by J. D. Robb
“You think the boy leaked this? Eve—”
“No, he didn’t leak it. He’s too good a cop already. I know where the leak came from.” She snagged a jacket. “This may not be my game, but I know how to play it when I have to. I know how to win it. If you’re with me,” she added. “You’ve got five minutes.”
She let him drive and spent the entire time on the ’link, covering the situation with her team, coordinating them and arranging for extra bodies at Central to hold back the media who would certainly be swarming into a pack outside the doors.
Then she tagged Nadine.
“Listen, before you jump on me, I was given that bulletin thirty seconds before air. There wasn’t even time to polish the copy. I couldn’t have flipped it to you if I’d wanted to.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“You’re asking me to reveal a source, and you know I won’t. But as it happens it was given to me by my producer. I don’t know his source. Sources,” she amended. “He’s never gotten this hot with less than two. All I know is someone high up leaked to him with the stipulation I read the story—he confirmed, and we aired.”
“You specifically?”
“That’s right.”
“Smart,” Eve decided.
“Things are popping around here, Dallas. You’re going to want to give me a statement ASAP. What evidence do you have linking Mayor Peachtree to the activities of The Purity Seekers?”
“No comment, Nadine.”
“The shit hitting the fan isn’t all going to land on Peachtree’s face. A lot of it’s going to fly into yours.” As she spoke, Nadine angled her chair, brought up data manually on her computer screen. “He had a fifty-three percent popularity rating before this. And many of the voters included in that percentage are very vocal, very staunch, and very monied supporters. On the other side’s the faction who’ll want to lynch him politically, and will use you as the rope.”
“No comment. Curious. Which side do you bet on? Supporters or lynching party?”
It was a good angle, she mused, and one it wouldn’t hurt her to get a jump on. “He’ll resign. No way out of it. Without the dirty details of this sexual misconduct, I can’t project. He’ll take hits for cheating on his wife, and for any connection with Greene.”
“Off the record, Nadine?”
Eve could see Nadine strain against the bonds. “Okay, damn it, off the record.”
“If it’s a little juicier than cheating? If it involved some sexual kinks?”
“Oh God, you’re killing me. If it’s good and juicy, he’s probably cooked, at least short term. Convicting him of murder, unless you’ve got him with fresh blood on his hands, is another matter. Public support will swing both ways, which puts him center ring. People have short memories, and selective ones. They won’t necessarily remember if he’s guilty or innocent, but they’ll remember he did something big. If he doesn’t do hard time, if he can slither on the sex, he could run again in a few years. And he’d probably win.”
“That’s politics,” Eve stated. “Later.”
“Dallas—”
But Eve cut her off.
“You’re pulling on a string, Lieutenant,” Roarke said. “I’m beginning to see the shape of the ball it comes from.”
“Yeah, let’s see how it unravels. Head straight to garage level. Oh, and if you run over any reporters, I give you extra points.”
Inside she moved fast. She had Dukes and his team of lawyers in Interview within fifteen minutes. She teamed with Peabody, deliberately choosing to piss Dukes off by having two females go at him.
She turned on the recorder, input the salient data, then sat back. “Let’s get started.”
“Lieutenant Dallas.” The head of the legal team, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed man named Snyder, interrupted. “Mr. Dukes has opted to have all questions and comments directed through and answered by me or one of my associates. As is his right. He prefers not to speak to or be spoken to by you directly.”
“No problem. You’re going to want to inform your client that with duly executed warrants his data and communication centers were confiscated from his residence in this city, and from the portable registered to him found in the Albany location. Said units were then officially logged. Technicians attached to NYPSD extracted data and transmissions from said units. This data, these transmissions, lock your client in a cage, away from his family, away from his friends, away from whatever has previously passed for his world for the rest of his natural life.”
She smiled when she said it, and kept her eyes on Dukes’s face. “You can also relate to your client that I’m just as happy about that as I can be. I danced all the way in here this morning. Right, Peabody?”
“You do a mean tango, Lieutenant.”
“Your sarcasm is noted on record,” Snyder said.
“You betcha.”
“If, as you claim, you are in possession of such damning evidence against my client, I fail to see why you’re wasting your time in this interview.”
“Mostly I wanted to gloat.” She grinned. “And, as much as it offends my sensibilities, I’m required to give this asshole—excuse me—your client an opportunity to show remorse, and to cooperate so that such remorse and cooperation may be considered during his sentencing. Have you guys done the math? Eight counts first-degree murder. There’s a cop in there, which puts that single count at full life, off planet facility, no possibility of parole.”
“Lieutenant.” Snyder spread his hands. “You don’t have first and you certainly can’t hang the cop on my client. The fact is, you don’t have any direct evidence linking Donald Dukes to the alleged activities of this supposed organization.”
“Either you’re as bloody as your client, or he hasn’t given you full disclosure. Which do you figure, Peabody?”
“I think we should give Mr. Snyder the benefit of the doubt. I think Dukes is too puffed up with his own importance to believe he needs to tell his lawyer everything. He likes being in charge too much.”
“You think wearing that uniform makes you somebody,” Dukes said under his breath.
“Yeah.” Peabody edged closer. “It makes me a cop. It makes me somebody who’s sworn to protect the public against people like you. It makes me,” she said, slapping her palms on the table and pushing her face close to his, “one of the people who walked through the blood you spilled.”
“You will not speak directly to my client.” Snyder shoved to his feet, and to Eve’s delight, Peabody shifted and got up in his face.
“Your client spoke directly to me, on record. He does that, I’m free to respond, on record.”
“Now, now, class.” Eve clapped her hands once, made a sit-down gesture. “Let’s not let our tempers override our manners. If we’re going to give Snyder the benefit of the doubt, then we owe it to him, and his associates here, to inform them of the evidence that is now in our hands.”
“Maybe we should just toss him to the P.A. Let them sink.”
“Peabody, that’s very harsh.”
“If the two of you think you can run the good cop/bad cop routine on me,” Snyder began.
“Wouldn’t think of it.” Eve grinned fiercely. “And just FYI, I’m the bad cop. I’m always the bad cop.”
“Bitch,” Dukes muttered.
“See, he knows. To respond to the bitch comment,” Eve continued, “let me just say, you ain’t seen nothing yet, Don. We ID’d your brainchild. We duped it, and we tracked it back to the source. Your little workshop unit. Your fingerprints, your voice prints, your personal code. You and nobody else. Didn’t think we could pull it out, did you?”
Now Eve leaned forward. “I’ve got a couple of techs at my disposal that make you look like a first-year hacker.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Infected e-mail transmitted from your unit, by you, to Louis K. Cogburn, eight July 2059, at fourteen hundred hours. Infected e-mail transmitted to Chadwick Fitzhugh, eight July, at twenty-three fourteen.”
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With her eyes on his, she recited every transmission she’d committed to memory. She saw the disbelief wash over his face, then the anger flood it.
She wanted the anger.
“We’ve got you nailed. They knew we’d hang you when we busted this open. You’re not a general, Don. You’re not even a soldier to the ones running this show. You’re the sacrificial lamb.”
“You don’t know squat. You’re nothing but some dried-up female trying to pass for a man.”
“Think so? I’ll show you my balls, Don, you show me yours.”
“I wish to consult with my client,” Snyder interrupted. “Privately. I wish to terminate this interview until I’ve consulted with my client.”
“You terminated them, didn’t you?” Eve demanded.
“We executed them.” Dukes spat it at her, then swiped out an arm, nearly knocking Snyder out of his chair when the lawyer tried to interrupt. “Shut up. Shut the hell up. You’re part of the problem. Just like she is. Enough money and you’d defend Satan. You help put garbage back on the street. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.”
“Are you dismissing your legal representation at this time, Mr. Dukes?” Eve asked.
“I insist on consulting with—”
“Fuck you.” Dukes surged to his feet. His chair shot out, slammed into the wall. “Fuck all of you. We did something great. You think I’m afraid to go to prison for it? I served my country. I served my community.”
“How did you serve your community?”
His mouth twisted. “By exterminating cockroaches.”
“Mr. Dukes.” With admirable calm, Snyder rose. “I’ll ask you one more time to afford yourself of your right to remain silent. Lieutenant Dallas will terminate this interview and we’ll go to a consult room to discuss—”
“Get the hell out,” Dukes ordered without looking at him. “You and your cockroach brothers are fired.”
“Let the record show that Snyder and Associates are no longer attorneys of record for Donald Dukes.” Snyder picked up his briefcase, signaled to his two associates. “Lieutenant Dallas.”
“On the door,” she said, and Peabody walked over to open it and let the lawyers out.
“Donald Dukes, did you conspire to murder Louis K. Cogburn?”
His shoulders were back, his head high. And the hate pumped like sweat out of his pores. “You’re damn right, I did.”
“Did you conspire to murder Chadwick Fitzhugh?”
“I created the virus. Did most of the work myself. She’s a beauty. I shot it into him. Into all of them.”
“By your conspiracy to cause these deaths, did you in turn cause the death of Detective Kevin Halloway?”
“Yes. What’s another dead cop? We took out that bitch George, Greene—along with the whore in training, whatever her name was, and Geller. That cover it?”
“Who gives you your orders?”
“I don’t take orders.”
“Did you conspire with Mayor Steven Peachtree to murder the individuals named on record?”
“Figure it out.”
“I have,” she told him. “You’re done. I don’t need you. Get him out of here, Peabody. Take him down so he can start living the rest of his life in a cage.”
He came at her. A silent, panther leap. Her fist shot out, rammed into his chin. As his head snapped back, she drew her weapon. But Peabody flipped out her stunner and nailed him.
“Damn it.” Eve, slapped her hands on her hips when he lay sprawled at her feet. “I wanted to do that.”
“So did I, and I beat you. Besides, you got to pop him first. Teamwork.”
“Yeah.” Eve smiled, but it still didn’t reach her eyes. “Nice teamwork, Peabody.”
Roarke corroborated the opinion when he met her in her office a few minutes later.
“The two of you played him like a violin. That’s superior virtuosity when you figure you’d only met him once before.”
“I knew him.”
“You did, yes. Knew precisely what would get under his skin and push him to pontificate. Well done, Lieutenant.”
“Not yet. It’s not done yet.” She heard the arguments, the raised voices coming through the bullpen toward her office. “But here comes the next stage. You want to hang in for this?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for worlds.”
“Of which you own several,” she murmured before Chang burst into her office like a tsunami.
“You will issue a statement. I’ve written it. You’ll issue this statement immediately, taking full responsibility for passing misinformation to a media representative.” He slapped both disc and hard copy down on her desk. His hair was wild; his eyes feral.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I’m telling you to do it. Because this is the last time you’ll undermine my work. The last time you’ll make a mockery of what I do.”
“What you do is a mockery, Chang.”
He took a step toward her. She was fairly certain he envisioned clamping his hands around her throat and squeezing until her eyes popped out. But whether it was the dare in her eyes or Roarke’s presence, he resisted.
“You leak a story to the media before its time. You use your influence with an on-air reporter to push forward your own agenda. You create a storm to distract from the fact that you’ve mishandled your own work. To—to plump and preen yourself before the public while leaving me to clean up the mess behind you. Mayor Peachtree has not been charged. He has not yet been interviewed, yet you’ve seen to it that he’s guilty in the eyes of the public.”
“Sure looks that way, doesn’t it? One small correction, though. I didn’t leak the story.”
“You think you can save yourself by lying to me?”
She shifted her body weight, and fascinated, Roarke eased back. He wondered if Chang knew how close he was to annihilation.
“Don’t call me a liar, Chang. You of all people.”
“Who is it who has a personal relationship with Nadine Furst? Who is it who gives regular favoritism to her and Channel 75, with exclusives and tips?”
“That would be me. And you know why? Because I can trust her to think of more than ratings. That relationship is why whoever leaked this saw that the story went to her. That’s your kind of maneuver, Chang.”
The hand around the throat image was appealing enough that she used it herself. She caught him one-handed, rapped him back into the wall, and lifted him to his toes. “All this spin, all this storm, all this fallout. That’s going to keep you a very busy boy for a while, isn’t it?”
“Get your hands off me. I’ll have you arrested for assault.”
“Yeah, you can bet a whole squad of cops is going to rush in here to save your oily ass from me. You’re going to get a lot of play out of this—fees, bonuses. Add screwing me over to the pie, and it’s real tasty. Did you leak the story, Chang?”
He was turning an interesting shade of puce as he batted and shoved at her hand. “Get away, get away!”
“Did you leak the goddamn story?”
“No! This isn’t something you leak until you’re prepared. Until the spin is in place. You leaked it.”
“No, I didn’t.” She released him so that he dropped to the flats of his feet with two sharp thuds. “Think about that. Now get the hell out of my office.”
“I’m filing a complaint.” He yanked at his collar. “You’ll read the statement or—”
“Bite me,” she suggested and shoved him out bodily.
“That was very entertaining,” Roarke commented.
“We’re not done yet. Act two should be starting any minute.”
“Until it does . . .” He smoothed his fingers over the ends of her hair, then slid his hand around the back of her neck. She stiffened, looked so mortally embarrassed that he laughed. “What?”
“I’m on duty here. Just back off. Really.” She turned away quickly and moved to the AutoChef. Even as she programmed coffee, she heard the fast, hard click of
high heels. “That’s my cue.”
Franco swept in. She looked every bit as furious as Chang had, if more elegant. “Lieutenant Dallas.” She bit down on the words as if she could chew them to bits. She gave Roarke a brisk nod. “I’m sorry, but I need to speak with the lieutenant privately.”
“Of course.”
“You may want to go give Feeney a hand, Conference Room B,” Eve told him. “He’s working on some tech stuff you’d be interested in. One level down,” Eve added. “Sector Five.”
“All right. I’ll leave you ladies to your business.” With one casual glance at Eve, he slipped out, closed the door.
“You’ve gone too far this time.” Unlike Chang, Franco kept her voice down, and controlled.
“In what area?”
“Who are you to decide Mayor Peachtree is guilty, to leak information that will ruin his political career, damage his personal life. And all before you’ve so much as questioned him. You gave him no chance to defend himself.”
“Leaking the story screwed him pretty good, didn’t it? Coffee?”
“You dare stand there, so arrogant, so goddamn cocky after what you’ve done?”
“Yeah. Same as you.” Eve leaned back on the AutoChef, sipped her coffee. “You leaked the story, Franco.”
“Are you mad?”
“No, neither are you. You’re a very smart woman. What I can’t figure is if you did all this, formed your organization, killed people, ruined a number of lives because you wanted to smear Peachtree or you really believed in what you were doing. I’ve thought about that a lot this morning, but I’m just not sure. I think it was both.”
“If you think you can save yourself by painting me with the same brush you’re using to paint the mayor, you’re very wrong.”
“He didn’t make the transmissions.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Peachtree didn’t make the transmissions from his office to Dukes. You did. You used his office, you used his ’link. The transmission telling Dukes to skip was sent out, from that unit, at sixteen forty-eight. Peachtree left for the day at sixteen forty-two. We have him on security cam. We have him walking out of the building at the time the transmission was generated. Those six minutes make a difference.”