Jeffery Deaver - Speaking In Tongues

“Okay. When did this anonymous call come in? Within the last half hour? Believe me, Matthews killed Amy and dumped the body on my land. I saw somebody watching the house this morning.”

“Did you report it?”

“Well, no, I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

Tate remembered thinking, as he stood in the rain-swept field that morning, Hey, looks like the Dead Reb. But it wasn’t. It was Aaron Matthews, waiting until I left the house then tossing the dog a bone, planting Megan’s letters, leaving fast.

“I just didn’t. Look, he knows I’m after him-Konnie was running a check on the Mercedes. It turned out to be his. That’s not a coincidence.”

“How do you account for the fact that this girl was murdered with a kitchen knife that had your fingerprints on it?”

“Because it was probably from my kitchen. Talk to Konnie about this morning. He-”

“Detective Konstantinatis is in custody and he’s also in no shape to talk to anybody. As I’m sure you know.”

“Beauridge, then. They were out to my house. Matthews broke in, planted some fake letters that Megan supposedly wrote and he must’ve stolen the knife at the same time. Or stolen it tonight. It’s an easy house to break into.”

“The cause of death was shock due to blood loss after her throat was slashed and her chest and abdomen punctured thirty-two times. There was some mutilation too.”

“Fuck of a way to kill someone,” the other detective added. Tate’s face grew hot. Megan’s terrified eyes were the most prominent image in his thoughts.

“We’ve checked out your house and found you’d packed most of your girl’s stuff away. Her bedroom looked about as personal as a storeroom.”

“She lives with her mother.”

“No pictures of her, no clothes, nothing personal. The impression we got was you’d been planning to say adios to Megan for some time. That’s making us wonder about this whole kidnapping story.”

“There were some witnesses. There’s a teacher… Robert Eckhard. He saw-” But he stopped talking when he saw the expression on their faces.

‘You a friend of Eckhard?”

“I don’t know him,” Tate said cautiously. ‘I just heard that he’d seen the car that was following Megan.”

“Have you ever talked to him?”

“No. I just told you-why?”

‘Robert Eckhard was arrested today on numerous counts of child pornography and endangering the welfare of minors.”

‘What?”

‘Could you describe your relationship with him?’

“With Eekhard? There is no relationship… Jesus Christ. I don’t know him! Please! Just send somebody out to check out this Matthews!”

A rhetorician never pleads. Tate’s talents were deserting him in droves. Think smarter, he raged at himself. He could talk his way out of this. He knew he could. There must be some way. What would his grandfather, the Judge, have done?

All cats see in the dark.

Midnight is a cat…

“Officer,” Tate said calmly, offering a casual smile, “you’ve got nothing to lose. Absolutely nothing. I'm not going anywhere. If you check him out, if you send a couple officers out to his house then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Anything. No hassle. We have a deal?”

One of the detectives sighed. He shrugged and stepped out the door.

Therefore Midnight sees in the dark.

Tate pictured Megan, bound and gagged, lying somewhere in a basement. Matthews standing over her. Undressing. It was a terrible image and, once thought, wouldn’t go away.

“Have you ever had sexual relations with Amy Walker?”

He tamped down his anger. “I’ve never met her,” he answered.

“Did you send your daughter off somewhere because she knew you were stalking Amy Walker? And did you fabricate a kidnapping charge?”

“No, I didn’t do that.” Struggling now to stay calm, to stay helpful. Really struggling. He looked at the doorway through which the other cop had disappeared. Were they sending a hostage rescue team to Matthews’s house? Or just patrol officers? Matthews could trick them. He could lull them into complacency-oh, yes, he had the gift too. Tate now understood.

You can’t negotiate with someone like Matthews. You need to act- immediately.

The silence of the deed.

“Did you kill Amy Walker?”

“No, I did not.”

“When was the last time you drove your daughter’s car?”

“A month or so ago, I think.”

“Is that how your fingerprints got on the door handle of her car?”

“It would have to be.”

“Could we run through the events just prior to her disappearance once more?”

“Prior?”

“Say, for the week before.”

Tate glanced out the door, squinted. Looked again. The second detective came back into the cubicle. Tate asked, “Did you send a team to his house? I should have told you to send hostage rescue. Not regular officers. And don’t listen to him. Whatever he says, Megan’s there, in the house. Tell whoever’s on their way not to listen to him.”

“He wasn’t home.”

‘What?” Tate asked. He didn’t understand. The officers couldn’t have gotten there so quickly.

“I called him. He wasn’t home.”

“You called him?” Tate’s heart stuttered.

“Relax, sir, I didn’t tell him anything. Just asked him to give us a call about some parking tickets.” The slick young cop seemed proud of his cleverness.

“Jesus Christ, you don’t have to tell him anything. Are you crazy?”

“Sir, we don’t have to pay any attention to your story at all, you know. We’re doing you a favor.”

Tate sat back, glanced into the hail again.

After a moment he looked back at the officers again. Closed his eyes and sighed. “You win. Okay, you win.”

“How’s that, sir?”

“I’ll waive my rights and tell you everything I can think of. No confession but a full statement about my daughter and Amy Walker But I want some coffee and I’ve got to use the john.”

They looked at each other and nodded.

“I’m coming with you,” the first detective muttered.

Tate laughed. “I was a commonwealth’s attorney for ten years. I’m not going to escape.”

“I’m coming with you.”

Tate gave a disgusted sigh and walked into the scuffed halls, which resembled a suburban grade school, He ambled to the men’s room and pushed inside. The detective was directly behind him.

He stood at the urinal for an inordinately long time. When he’d finished and washed his hands he stepped to the door and pushed it open, bumping into the woman who was juggling three large law books and several pads of foolscap, which tumbled to the floor.

“Sorry,” Tate said, bending down to pick up the books.

Bett McCall glanced at him, said, “No problem.” And slipped the pistol out of her purse and into his hand.

Tate didn’t even pause to think-he simply spun around, shoved the Smith & Wesson into the belly of the shocked detective and pushed him back into the men’s room as Bett calmly retrieved the books.

In one minute Tate had gagged and cuffed the furious cop and relieved him of his gun. He tossed it in the wastebasket.

“The cuffs too tight?” he asked. The detective stared angrily. “Are they too tight?”

A nod.

Tate snapped, “Good.”

And stepped out into the corridor as a faint rumble arose in the john, like a low-Richter earthquake. The detective was trying to pull down the stall.

When he’d looked into the hallway from the interrogation room he couldn’t believe that he’d seen her standing there, motioning with her head down the hall. “How did you get in here?” he asked as they walked briskly toward the exit.