Fear No Evil

TWENTY-EIGHT

QUINN MET DILLON in the lobby of the field office and led him into the rear. “Morton’s on his way over.”

“Where’s Kate?”

“She’s cooling off in an interview room. She and Merritt went at it. Verbally,” he added.

“I want to see her.”

Quinn glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes, if you want to be in with Morton.”

“Come get me.”

Quinn led Dillon to the room where Kate was being held. There was a plainclothes guard at the door. “Merritt insisted,” Quinn said before Dillon could ask.

“She’s not going to jail.”

Quinn shook his head. “We’re keeping her here overnight. It’s not very comfortable, but better than going to Seattle PD and being processed.” He cleared Dillon with the guard. “I’ll be back when Morton arrives.” He left Dillon alone with Kate.

Kate jumped up and ran into his arms. He held her tight. A wave of relief that she was okay, that she was safe, washed over him. And something more-a deep need to be with her.

He kissed her repeatedly, then held her at arm’s length to take in her appearance fully. She looked more like a cop than when he’d first met her two days before, but weariness clouded her expression. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “You came back.”

“I said I would.”

“How’s Lucy?”

“She has Carina and Jack taking her back to San Diego. They’ll take care of her.”

“Jack?”

“He’s staying until Scott is captured.”

She nodded. “You think Lucy is in danger.”

“Absolutely. Both you and Lucy.”

Kate sank into one of the chairs around the conference table. Dillon sat next to her, turning his chair so they were knee to knee and he could hold her hands. “Why does he want me now?” she asked. “I understood his frustration before-Paige and I slowed down his operation, forced him to go underground. I can see that he wanted revenge. But now we know who he is. He has the money to disappear-why doesn’t he just disappear? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It does make sense,” Dillon said. “You’re thinking about this logically from your experience. But Adam Scott has a different background. It’s personal.”

“I never knew him before we started investigating April Klinger’s disappearance.”

“What I mean is, for him it’s personal. You remind him of another woman who took something from him. Maybe he was unable to fight back or reclaim what he lost, so he’s put you in her role. On the surface, he can convince himself that he’s getting back at you because of what you stole from him-his legal porn operation, his freedom of movement, and now Lucy. But it’s an act. What he really wants is revenge on someone he could never get revenge on. By killing you, he’s avenging his own failures, hurting the person who hurt him.”

“I guess that makes sense. But if I were him, I’d lay low for a couple of years and come after me when I’d least expect it.”

“That’s logical, and up until now Scott has been smart. But we’ve exposed his identity. We took away his support-Roger Morton and Denise Arno. And remember, for him this is not so much a game as a show. He sees himself as Trask, the actor. Onstage. Performing. His public persona is much different from his inner person. In fact, on the surface Trask is amiable, charismatic, attractive. Inside, where he’s Adam Scott, he’s dark and twisted. He’s been able to keep them separate-meaning, if we saw his dark side, we’d recognize it immediately. But Trask the actor has taken over. A man who can trick teenage girls into meeting him. A man who probably didn’t seem like he’d hurt anyone. He looked safe. But in exposing Adam Scott, the weaknesses and insecurities that he has long suppressed are coming out. That’s why he couldn’t rape the woman last night. That’s why he couldn’t climax. It was in his face-the rage, the frustration, and fear.”

Kate sighed, squeezed his hands. “I just want this to be over. I want Lucy to feel safe again. I want to get my life back.”

“Quinn said you and Merritt had it out.”

“Merritt’s an asshole. He honestly believes that I intentionally brought Paige into a dangerous situation and did nothing to save her. And I told him the truth-that Paige had assured me he’d authorized backup. I thought there were agents surrounding the building, ready to act. He didn’t believe me.”

“But Quinn does.”

“I think so.”

“You’re doing the right thing, Kate. And no matter how long it takes, I’ll stand by you.”

She touched his face, then dropped her hand when Quinn Peterson walked into the room. “Morton’s here,” he said.

Dillon stood. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded, gave him a quick smile. “I’m okay.”

Dillon asked, “Did they find the girl in the video?”

“Not yet. I sent the file to the lab to see if they can find any personal information from the images. It appears to be her own bedroom, very feminine. A double bed. She’s likely single, so unless an employer or relative calls, or she has a roommate who wasn’t home last night, we might not find her for a couple of days.”

Dillon followed Quinn down the hall, around the corner, and through a secure door into another interview room. Two guards stood next to a chained and seated Roger Morton. Quinn motioned for them to step out.

“Where’s my lawyer?” Morton sneered as the cops closed the door.

“I’m sure he’s on his way. We informed him of this meeting.”

Morton’s dark hair had begun to gray and he sported the beginnings of a beer belly. He was muscular with a thick neck and hands. He played with a class ring on his left pinky finger. He was neither handsome nor ugly, an average guy who worked out to build the muscles, but as he aged the muscles were turning into flab. Purple and black bruises had formed on his face from Dillon’s attack the day before. Dillon couldn’t muster any sympathy for his injuries.

“I’m not talking. Told you that.”

“I know what you told me yesterday,” Quinn said. “I’m giving you a chance to make a deal.”

“Talk to my lawyer.”

“I will.” Quinn tapped his fingers on the table. “But if you cooperate and help us find Adam Scott, we’ll make a deal. A good deal. If you don’t, it’s special circumstances murder. Death penalty.”

“Bullshit. You don’t have me for murder.”

“We have a witness from five years ago who has given us a sworn statement regarding the events in the warehouse that resulted in the deaths of two agents.”

Morton leaned forward, chains clinking. “If you have a sworn statement that is at all accurate, it has a criminal stating that Adam Scott killed that guy in the warehouse, not me. I know that Kate Donovan is not a reliable witness.” He snorted.

Quinn tensed. “You were there. You are an accessory to murder. We have you on tape raping eight girls.”

“Women,” Morton corrected. “Consenting women.”

“Lucy did not consent,” Quinn said. “Paige Henshaw did not consent.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t kill them. What’s rape? Five to seven?”

“Kidnapping, use of a weapon during the commission of felony rape, you’ll be getting far more than seven years.”

Morton stared straight ahead.

“You don’t get it, do you? Adam Scott is leaving you to take the blame. The evidence at the cabin on the island points to you as being an equal partner in Trask Enterprises, including murder, rape, kidnapping, money laundering, e-crimes, and that’s just the major-ticket items.” Quinn leaned forward. “Scott gets away with your money to sun himself on some Caribbean island and you are left having to answer for his crimes.”

For the first time, Dillon saw a flicker cross Morton’s face.

“So Scott gets away and you go to prison. Seem fair to you? Especially since, as you say, you didn’t kill anyone.”

“I didn’t,” Morton insisted. “And you’re not going to get me to say I did.”

“You attempted to kill Agent Kate Donovan.”

Morton snorted. “She was trespassing.”

Quinn stared at him and shook his head. “That’s not going to fly, Roger. You had kidnapped and raped a girl on the premises. Probable cause.” He leaned forward again. “Mick Mallory survived. I already have a statement from him. So between Mallory, Donovan, and Lucy Kincaid, I have three eyewitnesses.”

“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.”

“They could be fucking twins.”