by K. J. Emrick
“Say that five times fast,” Ellen said.
“Say it once,” Darcy countered. “I had to practice it in my head on the way over.”
Ferguson slowly sat back down on his couch, his face still defiant even as the wind was knocked out of his bluster. “But… but I just picked the two men out of your line up! Those two guys right there. I’m telling you, those were the ones from the circus that day. What about that? Why don’t you go and question those guys?”
“Because those guys,” Ellen told him, “are cops.”
Whatever he’d been about to say next, Ferguson choked on it. He sputtered, moving his hands like he might grab an excuse out of the air, before he finally clamped his mouth shut and slumped over his knees. “Guess you got me. Those guys are really cops?”
Darcy put the report back in the folder, along with the photo array, and then closed it up. “Yes. They’re actually members of the State Police. They were nice enough to help me out when I told them what I needed. They changed into plain clothes and then posed for us to take some pictures. You did the rest for me. I’m pretty sure you picked out a sergeant and a lieutenant.”
Ferguson managed a weak laugh. “Bravo, Darcy Sweet. Just… bravo. This is the part where I break down and tell you why I did such an underhanded thing, is that what this is?”
“Let me save you the time,” Darcy told him. “Usually I’d love to hear a good monologue but I’ve got too many other things to take care of and my husband is still in the hospital. So here’s what I think. I think you needed money. I think you were running low after you left the circus, or you didn’t have enough to keep your dad’s old place here, or you’re just plain greedy. So, you arranged to transfer the money in your bank account to a dummy account. Only, you weren’t worried because you belong to that… what was the name of the organization? Life something?”
“Lifelatch,” Ferguson supplied, nodding his head. “They pay you back if your identity gets stolen.”
“Which is what you said happened. Someone used your ID to drain your account.”
Ferguson nodded again.
“Only,” Darcy continued, “no one had to steal your identity.”
This time, he shook his head. “I lied about that.”
“So, in your perfect scheme, you would have both the money you said was stolen from you, plus an equal amount more paid back to you by Lifelatch. Double the money. All you had to do was drain your own bank account.”
“Pretty nifty idea,” Ellen said absently. When she caught Darcy’s look, she quickly added, “If it wasn’t a crime, I mean.”
“Which it is.”
“Right,” Ellen agreed with her. “Which it is.”
Ferguson heaved a big sigh. “So what now?”
“Now,” Darcy said, finally standing up, “if I were you, I’d turn myself in down at the police station. I’d offer you a ride there, but I have a daughter waiting for me at home.”
Outside, Ellen whistled a long, high note. “You are kind of amazing, you know that, Darcy?”
“Coming from one of the most amazing women I know,” Darcy told her, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You should.” They got into the car and Ellen started the Fiero’s engine up. “I don’t think much of most people.”
“I’m not most people.” Darcy hid her expression as she clicked her seatbelt in place, but she really did think the world of Ellen.
Backing out of the driveway, Ellen turned them back toward Darcy’s house. “You know you still wouldn’t have gotten him to confess without that forensic accounting report. Good thing you could get it so quick.”
“You mean my detailed inventory report from the bookstore?” Darcy asked, taking out the sheet she had used to trick Ferguson into a confession. “Yeah. Thought that might come in handy.”
Chapter 13
The interview room the State Police showed them to looked a lot like the one at the Misty Hollow Police Department. Just bigger. Darcy supposed there was only so much you could do with a room like this.
A metal table was centered in the room, with a single chair on the one side, and two chairs on the other. The walls were painted a drab gray. To the right of the door, a rectangle of glass let people in the hallway look inside. From the other side it would be mirrored, which meant the man sitting in there wouldn’t be able to see who was out here, watching him.
Adolphos Carino.
He sat defiantly in an orange jumpsuit with the word “inmate” written across the back. His arms strained the sleeves. His neck strained the collar. A little smile crooked his mouth even though his hands were cuffed and chained to the metal ring bolted into the table in front of him. Even charged with three counts of attempted murder, the man was certain he would walk. Again.
At least, that was what he thought was going to happen. Darcy was here to ruin his plans.
Two State Police sergeants stood in the hallway with her, more than willing to let someone else have a go at a man who had dodged every question so far. Darcy knew Adolphos would be a tough man to crack.
She also knew that the man next to her was tougher still.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked Jon.
He nodded, keeping his eyes on the interview room and its sole occupant. The bruises had faded a little in the three days since he had been transferred to Meadowood’s St. John Camilus Hospital. The stitches had come out, but Jon would have a permanent scar above his eye to remind him of this ordeal. Darcy thought it made him look dangerous. Staring at himself in the mirror this morning, Jon had told her it made him look old.
No way, she told him. We’re too young to be old.
“He’s waived his Miranda rights,” one of the State Police officers told Jon. “We’ve got the waiver on a signed form. He’s all yours, Chief.”
Slapping a folder against his thigh, Jon nodded again, and one of the officers buzzed the door open for them. Darcy had the pleasure of seeing shock and surprise register on Adolphos’ face as he saw who was here for him, before he schooled his expression back down to his typical impassive smugness.
Jon limped on his broken foot in its cast, leaning heavily on a cane, and maybe only Darcy could see the way he held his right hand cramped. He was still in pain, still healing, but he had wanted to do this himself, and no one was going to tell him he couldn’t.
Adolphos looked him up and down with a sneer. “You’re not looking so good, Chief. Perhaps you need more iron in your diet.”
When Jon got to the chair he lowered himself into it, loosened his tie, and calmly put the folder he had brought down on the table. Darcy admired his control. She wanted to slap Adolphos across his face and make those gray eyes rattle in his head.
Jon looked across the table without blinking. “You tried to kill me,” he said, stating it as a fact as easily as if he were explaining that water was wet.
Adolphos shrugged. “So you say. I may have said some things back at the casino when your lovely wife and her friend were trying to break my arms, but even if I did such excited utterances would never hold up in court. Oh, nice scar by the way.”
He leaned down so he could tap at his own crescent scar under his eye with his restrained hands, then he pointed up at Jon’s on his forehead. Jon didn’t say anything. He just waited.
With an exaggerated sigh, Adolphos shrugged. “You see, Chief, I’m afraid that once again I won’t be in jail for very long. I know too much. What little you might be able to make stick can be easily traded away with some of the information I have to bargain with. So let’s not waste our time, shall we?”
Darcy hung back by the door. There was another chair next to Jon, and she could sit there if she wanted. But she really, really wanted to hit Adolphos. A lot. With something heavy. Like a truck.
Plus, she liked watching her man work.
After a moment, Jon opened his folder. “I see. So what you’re saying, is that we don’t have enough to send you away for the rest of your life.”
/> Adolphos laughed at that. “Not even close.”
“Because we lack a good case.”
“Took the words out of my mouth.”
“We’re lacking a good eyewitness for the attacks on me and Grace,” Jon said.
“For starters. Yes.”
“Or,” Jon went on, “anyone who can put you at the scene of Grace’s attack.”
“There you go. Now you’re catching on.”
“Only…” Jon tapped at a page in the folder. “We can put you at the scene of my attack. You were at the casino when I was there. The damage to your car is consistent with the damage to mine.”
Adolphos spread his hands apart as far as the restraints would let him. “Circumstantial evidence.”
“Oh, but wait.” Jon said it like the thought had just occurred to him. “We also have the testimony of the two thugs you sent to attack Izzy McIntosh.”
Darcy saw that point hit home. “Testimony changes,” he told Jon. “Sometimes. When people are under… stress.”
Ignoring the veiled threat on the lives of Izzy’s attackers, Jon flipped a page. “And then there’s your motive.”
Adolphos glared at him.
“It wasn’t revenge,” Jon said. “You’re not that kind of man. For all your faults, you’re a gentleman. You consider yourself above petty things like getting even.”
“Thank you,” Adolphos said, mockingly.
Jon chose to ignore the sarcasm. “You’re welcome. So we had to ask ourselves, if you weren’t attacking me and Grace and Izzy out of revenge for being arrested all those years ago, then why were you doing it?”
Jon waited, and Darcy waited, and she could almost feel the State Police officers outside waiting. If any of them were hoping that would be enough to get a real confession out of Adolphos, they were disappointed.
He rattled the chains against the metal table again as he shifted in his seat. “Go on, Chief” he told Jon. “You tell me. What was my motive?”
Jon spun a paper out of the folder, turning it toward Adolphos, and sliding it across for him to see. “This is a letter from the State’s Parole Board written to Izzy McIntosh. A photocopy, actually, but you can see what it says. Her ex-husband was due for early release. In two days. You remember Chip, don’t you?”
Adolphos stared down at the letter. It was obvious that none of this was news to him. He’d known about Chip’s parole hearing, just like Jon and Darcy had suspected.
“He stole a lot of money from your organization,” Jon asked, “didn’t he? Money that The Hand never got back? I’m sorry, I can’t take that name seriously. The Hand? Really? That was the best anyone could come up with?”
Fire flashed behind Adolphos’ gray eyes.
“I mean,” Jon pressed, “it doesn’t exactly inspire fear, does it. Ooooh, watch out for The Hand. They might… what? Scratch your back? Pick your nose?”
Adolphos exploded out of his chair, caught short by the handcuffs attached to the metal ring, looking like he would come over the table at Jon if he could. “Enough! The Hand was started by Polish immigrants in the late 1800s as a group to protect their interests! Our group has a long, proud history, and I will not listen to some dumb cop slur insults at us because he’s too stupid to find the answers he’s looking for!”
Darcy took an involuntary step back as her fingers touched the etched surface of her Great Aunt’s ring. There was something raw in Adolphos’ voice as he ranted, and just the hint of an accent too, that hadn’t been there before. Was the cultured, refined Adolphos Carino just an act? Was this man really nothing more than a thug in nice clothes?
Well. In an orange jumpsuit, at the moment.
Jon wasn’t impressed by the outburst. “Have you found the money Chip stole from you yet, or not?”
Breathing a little ragged, Adolphos sat back and shifted his shoulders around to settle the jumpsuit back into place. His thinning hair had come loose in wispy strands as he had ranted, but there was nothing he could do about that with his hands restrained. “No, Chief Tinker. We have not found that money. So, what? Did you think maybe I sent people to kill you and the others because I thought you might have it? Don’t be absurd.”
“Well at least we agree on something.” Jon turned another page in the folder.
“And what are we agreeing on?” Adolphos asked him.
“That would be absurd. You don’t think any of us have that money. You know that Chip McIntosh has it. He’s hidden it somewhere. But where?”
Adolphos was back to his old self, smiling a too-sweet smile. “I don’t know, Chief Tinker. Why don’t you go ask him?”
“For the same reason you haven’t asked him yourself, Adolphos. Chip’s in prison. Every conversation monitored. Every visitor logged. No way were you going to risk talking to Chip under those circumstances. If you did, whatever happened to Chip, and the money, would trace right back to The Hand.”
On the other side of the table, Adolphos’ eyes narrowed. Darcy smiled to herself. They’d struck a nerve.
“So what could you do?” Jon asked rhetorically. “The only thing you could do, was wait for Chip to be released, and grab him on the outside. Only Chip was spending years in prison. Way more than you did, Adolphos, because Chip didn’t have any secrets to tell the FBI in exchange for a light sentence. No, our old friend Chip is doing hard time. But wait.”
He reached across the table, and tapped the Parole Board letter.
“Chip was going to get out early.”
Adolphos wasn’t looking at the letter anymore. He didn’t have to. He knew what Jon was going to say.
“You couldn’t risk anything going wrong with that Parole Board hearing.” Jon closed the folder, leaving the letter out on the table. “No, you needed to make sure no one would interfere. If there was, say, anyone who might testify against Chip getting early release, you’d have to make sure they couldn’t say a word.”
Adolphos smiled. It was like seeing a snake coiling itself up to strike.
“So,” Jon said, getting to the end of his explanation. “You arranged for accidents to happen to Grace. And me—my bad luck to walk into the casino that day, true, but you would have gotten to me soon enough. And Izzy, too. And let’s not forget about Darcy.”
He held his hand out to her, and she came over to stand beside him, their fingers locked together against his chest where she could feel his beating heart. “You would have tried to hurt my wife next, wouldn’t you?”
There was no answer, except for another flicker of raging anger behind Adolphos’ eyes.
“You didn’t need us dead, but it wouldn’t have hurt your feelings, would it? Because you pretend to be all civilized and cultured, but underneath, you’re just a thug.”
Jon shifted in his seat. Darcy saw the shadow of pain cross over him. His strength was failing him. The strain of this interview had been too much.
But he wasn’t done yet.
“Well, you know what they say, Adolphos.” He went to stand up, leaning heavily on Darcy as he did. “One hand washes the other.”
“Stop it,” Adolphos growled.
“I’d say this goes hand in hand with that old saying.”
“I said, stop.”
“A bird in the hand…”
“Enough!”
Jon picked up the folder, and smiled. “I’d shake your hand but I don’t know where it’s been—”
“You ignorant, unimportant nobody!” Adolphos screamed at him, the fire in his eyes spilling over into a pure white hatred. “How dare you make fun of The Hand! I’m only sorry I didn’t end your life when I crashed into you! If there hadn’t been another car coming I would have gladly taken the time to go down that hill myself and put two bullets through that thick, stupid, ugly skull…!”
He stopped, realizing what he’d just said.
Jon looked over to the mirror. “Did you get that?”
A voice came through a hidden speaker with a burst of static. “We got it, Chief. Well done.”
He’d just confessed to trying to kill Jon.
“That’s how we beat a man like Adolphos Carino,” Jon said to Darcy. “We beat him at his own game.”
Slumping into his chair, folding his face into his hands, Adolphos made a choking sound that became a whispery sort of cough, and then to Darcy’s surprise, turned into a broken laugh.
“Oh, well played, Chief Tinker,” the man said between shaky breaths. “Well played.”
At the door, before they left, Jon leaned against his cane to steady himself as Darcy held onto his other side. “Adolphos, do you want to know the really crazy thing about all of this?”
“You mean,” he answered back, head still down, “besides being beaten by a dumb cop like you? Sure. Why not?”
“I spoke with the Parole Board last night. They had already decided to cancel Chip’s parole hearing. They said there was no way they would give parole to a man like that. He’s been a model prisoner, but that doesn’t erase how he sent his wife and daughter into hiding, or how he tried to frame his little girl’s mother for murder.”
Adolphos raised his head, his mouth hanging slack, his eyes wide.
“You were trying to keep us from testifying at his parole hearing,” Jon explained, “and there was never going to be a hearing. Chip’s going to serve his full time. Unless, maybe he wants to testify against you for a reduced sentence.”
On their way out of the interview room, laughter echoed after them. “See you next time, Chief Tinker!”
“No,” Jon said, his voice exhausted. “You won’t. Not unless I come visit you in prison.”
Darcy held him close, lending him her strength as they walked out of the State Police station into the bright sunshine of a warm, sunny day.
Chapter 14