Лорел Гамильтон - Blue Moon

Having a call from the feds made Wilkes jumpy as hell. The bad guys had ambushed us across from the police station. You didn't do a planned attack right next door to the cops unless you were pretty sure they wouldn't spoil the fun. The bad guys had known the police wouldn't help us. They'd said as much during the fight, challenging Millie to call Wilkes, like it wouldn't help. But Wilkes's reaction to the call from the feds sort of clinched it for me. Policemen are very territorial. No federal laws had been broken. The FBI had no business in a simple assault case. Wilkes should have been pissed, and he wasn't. Oh, he made noises like he was angry, and he was, but he should have raised hell, and he didn't. His reaction to everything was just a little bit off — a little bit less convincing than it should have been.

I was betting he was dirty. I just couldn't prove it yet. Of course, it wasn't my job to prove it. I'd come down here to get Richard out of jail, and we'd done that.

Wilkes finally asked to speak with me alone. Belisarius didn't like it, but he left with the others. I sat at the little table and looked at Wilkes.

It was the cleanest interrogation room I'd ever been in. The table was pale pine and looked handmade. The walls were white and clean. Even the linoleum on the floor was hospital bright. I didn't think Myerton got a lot of use for the room. It'd probably started life as a storage closet. It had been almost too small to hold five of us, but there was room for two.

Wilkes pulled a chair out and sat across from me. He clasped his hands in front of him and looked at me. There was a band around his head where the hair had been pressed flat from the hat. There was a plain gold wedding band on his left hand and one of those watches that joggers use, big and black and utilitarian. Since I had the lady's version of the same watch on my left wrist, it was hard to criticize.

"What?" I said. "You going to give me the silent treatment until I scream for mercy?"

He gave a very small smile. "Made some phone calls about you, Blake. There's a lot of talk that you'll bend the law if you need to. That maybe you've murdered people."

I just looked at him. I could feel my face thinning out, blanking. Once upon a time, every emotion I'd felt had played along my face, but that was a while ago. I'd perfected my blank cop stare, and it showed nothing.

"Is there a point to this conversation?" I asked.

The smile this time was bigger. "I just like to know who I'm dealing with, Blake, that's all."

"Good to be thorough," I said.

He nodded. "I got calls from a Saint Louis cop, a fed, and a state cop. The state cop says you're a pain in the ass and will bend the law six ways to Sunday."

"Bet that was Freemount," I said. "She's still pissed about a case we worked together."

He nodded, smiling pleasantly. "The fed sort of hinted that if you were detained, he might find a reason to have the local federal office to come take a look around."

I smiled. "Bet you really enjoyed that."

His brown eyes went hard and dark. "I don't want the feebies down here messing in my pond."

"I'll bet you don't, Wilkes."

His face tightened, letting me see just how angry he was. "What the fuck do you care?"

I leaned across the table on my elbows. "You should be more careful who you do a frame-up job on, Wilkes."

"He's a fucking junior high science teacher. How was I supposed to know he was shacking up with the fucking Executioner?"

"We're not shacking up," I said automatically. I sat back in my seat. "What do you want, Wilkes? Why the private talk?"

He ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, and for the first time, I realized how nervous he was. He was scared. Why? What the hell was happening in this tiny town?

"If the rape charges disappear, Zeeman is free to leave town. You and everybody go with him. No harm, no foul."

A sport's metaphor — ooh, I was all a-tingle. "I didn't come down here to sniff around your mess, Wilkes. I'm not a cop. I came down here to get Richard out of trouble."

"He's out of trouble if he leaves."

"I'm not his keeper, Wilkes. I can't promise what Richard will do."

"Why does a schoolteacher have bodyguards?" Wilkes asked.

I shrugged. "Why do you want the schoolteacher out of the way bad enough to frame him for rape?"

"We've all got our secrets, Blake. You make sure he leaves town and takes his assassins with him, and we can all keep our secrets."

I looked at my hands spread on the smooth tabletop. I looked back up, met his eyes. "I'll talk to Richard, see what I can do. But I can't promise anything until after I've talked to him."

"Make him listen, Blake. Zeeman is so clean he squeaks, but you and I know the score."

I shook my head. "Yeah, I know the score, and I know what people say about me." I stood up.

He stood up. We looked at each other.

"I don't always pay attention to the letter of the law, that's true. One of the reasons Richard and I aren't dating anymore is that he is so fucking squeaking clean it makes my teeth hurt. But we have one thing in common."

"What's that?" Wilkes asked.

"Push us, and we push back. Richard usually for moral grounds, because it's the right thing to do. Me, because I am just that unpleasant."

"Unpleasant," Wilkes said. "Mel Cooper may never walk right again or have the full use of his left arm."

"He shouldn't have pulled a knife on me," I said.

"If there hadn't been witnesses, would you have killed him?"

I smiled, and even to me, it felt like a strange smile, not humorous, unpleasant maybe. "I'll talk to Richard. Hopefully, we'll be out of your hair before tomorrow night."

"I wasn't always a small-town cop, Blake. Don't let the surroundings fool you. I will not let you and your people fuck with me."

"Funny," I said. "I was thinking the very same thing."

"Well," Wilkes said, "we know where we stand."

"I guess we do," I said.

"I hope come dark tomorrow you and your friends are on your way out of town."

I stared into his brown eyes. I'd looked into scarier eyes, blanker, more dead. He didn't have the eyes of a professional killer. He didn't even have good cop eyes. I could see the fear shiny and almost panicked around the edges. No, I'd seen scarier eyes. But that didn't mean he wouldn't kill me if he got the chance. Make even a good man scared enough, and you never know what he'll do. Make a bad man scared, and you are in trouble. Wilkes probably hadn't killed anybody yet or they wouldn't have framed Richard for rape. They'd have framed him for murder or just killed him. So Wilkes hadn't slid completely down into the abyss. But once you embrace the screaming darkness, eventually, you kill. Maybe Wilkes didn't know that yet, but if we pushed hard enough, he'd figure it out.

By the time I got back to the cabins, it was after seven. It was August, so it was still daylight, but you could tell it was late. There was a softness to the light, a tiredness to the heat as if the day itself was eager for night. Or maybe it was just me that was tired.

My face hurt. At least I hadn't had to have stitches in my mouth. The EMS guy on the ambulance had said I'd need a couple of stitches. When I got to the hospital, the doctor said I didn't. A very bright spot for me. I'm sort of phobic about needles. But I've taken stitches with no painkiller and that ain't fun, either.

Jamil was standing in front of the cabins. He'd changed into black jeans and a T-shirt with a smiley face on it. The T-shirt was cut across the middle so his abs showed. Though my dance card was full of attractive men, Jamil did have one of the nicest stomachs I'd ever seen. The muscles stood out under the tight smoothness of his skin like shingles on a roof. It didn't even look real. Somehow, I didn't think you needed cobblestone abs to be a good bodyguard. But hey, everyone needs a hobby.