Неизвестный - 3. In Pursuit Of Justice

“The reason I’m asking is that if someone were to look at this from the outside, your actions could be construed as taking the law into your own hands. You not only saved the hostage, you executed the perpetrator.”

Rebecca almost smiled. Now he was trying to provoke her into saying more than she intended to reveal. Another interrogation technique that he wasn’t employing very well. “Dr. Whitaker, I did not execute the suspect. I used appropriate force to subdue a violent criminal who gave every indication that he was about to inflict severe bodily harm on a civilian and who gave verbal confirmation that he intended to kill her as well as me.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Detective Sergeant.”

“That would be nice.”

“Given the same situation, would you do the same thing again?”

“Yes,” Rebecca answered without hesitation. Her eyes met his, and whatever he saw in her steel gaze made him blink.

“Would you risk your life for any hostage, or only one you were personally involved with?” he asked softly.

She leaned forward, never taking her eyes from his, and her voice was flint. “Meaning what?”

“You knew the hostage personally, didn’t you?”

“I met her during the course of the investigation, yes.”

He gave no sign that she hadn’t precisely answered his question, but merely continued. “Did the fact that you…knew her…influence your reaction to the situation?”

“No.” She didn’t see any need to tell him that she’d been almost out of her mind with fear and anger only a short time before she’d finally found Blake and Catherine. Because her mind had been crystal clear when she’d stepped into the room with them. She’d been in perfect control.

“So,” he said with soft finality. “What you’re saying is that you would risk your life…no, forfeit your life…for anyone in the same situation.”

“I’m a cop, Whitaker,” Rebecca remarked sharply, finally allowing her impatience to show. “In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what we do. I’m not a loose cannon; I’m not a danger to society. I’m not a risk to anyone.”

“Except yourself.”

Standing, she asked quietly, “Are we done here?”

“For today, yes. I’d like to see you one more time, which is my standard operating procedure.” As she turned to leave, he added, “You might consider, Sergeant, that you would be much more effective if you valued yourself as much as those you were sworn to protect.”

She didn’t answer, but closed the door gently behind her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

WHEN REBECCA WALKED out into the hallway after leaving Whitaker’s office, she turned right and almost walked into Watts, who was leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette under a big bright red No Smoking sign. She stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you pull into the parking lot this morning.”

“And what?” she asked tersely. “You didn’t have anything better to do than hang around out here?”

Well,” he said unhurriedly, taking the last drag on his cigarette and dropping it on to the stained tile floor and crushing it beneath his scuffed wingtips. “Now that you mention it, I do have something better to do, and I thought you might like something better to do, too.”

“What have you got?” she asked, curious despite her irritation at finding him outside the psychologist’s office. It wasn’t exactly a secret what she was doing there, but she still didn’t like being reminded that her colleagues were aware of the fact that she was undergoing evaluation. Even though she was not under any kind of suspicion, it still made her feel as if she were not on firm ground within her own province. As much as she understood intellectually the need for police officers, with their steady diet of stressful and dangerous situations, to have the access to and support of psychologists who understood the pressures of the job, it was still something of a stigma. Before he could speak, she snapped, “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them began to walk toward the exit sign above the stairwell at the end of the hallway, and Watts replied, “I’ve tracked down a guest of the state, located right here at our own correctional institution, who might be willing to give us some information for something in return. You know the drill—these cons will roll on their own mothers for extra privileges or a shot at an earlier parole hearing.”

“Who is he?” Rebecca asked, her pulse quickening at the thought of any kind of hard lead. It wasn’t in her nature to sit by and wait for other departments, or in this case, federal agents to point her in the right direction on a case. If Sloan and McBride turned up something with their Internet searches, all the better, but she wasn’t holding her breath.

“A guy by the name of Alonso Richards. He’s doing six to ten for possession with the intent to sell.”

“Huh,” Rebecca said disappointedly. “Drugs. What makes you think he can help us?”

“Because when they raided the house where he was holed up with his stash of crack cocaine, they also found some very interesting videotapes. Tapes with a whole bunch of teenage girls and a couple of …uh… mature men frolicking in the nude in a variety of combinations. And they weren’t commercial tapes—these were home movies.”

“Do you have the tapes?”

Watts shook his head disgustedly. “Nope. I checked with the evidence room last night. Mysteriously, the tapes have disappeared.”

“So we don’t know who was on them?”

“No such luck. There was no mention as to whether the men were ever ID’d or not.”

Rebecca stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and stared at Watts. “How did you find this? And how come we’re just hearing about it now?”

Watts shrugged, but his expression was wary. “Something doesn’t smell right, but I can’t figure out where the smell is coming from. Since we’re Vice, someone from Narco should have tipped us off about it. But it was buried in the arrest report, and the only reason I found it at all is because I pulled the files on the busts you and Cruz made when you closed down that chicken coop last spring. I was trying to find some connection with the guys running that deal, hoping we’d find someone still working the streets, so I cross-referenced the names of the guys you sent away for known associates. Then I ran the names of those guys looking for recent activity and out popped this Richards.”

They pushed through the exit door into the parking lot, where Watts promptly lit another cigarette. Police vans, cruisers, and unmarked vehicles were interspersed with civilian cars, and as the two of them wove between the haphazardly parked automobiles towards Rebecca’s Corvette, she asked, “You must have spent a lot of time humping that computer. Nice job.”

He didn’t reply but a smile flickered across his face and was just as quickly gone. “I think we need to hunt down the narc dicks who made the bust and find out why we never heard about the pornography tie-in. I’ve called and left messages, but no callbacks. Anything to do with prostitution and kids should have automatically been kicked over to someone in our division, and I couldn’t find a record of it.”

As Rebecca opened the door and slid into the seat, she grumbled, “There seems to be a lot of things that we should have been informed of that we haven’t been. Come to think of it, Cruz and I were lucky to have made that initial arrest. We were tipped off to the place by a junkie we were questioning about something entirely unrelated, and he gave up the location hoping we’d leave him alone. Now I wonder if we hadn’t moved on it so quickly whether there would have been anyone there at all when we showed up.” When Watts had settled in beside her, she swiveled in her seat and said to him, “How come you didn’t tell me about the rumors that Jeff Cruz was dirty?”