Jeffery Deaver - The Kill Room

“Detective,” Laurel said evenly, “what are you talking about?”

She didn’t start with the news Sellitto had just informed her of, the suspension. She went chronologically. “You took my name off all the memos, all the emails. You replaced my name with yours.”

“I’m not—”

“Anything to help you get elected, right, Assemblywoman Laurel?”

Sachs withdrew the copy she’d made from Laurel’s secret files and thrust the sheet forward. It was a petition to put Laurel on the ballot to run for the office of assemblywoman in her district. The assembly was the lower house of the legislature in New York.

The woman’s eyes dipped. “Ah.”

Busted.

But an instant later she was gazing coolly back into Sachs’s face.

Sachs snapped, “You took me off the documents to take credit for yourself. Is that what this case is all about, Nance? ‘Your’ case, by the way. Not ‘ our case’ or ‘ the case.’ Because you wanted big media defendants to make a big splash. Forget Unsub Five Sixteen’s torturing innocent women. You don’t want him. You want the highest government official you can bag.

“And to make sure that happens you had me running around town digging up all the good things about Moreno I could find. Anything substantive on the case, you co-opted, put your name on it and took credit.”

The assistant DA, though, didn’t seem the least fazed. “Did you happen to look up my application to go on the ballot?”

“No, I didn’t need to. I had this, the petition with the signatures.” She lifted the photocopy.

Laurel said, “Those support the ballot application. You still need to submit one.”

Sachs was pinged by that feeling she sometimes got, a nagging concern, that she might have missed something at a crime scene. Something fundamental. She was silent.

“I’m not running for office.”

“The petition…”

“The petition was filed, yes. But I changed my mind. I never filed the application to run.”

More silence.

Laurel continued, “Yes, I’d wanted to run in the Democratic primary but the party felt I was a little too opinionated for them. I filed a petition to run as an independent. But as time went by I decided not to.”

Ping…

Now, curiously, Laurel’s eyes were averted. She, not Sachs, seemed the more uneasy. And her shoulders, usually completely upright, sagged. “Last winter I went through a very hard breakup. He was…Well, I thought we’d get married. I understand that those things don’t always work out. Fine. But it just wouldn’t go away, the pain.” Her jaw was set, her thin lips trembling. “It was exhausting.”

Sachs recalled her observation from earlier, when Laurel had gotten the phone call in the town house.

She’s vulnerable, even defenseless…

“I thought I needed to try something different. I’d run for office, devote myself to politics. I’d always wanted to. I have very strong ideas about this country and government’s role. I was class president in high school and college. That was a happy time for me and I guess I wanted to re-create it. But I decided I was a better DA than I would be a politician. This is where I belong.”

A nod toward the interview room. “The perp in there? History of sexual assault. He’s in here because he groped three high school students. The original prosecutor didn’t have time for the case and was going to charge him with forcible touching. Misdemeanor. He couldn’t be bothered. I know about people like this suspect, though. Next it’ll be raping an eleven-year-old and the time after that he’ll kill the girl once he’s finished. I took over and I’m going for first-degree sexual act.”

“Class B felony,” Sachs said.

“Exactly. And I’m going to get it. Running cases like this’s my talent, not politics. Stopping rapists and people like Shreve Metzger, who’re hiding behind the government and doing whatever the fuck they want, to hell with the Constitution.”

An obscenity. She was angry. Sachs suspected this was the real Nance Laurel, rarely visible beneath the buttoned-up suits, the spray-painted makeup, the if-you-don’t-mind verbiage.

“Amelia, yes, I took your name off the memos and emails. But that was purely for your sake and the sake of your career. It never occurred to me that you’d want credit. Who would?” She gave a shrug. “You know how dangerous this prosecution is? It’s a career-ender, if the slightest thing goes wrong. Washington might cut Metzger and Barry Shales loose and let them swing in the wind. But they might also make this their Gettysburg, take a stand against me. And if they do and I lose on the immunity issue, then I’m history. The feds’ll pressure Albany to get rid of me, and the attorney general will. In a heartbeat. That’ll happen to everybody involved in the case, Amelia.”

My case…

“I wanted to shelter you and the others as much as I could. Lon Sellitto’s not mentioned in any of the memos. Ron Pulaski, the same.”

Sachs pointed out, “But one of us’ll have to testify in court as experts—to the evidence.” Then she understood. “Lincoln.”

Laurel said, “He’s a consultant. He can’t be fired.”

“I didn’t understand any of this,” Sachs said. She apologized for her outburst.

“No, no. I should’ve shared the strategy with you.”

Sachs felt her phone vibrate and she glanced at the screen. A text from Lon Sellitto.

A—

Just learned. The suspension came from downtown. Capt. Myers. Thinks you’re not up front on health issues. He got your medical records from your private doctor. I bought you a week to stay on Moreno case. But need full medical by May 28th.

So that was it. Laurel had had nothing to do with getting her sidelined. Thank God she hadn’t blurted what she’d been thinking earlier. But then: How the hell had Myers gotten her private records? She never made insurance claims through the department. She herself paid for the appointments with her orthopedist—for this very reason: so no one in the Big Building would find out.

“Everything okay?” Laurel asked, nodding at the phone.

“Sure, fine.”

At that moment a buzz sounded from the end of the corridor. The door swung open and a man stepped inside, in his thirties, athletic, wearing a dark suit. He blinked in surprise, seeing the women at the end of the hall. Then he started forward, eyes taking in the rest of the hallway and the empty rooms.

Sachs spent a lot of time here. She knew many of the officers and guards. The detectives, of course. But she’d never seen this man before.

Maybe he was the sex pervert’s lawyer. But the expression on Laurel’s face said that she didn’t recognize him either.

Sachs turned back to Laurel. “I do have some news. Before I left we got a lead to the whistleblower.”

“Really?” Laurel lifted an eyebrow.

Sachs explained about the tourist’s photos of the tea-drinker who liked Splenda and had a bum stomach. His inexpensive, odd-colored suit. His possible connection to the military.

Laurel asked a question but by then Sachs’s instinct had kicked in and she wasn’t paying attention.

The man who’d been buzzed in was ignoring the interrogation rooms. He seemed purposefully, but warily, making his way toward the women.

“You know that guy?” Sachs whispered.

“No.” Laurel seemed troubled by the detective’s concern.

A scenario played itself out in Sachs’s imagination, honed by instinct: This wasn’t Barry Shales—they’d seen his picture—but could it be Unsub 516? Sachs had been careful with the cell phones but who knew what NIOS was capable of. The man could have tracked her here—or followed Laurel. Maybe he’d just killed the guard out front and buzzed himself in.