Allison Brennan - Fear No Evil

“Mallory?” Morton looked skeptical.

Dillon spoke for the first time. “You didn’t know he was an undercover FBI agent?”

By the look on his face, this was the first Morton had heard of it. “That’s a fucking lie.”

Quinn shook his head. “We had an undercover agent inside and Scott learned his identity. He left the island with Mallory with the purpose of killing him and luring Donovan into a trap, but someone saw the attack and got Special Agent Mallory to the hospital in time.”

“Bullshit,” Morton said. “Mallory watched Trask whack that bitch-” He stopped himself.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Continue.”

“Fuck you.”

Morton leaned back in his chair and glared at them.

Dillon glanced at Quinn, then said to Morton, “I understand why you want to protect Adam. You’ve been covering for him for a long time. Ever since he killed Trevor Conrad.”

Morton’s eyes flickered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There was no passion in his words.

Dillon didn’t have all the details, but he’d begun to piece together the complexities of Morton’s relationship with Adam Scott. He started fishing, knowing that the waters were ripe. “You, Adam, Paul, and Trevor were best friends. Palled around together at Stonebridge, rich boys with the world in your palm. Cocky. But Adam was always a little different. He had a dark charisma. You did things you probably wouldn’t have done because of him egging you on. After all, you wouldn’t be a man if you didn’t push the envelope.”

Dillon leaned forward, stared Morton in the eye. “Trevor balked. I think he knew something about Adam that he didn’t like. Planned to talk to the authorities about it. And Adam killed him. The explosion in the science lab was to cover up the murder.”

The look on Morton’s face told Dillon he wasn’t far off in his analysis. He pushed deeper, putting himself into Adam Scott’s mind. What would he have asked his best friends to do? What would have repelled one of them so much that he would have risked everything to talk to the police?

“You all raped a girl, but Adam killed her. Probably strangled her while having sex. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe not. But Trevor freaked.”

Dillon watched Morton closely. He was off this time. Damn, he thought he’d nailed the connection, what Adam lorded over Roger Morton and Paul Ullman to get them to commit felonies. Morton himself wasn’t hard to sway; he was already predisposed to a life of violence. He was a classic power rapist. Without Adam Scott, he probably would have ended up in prison at some point in his life. He was abusive and treated women as objects. But he wasn’t the brains behind Trask Enterprises, merely a figurehead.

But Adam Scott. He had dark fantasies that had developed early in his life, fueled by strict parents. But that wasn’t the reason Adam turned to murder. He was sexually dysfunctional. And if he had killed a woman during sex when he was in high school, that meant the cause of the dysfunction had occurred even earlier in his childhood, likely at the onset of puberty.

Morton wouldn’t know how to cover up a crime. That was all Adam, the genius. And maybe it was strictly Adam’s crime that they were covering up.

“Maybe you had nothing to do with the rape. Maybe Adam told you about it. Boasted. Maybe he needed help getting rid of the body.”

Morton squirmed. Dillon didn’t smile, though he felt some small pleasure in weaving through the facts and conjecture and nailing Roger Morton. He certainly would lose at poker.

“What was her name?”

“You’re fishing.” Morton’s voice was weak.

“We’ve reopened the investigation into Trevor Conrad’s death,” Quinn said. “We’ll exhume the body and with technology today, it’s very easy to determine the cause of death even after twenty years in the ground.”

That wasn’t always true, but Morton didn’t know that.

“It was an explosion. Not much left of Trevor.”

But Morton was losing some of his cockiness.

Quinn turned back to Adam Scott’s disappearing act. “Scott took a federal agent to Mount Baker in an attempt to draw Agent Donovan out. He shot him in the back while you were back on the island. He knew about the raid on the island, but he didn’t warn you, did he? He just walked. Left you, Denise, the others to take the rap. He had a huge head start. You could have escaped. But he took the only boat .”

Morton frowned. Didn’t say anything.

“What we want is your cooperation. We want the names and whereabouts of Scott’s victims’ remains. We want every known hideout of Scott. Bank accounts, property, the works. Everything you know.”

He didn’t say anything. Thinking.

Dillon glanced at Quinn, got the nod. “What I want to know is why?”

“Why what?” Morton asked.

“Why Lucy?”

He shrugged. “She’s hot. Just like-” he stopped.

“Like who?”

Something clicked in Morton’s head. He straightened his back. “If I give you something, something really good, that will solve a major case for you, what do I get in return?”

“It depends on the information,” Quinn said.

“I need something better than that.”

“You give us everything on Adam Scott, tell us what happened with Trevor Conrad, and cooperate from here on out, I’ll put in a good word.”

“A good word?” Morton laughed, leaned back. He knew he had them on the hook. Dillon feared that the conversation was turning away from them and that they wouldn’t get anything.

“I’m not a U.S. attorney,” Quinn said. “But I can make a recommendation to deal, simple felony rape instead of kidnapping, conspiracy to murder, manslaughter, and a host of other charges the lawyers will pile on when they know they can get the death penalty.”

Quinn stared at Morton. “I can also tell them that you’re a vicious prick who rapes teenagers and watches as they die. I can nail you for Henshaw’s murder even though the man wore a mask. You were there. We have your prints. We have a nice federal prison down in Florida. Cuban gangs run it. They won’t like it that you hurt one of their own. And I’ll make sure every guard knows exactly what you did and who you did it to.”

Morton squirmed. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you one thing, then I want an attorney in here who can make me a deal before I give you everything. Got it?”

Quinn nodded.

“Does the name Monique Paxton mean anything to you?”

Quinn shook his head, then stopped. “Paxton? You mean Senator Jonathan Paxton?”

Morton nodded. “He was some low-level politician at the time. Monique was fucking Adam. They were hot and heavy for a couple months. One night things got kind of rough. She ended up dead. I mean, if she was just some whore from the wrong side of the tracks, no one would care. He could have dumped her body and no one would have looked too closely at anyone. But it was Monique Paxton and he couldn’t just drop her on her daddy’s doorstep. He called me, and I had Trevor with me. I don’t know why he called me-I was hours away. But his parents were out of town for the weekend. So I went down, brought Trevor, and we took care of her. But when Trevor saw the news on Monday about how this politician’s daughter was missing, he sort of flipped. Adam didn’t tell us who she was at the time. Trevor wanted to confess, the stupid prick. Adam convinced him not to, but didn’t trust him. Got Paul to help get him to the lab, then rigged it to explode. But he was already dead.”

“How?” Quinn asked.

Morton shook his head. “Nope, nothing more. I want a deal on the table or you get nothing more from me.”

Dillon spoke quietly. “And Lucy looks like Monique.”