Chap­ter 13 of We Solve Mur­ders brings Steve face to face with Gary Gough in an uncom­fort­able yet piv­otal con­ver­sa­tion, mark­ing a moment of reflec­tion and moral con­flict. Steve is there to address a trou­bling issue involv­ing Gary’s daugh­ter, Lau­ren, who has report­ed­ly been bul­ly­ing anoth­er girl to extort mon­ey. Steve’s inten­tion is clear: he hopes to con­vince Gary to step in and guide his daugh­ter to do the right thing. How­ev­er, as the con­ver­sa­tion unfolds, it becomes painful­ly clear that Gary has no inter­est in tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for his daughter’s actions. Gary’s dis­mis­sive atti­tude about his role as a father leads him to claim that chil­dren should be allowed to make their own deci­sions. Steve, famil­iar with the type, knows that peo­ple like Gary are dif­fi­cult to change, but he feels com­pelled by his sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty to con­front him.

As the exchange inten­si­fies, Gary, ever the oppor­tunist, offers Steve a bribe, ask­ing how much it would take for him to back off and leave the sit­u­a­tion alone. Steve, stand­ing firm in his prin­ci­ples, refus­es the offer, insist­ing that what’s at stake isn’t some­thing that can be bought off. He stress­es the impor­tance of teach­ing Lau­ren the con­se­quences of her actions and reminds Gary that Lauren’s priv­i­leged upbring­ing makes her a bul­ly, not a vic­tim. This clash between their per­spec­tives is where the ten­sion peaks, as Gary’s indif­fer­ent world­view, shaped by a “law of the streets” men­tal­i­ty, con­trasts with Steve’s belief in per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. This con­fronta­tion reveals much about their dif­fer­ing atti­tudes towards ethics and pow­er. Gary’s refusal to engage with the mat­ter reflects a broad­er soci­etal issue, one that Steve has encoun­tered time and time again: peo­ple who refuse to take account­abil­i­ty for their actions, often at the cost of oth­ers.

After leav­ing Gary’s house, Steve reflects on the encounter, feel­ing both frus­trat­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned by the con­ver­sa­tion. He rec­og­nizes that indi­vid­u­als like Gary are ubiq­ui­tous in society—people who main­tain a detached, self-serv­ing atti­tude and avoid respon­si­bil­i­ty, yet expect oth­ers to bear the con­se­quences. The encounter, although frus­trat­ing, is not unfa­mil­iar to Steve, who has often encoun­tered this type of per­son in his work. How­ev­er, rather than dwelling on the neg­a­tive inter­ac­tion, Steve attempts to retreat into the things that bring him com­fort and solace: his pets, the sense of com­mu­ni­ty he feels at his local pub, and the sim­ple rou­tines that help him ground him­self in times of dis­tress. He looks for­ward to Ital­ian night at the pub, see­ing it as a much-need­ed break from the com­plex­i­ties of the day. In this way, Steve attempts to bal­ance the emo­tion­al weight of his respon­si­bil­i­ties with the com­fort­ing sim­plic­i­ty of his every­day life.

Want­i­ng to shift his focus from Gary’s apa­thet­ic nature, Steve sends a text to Amy, indi­cat­ing the start of a new con­ver­sa­tion that will bring his atten­tion back to the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Andrew Fair­banks. Amy, involved in an inves­ti­ga­tion that Steve is begin­ning to take a keen inter­est in, becomes a cat­a­lyst for Steve to refo­cus his ener­gies. His curios­i­ty is piqued by the mys­tery sur­round­ing Fair­banks and the poten­tial links to a much larg­er scheme involv­ing a pop­u­lar ener­gy drink com­pa­ny and its media con­nec­tions. The chapter’s tran­si­tion from Gary’s apa­thy to the intrigue of the Fair­banks case sig­nals a shift in Steve’s nar­ra­tive, mark­ing a move from deal­ing with moral quan­daries in his per­son­al life to active­ly engag­ing in an inves­ti­ga­tion that could uncov­er larg­er, more dan­ger­ous truths.

The con­ver­sa­tion with Gary weighs heav­i­ly on Steve, yet it also acts as a reminder of the inter­nal strug­gles he faces between his past, present, and future. While try­ing to resolve the chaos around him, Steve con­tin­ues to wres­tle with the moral dilem­mas that have long haunt­ed him. The more he uncov­ers about the peo­ple he inter­acts with, the more he ques­tions the nature of his role in their lives. As the inves­ti­ga­tion into Fair­banks deep­ens, Steve real­izes that these eth­i­cal deci­sions will fol­low him, influ­enc­ing not only the out­come of the case but his own sense of iden­ti­ty. In the con­text of solv­ing the mur­ders sur­round­ing Fair­banks, Steve will be forced to con­front the com­plex­i­ties of trust, moral­i­ty, and the dif­fi­cult choic­es that arise in the pur­suit of jus­tice. The ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion serves as both a pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenge and a per­son­al test of his abil­i­ty to main­tain his integri­ty in an often murky world.