by J. D. Robb
He couldn’t miss at this range, she thought. Neither could she. She thought: What the hell, prepared to fire, braced for the return hit.
Roarke flew across the stage, a panther on the spring. He hit Frye low, at the knees, sent them both shooting through the air, across the floor.
“Restraints!” Eve shouted, dashed toward Roarke. Before she could get to him, he’d pulled back, plowed in, slamming a fist into Frye’s face.
Twice.
“Okay, okay, okay. He’s done. Suspect is down.”
“LT.” Jenkinson tossed her restraints, wincing as he climbed onto the stage.
“You hurt? You hit?”
“Nah, just burned me some. I’m wearing gear. It still gives you a jolt.”
“I know. Sit down, get your breath. You, too,” she said to Roarke, but he was already sitting beside the dazed Frye.
When Frye tried to rise, Eve stuck her stunner in his face. “You’re done,” she repeated. “On your face. Roll over on your face, hands behind your back.”
When he groped at his pocket, Roarke jabbed him, not so lightly, in the side. “Looking for this, boy-o?” He held up a knife, let the light catch the blade. “I had it out of your pocket before you hit the bleeding ground. Put another hand on my wife, and it may find its way into you.”
The best Eve could spare was a warning stare and shake of her head.
“Jenkinson, bag the knife, will you? The rest of you help me roll this big bastard over.”
He bucked, drummed his feet, reminding Eve of the kid with the cold and his tantrum. “Jesus, you’re done!” She had to expand the restraints to fit, and was fully, sincerely grateful she hadn’t gone head-to-head with him. “Clinton Rosco Frye, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to murder and murder for hire of Marta Dickenson, Chaz Parzarri, Jake Ingersol, human beings. Additional charges to come, including, you dick, assault with intent on police officers. Twice. Get him up, get him out—back door. Book him. I’ll be in shortly.”
She sat back on her heels, looked at Roarke while they dragged Frye to his feet. He’d yet to make a sound, but it took four cops to contain him and perp-walk him out the door.
Roarke nodded at her face. “Did he do that, bloody bastard?”
“Is it bad?” She touched her fingers to her cheek, her eye, sent them both throbbing madly. “Shit, shit. No, he didn’t do it—directly. He threw that idiot Candida at me. Her fist hit me—I think her fist.”
“First a baby, now a drunk idiot.”
“Well, it’s sort of consistent.” She glanced back, saw the people crowded in the back of the theater with Peabody and Baxter and others trying to move them back. She gave Roarke a thin smile. “Sorry, but it looks like I’m going to miss the premiere. I need to deal with this.”
“We’ll miss it. I’m with you.”
“You don’t have to—” She broke off, shrugged. Of course he had to go with her. “Nice tackle, by the way.”
“I spent some time on the pitch as a boy.”
“On the—oh, right, Irish football. You’ve got a knack.”
“I feel it in every bone,” he said, and flexed his raw knuckles. “It was like hitting a wall of fucking concrete—tackle and punch.”
She took his hand, studied the knuckles. “Looks like somebody else is going to need some ice.”
“I’m after some in a glass, with whiskey over it.”
“Who can blame you? Well, hell, I guess we put on a show anyway.”
“We did indeed, and we’ll make the after-party at some point.” He rose, held out a hand to pull her up, then he laid the fingers of his bruised hand on her bruised cheek. They just smiled at each other.
“Dallas!” Peabody ran down, Eve’s glittery shoes in her hand. “Ouch! You took a knock. Are you okay? Both of you okay?”
“Okay enough. We’re going out the back. I’m going to finish with Frye.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I need you to stay here, handle this situation, calm it down, make sure that incredibly stupid Candida isn’t hurt.”
“But—”
“I can handle Frye, but I can’t be here and there. I need you here. You’re in charge here. I’ll contact you when it’s done. We’ll hit the party if we can, otherwise, the rest can wait till Monday.”
“All right.”
“Alexander?”
“Baxter and Trueheart have him, and is he pissed.”
“Sorry I missed that.”
“Wow. Some night already.”
“Some night,” Eve agreed. She took Roarke’s good hand, forced herself to put on her shoes. “It pretty much went as planned.”
He laughed, gave her hand a squeeze. “Pretty much.”
They went out the back, leaning on each other.
EPILOGUE
EVE SAT ACROSS FROM FRYE IN INTERVIEW. THEY’D PUT him in stronger restraints, and those restraints were attached to chains bolted to the floor.
He’d fought, according to Reineke, like a crazy, giant bastard every step of the way.
“Alexander rolled all over you,” she told him. “He said you acted on your own, threatened him, coerced him. What do you say to that?”
What he said was nothing.
“Do you want him to walk?” Which was bullshit, as they had Alexander cold, as she’d just informed him and his four lawyers. He wouldn’t walk outside of a prison for the rest of his life. “Don’t you want to tell me your side of this?”
When he didn’t respond, she settled back. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I know, what I can prove, and what will put you in a concrete cage for the next three lifetimes. You abducted Marta Dickenson with the aid of Milo Easton, and on the orders of Sterling Alexander. You forced her into the empty apartment below the new WIN Group offices, questioned her, struck her, terrorized her, then you snapped her neck. Now Alexander wants to claim the neck snapping was your idea, and Easton wants to say he didn’t know what was going on. What do you say?”
Nothing.
“I can take you through the other two murders the same way, with Alexander claiming ignorance or coercion, with Milo claiming to be oblivious, and you acting on your own. If you don’t tell me your side, you go down for everything, and they get a slap on the fraud. Are you that stupid?”
Fury leaped into his eyes. “Don’t call me stupid.”
And these, she thought, were the first words she’d heard him utter. With them, he’d shown her his weak spot.
“I’m asking if you are stupid. If you’re just going to bend over and take it while Alexander screws you, question answered in the affirmative. I know he hired you. I know he paid you. I know he told you what to do. Show me you’re not stupid. Show me you’re not going to just sit there and let him hang everything on you.”
She leaned in. “He doesn’t have the right to make you the patsy. He’s the one who thinks you’re stupid, but we both know he gave the orders. You just did the job. You just followed those orders.”
“He says take the woman, find out what she knows, what she did. Take what she’s got, then shut her up for good. Get rid of her. I decide what to do and how.”
“Okay.” Face impassive, she sat back again. “You think for yourself, I get that. How much did he pay you to take her, to question her, to kill her?”
“Twenty-five thousand. I said cash. He tries to make it less, tries to string it out, like always. I said cash, now. I’m not stupid.”
“That’s right.” Moron. “Like always? Had he hired you to get rid of somebody before?”
When he said nothing, she gave him a mild prod. “It goes to pattern, see? Alexander’s pattern. Getting other people to do the work, trying to go cheap, thinking he’s so much smarter than you are.”
“He just pays for me to mess them up. Give them a pounding, break an arm maybe.”
“It cost more. Twice more. I told him. I took her stuff after, took her coat. Nice coat. So it’s a mugging. You wouldn’t know different if that asshole Milo hadn’t told you.”
“You made it look like a mugging, and that was good thinking. They were stupid, Frye, having you do it in that place, a place that connected to Alexander. That’s not your fault. Then there’s Parzarri. How was that arranged?”
“He—”
“Who?”
“Alexander, who you think? He says the accountant has to go. He screwed up, he’s a . . . a liability. He says, ‘Find out if he talked, then get rid of him.’ I say it’s more. It’s a man, and it’s not so easy as the woman, so it’s more.”
She nodded as if appreciating his business acumen. “You do the work; you set the price. How much?”
“Thirty thousand. He doesn’t want to pay, but that’s my price, so he pays. And I think how to get the ambulance, and the rest. So I tell him he has to get Milo, and that’s more money. But he pays. He just says do this, but I figure how.”
“The same with Ingersol?”
“He acts like I’m nothing, like he’s better. Calls me Bubba. My name’s not Bubba.” Angry color streaked his wide cheekbones. “I don’t work for him, but he acts like I do, like he can tell me what to do. Alexander says he’s the liability, too, and get rid of him. I charge the thirty, but I’d have done it for less. I liked doing it. He made fun of me, treated me like I’m stupid. I’m not stupid.”
“Sterling Alexander hired you, paying you twenty-five thousand dollars to kill Dickenson, thirty to kill Parzarri, and thirty to kill Ingersol.”
“I told you already. He said get rid, I said pay me this much.”
“All right. Why did you try for me and my partner?”
“Alexander doesn’t like you coming around, asking questions. He said you were a couple of nosy bitches. You especially because you married money and now you think you’re his equal. He says get rid of both of them, and do it fast. I said two cops, I get sixty thousand. He says two, you bargain the price. He says fifty. I think fifty’s pretty good. You didn’t fall down. You were supposed to fall down. But I’m fast. I’ve always been fast.”
She didn’t bring up the baby, no point in it at this time. “You missed.”
“He wants his money back, but I say I’m not finished. I don’t like how he looks at me. I think maybe he’ll send somebody after me. Or maybe somebody saw me good enough and you’ll come. I have to get another place. I liked my place, but I have to get another. And I have to finish. You start, you finish. That’s that.”
“Were you going to kill me and my partner tonight, Frye?”
“Should’ve. It’s Milo’s fault. He told you too much.”
“Not really. I figured it out. I’m smarter than you. And I’m not a coward. You ambushed an unarmed woman, smothered an injured man after you strapped him down, beat a man to death after you stunned him. You tried to stun me in the back. You’re a coward, you’re a killer, and you’re cooked.”
He surged up, tried to grab for her, but the chains held him back. “I’ll kill you. I’ll get out and I’ll kill you.”
“You won’t do either, but you can take some satisfaction in knowing Alexander’s going to live out his life in a cage right along with you, and Milo makes three. And all the people he had out there defrauding, stealing, ruining people’s lives? They’re going to do some long, hard time, too. You won’t be alone.”
She rose. “Interview end,” she said and walked to the door. “Take him back.”
Four burly uniforms came in, and she walked away, toward her office. She stopped, surprised to see Pope sitting on a bench in the corridor. He got to his feet. “Lieutenant. I . . .”
“What are you doing here?”
“Sterling. I was told . . . His lawyer said he won’t see me.”
“Why do you want to see him?”
“He’s my brother. Whatever he’s done, he’s my brother.”
“You knew, at least some of it, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know about the killings. I swear to you. I thought, after Jake . . . I wondered, but it didn’t seem possible. I did know—think, suspect? I’m honestly not sure. About him, possibly, misappropriating funds. I would have helped him. I would’ve tried. He’s always shut me out. I always try to open the door.” Tears swam into his eyes. “But he always shuts me out.”
“You can’t help him, Mr. Pope. Your company is going to need help, and a lot of it. Your mother helped build that company. Maybe the thing you can do is look after it now, fix what’s wrong.”
“He didn’t need the money. He didn’t need it. He didn’t need to do any of this.”
“Sometimes it’s not about need, and all about want. I’m sorry for your trouble, Mr. Pope. Go home. Go home to your family. It’s the best thing you can do right now.”
“Yes. You’ll need to talk to me again.”
“I will, and the feds will. But not tonight.”
“All right. All right. I’ll go home. But . . . if he changes his mind. If he asks for me . . .”
“We’ll let you know.”
Eve watched him go, weighed down by sorrow.
“It’s a sad thing.” Roarke stood just inside the bullpen. “He’s loyal to something that doesn’t exist. And he knows it, but he can’t not be loyal.”
“I hope he gets over it. His worthless, greedy, murderous half brother is going away, far and long.”
“Did you get what you needed from Frye?”
“All of it, after he decided to talk. He’s . . . a little off. Maybe too many hits on the field, or maybe he’s just wired wrong. His ex-coach said he got so he couldn’t follow the plays, couldn’t or didn’t listen to them. They cut him loose. But he knows right and wrong, he knows what he did, and he’s proud he thought of how to do it in each case, how he negotiated the fee. He’s not crazy, not mentally defective. He’s just mostly empty.”
He stepped to her, gently touched his lips to her injured eye. “Let’s put some ice on that.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Let’s see.” He brought out his PPC, keyed in. “Here’s something that’s making the media and Internet rounds.” He turned it around so on screen she saw herself, eye already going purple, smiling at Roarke as he smiled down at her, hand on her cheek, knuckles raw.
“Damn it. They took pictures? They’re taking pictures when we’re dragging a killer away?”
“I like it.”
She started to sneer, took another look. “You know what? You’re right. It’s us. Absolutely us, and I like it, too. I want a copy. I want to put it in a frame for my desk.”
“Do you now?”
“Home office,” she qualified. “But yeah. It’s us. It’s who we are, and I like who we are.”
“So do I. Ice for the eye.”
“And the knuckles.”
“And,” he agreed. “We’ll tend each other in the car. Is it for home then, or the party?”
She thought about her bruised eye, the lateness of the hour. Thought of the picture of the two of them. Who they were.
“Fuck it. Let’s party.”
• • •
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit www.penguin.com/robbchecklist
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