are maybe three people left in this whole place who are still on Olivia's side, and two of them are screaming at each other in the basement. You don't like me. I get it. I'm not exactly about to pucker up and ask you out to prom either. If you really need it, we can fight it out when this is all over, but if we want to do anything for Olivia, we need to help each other out for once."

Amaro closed his eyes, counting to ten. If Cassidy was being the voice of reason, the world had truly gone insane.

"Fine," he said. "Tell me what happened. When did you find out she was gone?"

"She called and told me she was going to give a consult on a case and she wouldn't be back until late. I called her around midnight and she didn't answer the phone, so I called the precinct. After that… well, you know."

"You didn't call her until midnight? You didn't think it was weird she'd stay out that late on a case that wasn't hers?"

"Rollins died in our living room," Cassidy said incredulously. "Neither of us liked being in the apartment anymore. She only ever came back to sleep, and she didn't even do much of that. I told her we should just take the hit as far as money and just move, but she wouldn't do it."

"Why not?"

Cassidy shrugged, looking at the ground. "Beats me. Once in a while we'd hear someone walk by close to the door and she'd always tense up, like she thought they were going to come bursting inside. Sometimes I thought maybe she wanted Lewis to find her, to finally get things over with or something."

Amaro rubbed his eyes. These were too many revelations for him to handle in a few short hours. One thing was clear though. There was nothing any of them could have done to prevent what just happened. They could have put it off, changed the conditions, but they couldn't have stopped it. Olivia and Lewis were bound to have their one last confrontation, as inevitably as the seasons or the tides. All they could do now was to try and mitigate the damage.

"Okay," he said finally. "They're not going to let either of us anywhere near Olivia's case. But keep your ear to the ground. If they sound like they've got a solid lead, call me."

Because we need to get there first, he thought, but didn't say aloud. Cassidy knew it as well as him.

The other man nodded. "What are you going to do?"

Amaro had already turned back to the elevators. "I'm going to go find Lewis."

Amaro's first stop was to find the jury forewoman from Lewis's trial, the one who'd given the inflammatory interview to the tabloid. She was at home when he knocked, and had plenty to say about Lewis and Olivia, none of it good. She was still convinced that Lewis had been set up to cover for Olivia's bad decisions, and that the recent spate of killings was the final bit of proof that they had sent an innocent man to prison on the word of a bad cop. If there was anyone left on earth that would be willing to help Lewis, it would be her.

But somehow, he didn't think she did. She had none of the nervous caginess he'd expect from someone hiding so big a secret, and her anger was too genuine. She truly believed that Lewis was dead, killed by Olivia or someone acting on her behalf. Perhaps she would have been willing to conceal him, to help him get away. But she hadn't.

Amaro let her rant for a little longer before excusing himself, walking back out into the warm summer air. One lead down, he thought grimly, and about a thousand left to go.

He spent the morning talking to Lewis's few known associates, following up on the few plausible tips they'd gotten recently. Everything came up empty. A shade before noon, he sat alone in his car, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

This was impossible. He'd been deluded to think it might be anything else. If three full squads of detectives with the full backing of the NYPD couldn't find Lewis in a month, it was absurd to think he might do it by himself in the matter of – what, a day? A week? How long did Olivia have left? The problem now was the problem with too many investigations – that there were a thousand potential clues, all of them ephemeral, like soap bubbles in the wind, disappearing when he reached out for them. What he wouldn't give for one solid lead, one point in Lewis's timeline that crossed with something real that he could track.

The answer came slowly, with no sense of revelation. The prison escape, of course. Lewis's skill lay with people, not walls, and Amaro doubted he could have gotten out on his own. Someone must have helped him, most likely someone on the inside. Finding who it was would be his best chance of getting to Lewis. It wasn't exactly an original thought. But he was rapidly running out of time and options.

He put his car into gear and peeled off towards Rikers.

He was let into the prison without much trouble, shown immediately to the office of the head correctional officer, a man named Dean Evans. He looked at Amaro with mild interest as he explained his case, then shook his head.

"I don't know what you expect to find here," he said laconically. "You're about the sixth detective to come by asking those same questions in the last couple months. The last two who did it are dead now, and William Lewis still hasn't been caught. Not really a good sign.

So Fletcher and Garrett had come here too, walked away empty handed. Amaro tried not to feel discouraged. "What did the last two want?"

"Wanted to know if there was any way Lewis could have been killed by request, then had it covered up.

Amaro fought down a flash of anger. "And what did you say?"

"Off the record? Let me tell you something. If Sergeant Benson wanted him dead, she could have pulled it off without even trying. She could have gotten some fucked up lifer to shiv him right in the cafeteria for the price of a couple boxes of cigarettes. It would never have been traced back to her. Killing a guy is easy. Making him just disappear like this is a hundred times the work and a thousand times the risk. Lewis is alive out there, or at least he was when he left the prison."

That was both disheartening and reassuring in equal measure. "Is there any way I'd be able to look at the security tapes from around that time? Or before, even?"

"'Fraid not. Videos are deleted every ten days. Not enough storage space. And everything even remotely related to Lewis's escape was taken by the independent commission investigating it. If you want to know how he escaped, your best chance is waiting to see what they say."

"When does that come out?"

"They think the report will be out next week and we'll know what we all did wrong. Heads are going to roll. Maybe even mine." He sounded remarkably unconcerned at the prospect.

Amaro shook his head. A week may as well have been a year under present circumstances. "Can I talk to people? Ask around?"

"If they want to talk. I can't force them."

"Thanks," Amaro said shortly, already heading towards the door.

"I knew her," Evans said suddenly, and Amaro turned.

"Not well," the man amended. "I met her a couple times when she came to interview prisoners. Seemed like a good cop. Nothing like what they're saying on the news."

"The news has it wrong." His voice was flat.

Evans nodded. "That's about what I thought. I know you don't believe it, Detective, but I'm on your side. But my hands are tied here as far as what I can do. Giving you free rein to talk to people here is about as far as my authority goes right now.

Amaro nodded slowly. "Thanks," he said again, more sincerely this time. He left the office feeling slightly reassured.

Unfortunately, the guards were less than cooperative. The specter of the independent commission's report seemed to hang over everyone's head, and the few answers he did receive were terse and free of substance. He had to resist the urge to shake them, to scream that he didn't care about their all petty violations, he was trying to save his partner's life. But he knew it wouldn't help.

The prisoners were more talkative, though not necessarily more helpful. He had to weed through the obvious lies, the falsehoods by those hoping to finagle themselves into a deal, or those who were simply bored and inclined to screw up a cop's investigation. Even so, an image of Lewis during his time in prison emerged, of an odd loner, no friends, but not a troublemaker. A nonentity lost in the shuffle of colorful personalities. No one could say much about him.

"He wasn't close with anyone," said one of the more helpful informants, a skinny man with thick dreadlocks. "Most people here end up with a group of some sort, 'cause if you don't you're an easy target. But he never did. Never got jumped either."

"Why not?"

The man frowned, his eyes clouded. "He was scary, man," he said finally. "Don't know what it was about him. He looked like the kind of guy who if you fought him, would just take his hits and smile, and then maybe you'd wake up a week later with your guts hanging out. No one wanted to test him."

"What did he do all day?"

"Nothing. Sometimes he'd work out, but most of the time he'd just wait. I saw him out in the exercise yard all the time, always in the same place. But he never did anything. After a while you stop paying attention."

Amaro's heart beat a little faster. "Can you show me where?"

"Yeah, if you can get me out to the yard."

Twenty minutes and a short talk with C.O. Evans later, Amaro was led to a corner of the exercise yard, past the basketball hoops to a small bench near the wall. He combed the area meticulously, looking at the bench, the bricks, the concrete, looking for any hint of something out of place.

The other man laughed at him. "Shit, you think he dug his way out with a spoon or something? Not a chance. It's not like this place is hidden. People could walk by and see him. Besides, a lot of guards were on his case when he first came. They would have noticed if he was up to something."

Amaro looked up abruptly. "Which guards?"

The man shrugged. "Dunno. Donovan and O'Brien liked to hang around this place. Can't say if they ever talked to him."

That was the closest he'd gotten to useful information so far. "Thanks," he said, getting to his feet.

As it turned out, O'Brien was patrolling in a different cellblock, but a guard named Tim Donovan had gone home sick not long after Amaro had arrived, which couldn't help but ring some alarm bells. As Murphy had noted, nothing was quite as suspicious as running.

Amaro considered staying to interview O'Brien just in case, but decided he didn't have time to hedge his bets. He managed to finagle the man's address and then he was off, speeding down the street in the fading light of the sun.

Donovan lived in a tiny bachelor's pad about an hour's drive from the prison. No one answered when he pounded on the door, there was no sudden hush of voices, no shuffling noises of a sick man coming to check the peephole.

Amaro stood at the door, frustrated. This was all the more proof that something was amiss. While there was always the off chance the man had gone to a hospital, it was more likely his failure to appear at his door was a sign that Amaro's instinct was correct. But so what if it was? This path led to a literal locked door and he had no probable cause to get in. But Olivia could be behind that door, a gun to her head, a hand over her mouth keeping her quiet.

No, a clinical part of him corrected. She wouldn't be here. Lewis wouldn't take her anywhere where the neighbors could hear her scream.

The thought finally brought home the true horror of what had happened, and he braced a hand against the doorframe, clenching his teeth until a wave of nausea passed. Even if she wasn't here, this man was his best chance of figuring out where she was. Amaro could kick down the door. Get him to talk. If Donovan didn't want to cooperate, he could persuade him. By any means necessary.

The consequences would be dire. He was about half an infraction from serious trouble already. This kind of stunt would lose him his badge, probably even lead to jail time. Even so, it might work. His fists itched to do it.

But maybe that would be playing right into Lewis's hands, what with his uncanny ability to drag others down to his level. The first time Olivia had disappeared, Amaro had tried to contact some of Lewis's former investigators, hoping for some advice or insight, and found that an unsettling number of them were gone. Not dead, but fired, resigned or demoted not long after they'd finished with his case. When pressed as to why, a few of their commanding officers had hinted at disciplinary issues, problem behaviors. Maybe Lewis knew that violence was ultimately a temptation that many were unable to resist.

The first time he'd tried to interrogate Lewis, more than a year back, the man had given him a single searching glance and before dismissing him to focus on Olivia, and Amaro had always wondered what he'd seen. A weak link, maybe? A problem cop, perhaps, one who could be fooled into thinking that this long trail of blood and horror could be ended by just one more act of brutal, lawless violence. Or possibly a coward, one who lacked the stomach to do what was necessary. What kind of man was he? Did he still believe deep down that he could fight monsters without becoming one? Or were monstrous decisions the only way to beat someone like Lewis - fight fire with fire, blood with blood? Which path would help Olivia?

He straightened slowly, staring at the door again for a very long time. Then he turned away, feeling like a coward and a traitor, a bitter taste in his throat.

I'm sorry, he thought to Olivia. If I'm going to help you, I need to do it the right way. Just hold on a few more hours. Please.

He headed back into the evening, head down, shoulders hunched. Behind him, in a darkened living room, someone let out a quiet sigh of relief.