Dee Henderson - The Witness

She was pushing him away incredibly hard. That resistance told Luke a lot about her past in itself. “Either talk to me or I can run your prints to confirm your name and do my own looking.” He wanted her to trust him, but that wasn’t in the cards. She’d already taken too many hits in life that he knew about to easily trust. He’d settle for a neutral interview. “I’m not asking just to drag up grief for you. You’re in my town, running from a guy that scares the daylights out of you, and I care about the job and badge enough to do what I think needs done.”

She pushed away her plate. “It’s not that simple, Luke.”

“Nothing ever is.”

She rubbed her face and finally nodded. “Fine. Ask your questions. I’ll give you the abbreviated version of the answers.”

“Who wants you dead?”

“A guy named Richard Wise. He introduces himself with the phrase ‘Call me Rich, not Wise’ and laughs as he says it.”

“Why does he want you dead?”

“I have his money. He wants it back.”

The simplicity of it was startling. Luke looked at her and suspected where this was heading. “Go on. You said the guy killed a cop,” he reminded her gently.

The jump in her nerves was instant, working the fine muscles around her mouth, around her blue eyes. “Had killed, but yes, he ordered it. The cop got curious, asked questions, and was found beaten to death in his living room forty-eight hours later.”

“Why?”

“To have asked the questions he did the cop would have had to meet me. And they wanted to know where I was. So they beat the answer out of him. I was already a state away.”

“Where did this happen? When?”

“Detroit, four years ago.”

“You sound certain of what happened.”

“Certain enough to have bailed out and run for my life again.” She reached for her drink and just held it, lost in the thoughts that absorbed her. She shook her head. “I hate talking about this, Luke.”

She got up and paced across the room, finally stopping to lean against the dresser, her arms crossed protectively across her chest. “I got out of the army when I was thirty-three. That was mistake one; I should have made it a career. I rented a place in New York from a friend while I looked for a job I might like. That was mistake two. I’d been in town about a month when I met an accountant at a party and liked him. Greg Southerland-rich family, ambitious, loved to laugh. We started dating. That was mistake number three.”

It wasn’t what he expected, her expression. Not nervous or worried, but sad, heartbreakingly so. “Over time I began to realize he worked at home a lot, that he’d have business meetings at odd hours on short notice. After a while I suspected Greg was doing work for a bookie on the side, but he’d wave me off or have explanations. His family seemed entirely aboveboard, not the kind to have raised a guy who would skirt the law. But he died, I was concerned on the how, and I knew where the books he worked on at home were kept. I took them.”

“Greg had only one private client: Richard Wise.”

She nodded.

“You didn’t turn the books over to the authorities?”

“It wasn’t that simple. Everything is in those books: serioussized bets, bribes, payoffs, fixed cases. Richard Wise would take a bet on anything, or for a price get you out of whatever trouble you were in. Cops are implicated-federal, state, local-whoever Richard Wise needed to manipulate who had a price. Including Greg’s father.” She looked over at him then, and the cop in him understood the trapped look in her eyes.

“That just made it worse, Luke. Greg was in deep at the end by his own choice, but somewhere along the way it must have started because his father crossed with Richard Wise.” She walked the length of the room again, stopping to shift her jacket back onto the bed where it had half fallen off. She finally turned back to him. “I have been turning the information over to the federal authorities. Very carefully, and only as they are able to use it. I turn that pipeline of information on too fast and someone carrying a badge who’s dirty comes back to slap at me. Or Greg’s father realizes I’m still alive, and I get squeezed by the one person who could probably influence me to forget what I have.”

“You’ve been doing it a long time.”

She nodded. “Long enough. The entries are getting old enough the information has almost run its course. Which is one reason Richard Wise is so desperate to find me. The last step in the process is to seize his money; the accounts have sat out there while the people he’s corrupted are slowly brought down.”

“That’s your hold on his money? The account numbers?”

She bit her lip as she nodded. “It took a year to realize the only lists of account numbers in existence were in the books I had. Greg had moved most of the money the week before he died. Maybe that was part of their normal security steps to keep the accounts below the radar of authorities. Maybe it wasn’t. But without the account numbers and authorization codes the money might as well not exist; it’s unreachable. But until Richard’s organization is fully rolled up, turning the account numbers in to the authorities is not something I’m willing to do. The numbers pass through the wrong hands and that money is gone without a trace. Too much money sits there, just a breath away from this guy’s reach.”

Luke understood those risks as well as the reality. “The fact that you are the only source for the account numbers has helped keep you alive.”

“Yes. He’d have sent a sniper after me a long time ago if he didn’t need what I alone have. This plan has worked for years and it’s entering the endgame. We wait until all the people are identified; then the money is swept in. The books come into a trial-authenticated, original, and many entries in Richard’s own handwriting-and there won’t be a place left for him or the people he’s corrupted over the years.”

The location of the books and account numbers was something Luke was not ready to ask. “I need to walk for a while and think.” He wanted to promise her it would be okay, that there would be answers for this, but he wasn’t one to make hollow promises. Bad cops meant trouble at a level he hadn’t even considered. He picked up his jacket. “Catch some of the news; finish dinner. I’ll be back in half an hour. You’re not going to be moving on me?”

“I’ll be here.”

“Good enough.” He tugged the hotel-room door closed behind him and took the stairs down. He pulled out his gloves. The air was cool tonight, and it would rain again before morning, he thought. He walked east.

He turned her story over in his mind. He’d been a cop a long time. Truth or fiction? Every story had that kind of basic check to it. His gut said truth. Even the part with her not suspecting the guy she was dating was dirty. Innocence made even normally smart people blind. She hadn’t thought Greg could be breaking the law, so she didn’t see all the pieces until after it was over.

God, she’s in a lot tighter place than I’d imagined. A man after money he sees as stolen from him, with no conscience for what actions he’ll take to recover it-I don’t see the defuse point. Most situations have one, but this has spiraled on for so many years that even putting Richard Wise behind bars isn’t going to address the threat she has run from for so long. He’ll want her dead. Behind bars or not, he’ll want his justice. And there is nothing that can be done to keep an evil man from plotting evil .

There were times being a cop meant knowing how limited the law and justice could be. Justice was possible, but safety for Amy-she’d been right to run. If there were enough bad cops under the influence of Richard Wise, then Amy had been right to assume she was more safe long term out on her own than under the protection of the authorities. At least she was turning in the evidence she had, helping good cops clear away the turncoats lurking in their midst, helping end the corruption Richard Wise had created.