Shiver on the Sky
Page 34
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Faulkner drove. Gordon looked out the window at the Wave Inn as they passed it, wondering what to do next. “Maybe we should take him in.”
Faulkner shook his head slightly. “No. It’s not a good idea, Phil.”
“Well, maybe. I’ve been thinking. He’d get locked up, and then it would seem like the investigation was over, but we’re already not supposed to be doing this. We could keep looking into it, maybe with less hassle from the Feds.”
“You know better than that, Phil,” Faulkner said. Gordon looked at him blankly. “I swear,” Faulkner went on, “you keep coming up with the right answers in spite of yourself, but I’ve never known how you do it. You knew we weren’t taking him in from the beginning, or you would have read him his rights and recorded it all. Think about it.”
Gordon shrugged. “Okay. I don’t like him turning himself in either, but I dunno why. Maybe I just don’t like the idea of locking up victims, but he’d be safer behind bars right now.”
“No,” Faulkner said. “He wouldn’t.” He stopped talking while he changed lanes. He spoke casually, as if they were discussing yesterday’s traffic. “Personally, Phil, I think there is an excellent chance he would be shot trying to escape.”
“Fuck.” Gordon wanted to hit something. He did not want to think about this.
But he had no choice, not if he was going to do his job. Too bad it probably meant he’d lose it.
“Yeah,” he said a few minutes later. “Maybe. If the Feebs really are behind this, or some of them are.” He lit a cigarette to keep his hands busy, unsurprised to find his fingers were shaking. “I’m not used to thinking this way, you know. Generally I lock people up. I don’t go hiding them from the Feds. I don’t know how you can be so damned calm about it.”
Faulkner nodded. “Perhaps this time,” he said, “it really is a black thing.”
Gordon grimaced, then took a final drag on his cigarette and threw it out the window. He figured they were skating pretty close to the reason Faulkner had become a cop. He almost asked the question, but decided against it. Faulkner would tell the story when he wanted to.
“Yeah, maybe,” Gordon said again.
He took Tremaine’s .45 out of his pocket and transferred it to the glove box, wondering if he should have given it back. “I don’t like it,” he said quietly.
Faulkner shrugged.
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