Mortal Faults

49

“You’re in a great deal of trouble, Ms. Sinclair.”

Abby lifted an eyebrow. “You think?”

Assistant Director Michaelson leaned back in his chair in the interrogation room. Abby would have liked to lean back also, but her movements were restricted by the manacle securing her left wrist to a steel eyelet in the table.

“You were apprehended,” Michaelson said, “while holding a gun to the head of a United States congressman.”

“Who’d been shooting at me.”

“Because you tried to kidnap him. You and Andrea Lowry.”

Abby glanced from Michaelson to the only other person in the room-Tess, seated across from her. “Oh, come on.”

Tess offered no response.

“We have witnesses,” Michaelson said. “People in the hotel who saw you and Lowry forcibly escort Congressman Reynolds from the lobby.”

“Those witnesses must also have told you that I wasn’t the one holding a gun on him.”

“It doesn’t matter who was holding the gun. You aided and abetted Andrea Lowry’s escape from FBI surveillance. You orchestrated a meeting with the congressman. Then you and Lowry abducted him.”

“You’re wrong about that last part. But two out of three ain’t bad.”

Michaelson seemed to sense an opening. “So you admit to helping Lowry evade surveillance?”

“I more than helped. I pulled it off solo. I was driving Andrea’s car.”

Abby was aware that the meeting was being recorded by hidden cameras, and that her admission could most definitely be used against her. But she saw no point in lying. She was in a locked room in the FBI suite of the federal building, under suspicion of multiple homicides. It was time to test the old adage and see if the truth really would set her free.

“And you admit to setting up the meeting with Reynolds?”

“Correct-amundo. But not to kidnap him. That was Andrea’s idea-and in her defense, she wasn’t thinking clearly at the time.”

Tess, the only other person in the room, spoke up for the first time since the interrogation began. “If you weren’t there to harm Reynolds, what was the reason for the meeting?”

Abby shrugged. “Therapy.”

“Come again?” Tess asked.

“Well, therapy was one reason. Getting Reynolds to incriminate himself was another.”

Michaelson frowned. “I’m not following you, Ms. Sinclair.”

“Why does that not come as a surprise? Okay, here’s the story. Reynolds is the bad guy. He was behind the attack on Andrea’s house yesterday. He was also behind the murder of Andrea’s children twenty years ago. She didn’t do it. His thugs did. They put a bullet in her to make it look like suicide.”

Sometime during this explanation Michaelson had folded his arms across his chest, his body language radiating disbelief. “And you know all this-how? Clairvoyance?”

“I’m not clairvoyant-just unusually perceptive. And way smarter than, say, you.”

“Are you now?”

“Oh, yeah. Not that I’m bragging. Because, let’s face it, if I wanted to brag, I wouldn’t be comparing myself-”

Tess cut her off. “Abby.”

The low warning tone wasn’t lost on her. Abby smiled. “Pissing off the boss man isn’t such a good idea?”

“You ought to be taking these proceedings more seriously, Ms. Sinclair,” Michaelson warned.

“I never take anything seriously. It’s all part of my elusive je ne sais quois. Anyway, to answer your question, I knew the truth about Andrea’s past because of a conversation I had with her this morning.”

Michaelson folded his arms tighter, as if trying to hug himself to death. “You’re lying. You were never in contact with Andrea Lowry after the attack on Friday, which means you had no opportunity-”

“Oh, spare me. I met her in the ladies’ room of the Beverly Center while your idiot surveillance squad stood around window shopping outside. The garlic genius she picked up there-I bought it. Incidentally, is there any way I can get remuneration for that? Put it on the Bureau’s tab?”

Michaelson ignored the question. “Even if you did talk with Lowry, how can anything she told you possibly relate to the meeting with Congressman Reynolds?”

“I needed him to admit what he’d done. I wanted Andrea there to hear it-and to participate. The plan was for Reynolds to say too much, reveal that he’d sent his brownshirts after Andrea twenty years ago. I was hoping if Andrea heard this, she’d have a breakthrough. She’d remember what really happened that night. Not the phony, reconstructed memories the shrinks pounded into her, but the truth.”

“And did she?” Tess asked, sounding just the tiniest bit intrigued.

“She did. Big-time. It was, if I say so myself, a thing of beauty to behold. Up to a point.”

Michaelson still hadn’t released himself from his death grip. “What point?”

“The point when she pulled a pistol out of her pocket.” Abby shook her head. “Wow, try saying that three times fast.”

“You’re claiming you didn’t know she was armed?”

“How could I? You guys confiscated her revolver, right? She never said anything about a second gun.”

Michaelson finally unfolded his arms, but only to tent his fingers in front of his face, another sign of resistance. “So you didn’t anticipate that she would abduct the congressman?”

“Nope. I didn’t see that one coming. A rare lapse of prescience on my part.”

Michaelson spoke through his fingers. “But you accompanied her when she left the lobby with Reynolds.”

“I was trying to talk her down.”

“And I suppose you expect us take your word for that.”

“Not at all. It’s on tape. I recorded everything that happened.”

“And where is this tape?”

“In my purse.”

“And where’s that?”

“I lost it when I was scrambling around under Reynolds’ car. One of the crime-scene guys must’ve found it.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Abby felt her first flutter of anxiety. All along she’d assumed the purse would turn up. “They have to have found it. I mean, it’s a regular size purse with a microcassette recorder inside, and my wallet and ID…”

“Anything else?”

“Probably some condoms.”

Michaelson’s eyes narrowed. “Condoms?”

“Be prepared. That’s my motto.”

“You and the Boy Scouts,” Tess said.

“Do they carry condoms, too?”

Michaelson stood abruptly. “Ms. Sinclair, this narrative you’ve shared with us is all very interesting, but in the absence of proof it really doesn’t amount to much.”

“Andrea will vouch for me.”

“The statement of your accomplice isn’t likely to carry much weight.”

“Then find my purse and play the tape.”

“And will the tape also clear you in the murder of Dylan Garrick?”

She’d been expecting them to bring that up. She expelled a breath. “No.”

Tess straightened in her chair. “You met with Garrick when he left the bar. I have a witness.”

“Probably the bartender, right? That’s who I would’ve pumped for info.”

From the way Tess’s eyes flickered, Abby knew she’d guessed right. “The identity of the witness is unimportant,” Tess said. “What matters is that you left with Garrick, and he was shot later that night. When I asked you about it this morning, you lied to me.”

“I lie all the time, Tess. It’s a major part of my lifestyle. You ought to know that by now.”

Michaelson had turned away. Tess was handling this phase of the interrogation. “I don’t know why you would lie about Garrick unless you have something to hide.”

“I did have something to hide. I was in his apartment. I held him at gunpoint, using his own gun.”

Tess’s face hardened into an expression of contempt. “And you pistol-whipped him.”

“Yes.”

“And wrapped the gun in a pillow.”

“Yes.”

“And then you shot him.”

“No.”

“Why did you wrap up the gun, if not to muffle a shot?”

“I wanted him to think I was going to shoot him.”

“But you didn’t?”

“Again, N-O.”

“So who did?”

“No idea.”

“You were trying to scare him as part of an interrogation. Is that what you’re saying?”

Abby hesitated. “Not exactly.”

“What, then?”

“The interrogation was already over. I wanted to scare him just because-well, because he scared me. He put me through two or three minutes of hell in Andrea’s house, and I wanted to return the favor.”

“So you’re telling us Dylan Garrick was alive and conscious when you left?”

“He was alive. Not conscious. I KO’d him with the butt of the gun.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to toss his place, and I didn’t want him tiptoeing up behind me.”

“You searched his apartment?”

“Sure did. Found the gun he used at Andrea’s, and a slightly damaged silencer tube, and some other stuff. It was in his bureau in the bedroom, just like he told me.”

“And then?”

“Then I turned out the lights so I wouldn’t be seen leaving, and I sneaked out. Found a payphone a mile away and called in a shots-fired to nine-one-one. Muffled my voice so I couldn’t be identified on tape.”

“Why report shots fired, if there were none?”

“I figured it was the best way to get a fast response.”

“Why call the police at all?”

“So they would find his gear, link him to the shooting in San Fernando. Come on, Tess, you know how I work.”

“Yes,” Tess said quietly, “I know how you work.”

“Not sure I’m liking the mother superior tone. I was trying to help out. I even left the door unlocked to make it easier for the cops to get in.”

“When they got in, they didn’t find Dylan Garrick unconscious. They found him dead.”

“I know. I was watching.”

Michaelson turned to face her. “Watching?”

“After I called nine-one-one, I doubled back and parked a few blocks away. Then I found a vantage point where I could observe the action. I wanted to make sure the cops checked out the whole apartment and found the gun in the bedroom. That was the only link to the assault on Andrea. Instead I saw them call for a morgue wagon. I saw Dylan carried out in a body bag. That’s when I knew there was a problem.”

“A problem,” Michaelson said coldly, “because you shot him.”

“No, dickwad. A problem because somebody else shot him, but I would be linked to the crime. People saw me leave the bar with Dylan. Tess here already suspected me of having vengeance in mind-”

“Because you did have vengeance in mind,” Tess snapped.

“I didn’t shoot Dylan.”

“No, I’m sure the thought never even crossed your mind.”

“It crossed my mind.” Abby took a breath. “I thought about killing him. I wanted to. And… I came close. When I put the pillow around the gun, I wasn’t just trying to scare him. I was… thinking about it. How easy it would be.”

“And you yielded to that temptation,” Michaelson said. “Come on, be straight with us. I understand what you were feeling. I can sympathize. You’d hardly be human if you didn’t hate the man.”

This was the ADIC’s ham-fisted way of trying to establish rapport with the suspect. Abby could see why this bozo didn’t do fieldwork. Any halfway intelligent street criminal would see through him like Plexiglas.

“Don’t give me the touchy-feely routine, please,” she said. “I cry real easy, and I don’t want us to get all Oprah and start exchanging hugs.”

Michaelson backed off, frustrated. Tess took over again. “If you left Garrick alive, how did he end up dead?”

“Obviously someone else decided to do the job. I guess I’d made it easy. I left the door unlocked, lights off, Dylan unconscious with his gun on the floor where I’d left it, and the pillow right next to it.”

“In other words,” Michaelson said with heavy sarcasm, “someone just happened to walk in there, saw Garrick unconscious, and whacked him?”

Abby wrinkled her nose. “Don’t say ‘whacked.’ Too Sopranos.”

“It’s a rather large coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not necessarily. Dylan was pretty nervous. He’d screwed up royal. Disappointed Reynolds-and other folks, too. It’s not too surprising someone would take him out.”

“Someone like you.”

Abby sighed. She definitely was not getting through to this guy. “No, someone like one of his fellow gang members, enforcing discipline, imposing the penalty for failure. Maybe someone who was watching the apartment and waiting for Dylan’s girlfriend-namely me-to leave. When I did, this other guy comes upstairs, finds the door open, sees Dylan asleep, or so it appears. In the dark the intruder wouldn’t see the bruises or the blood. He moves closer, finds the gun on the floor. Realizes he can do the job with Dylan’s own piece. Fires twice through the pillow. Then runs.”

“All this takes place while you’re off providentially making a phone call to nine-one-one?”

“I’m not sure how much providence had to do with it, but yeah.”

“Why would the shooter run?” Tess asked. “Why wouldn’t he search the apartment like you did, take the evidence tying Dylan to the San Fernando raid?”

“I’m guessing that was his plan. But maybe the second shot was too loud. Or he might have heard the sirens of the cop cars responding to my call.”

Michaelson folded his arms again. A bad sign. “That’s an interesting series of suppositions.”

“Thank you.”

“But entirely unnecessary. We don’t need a mystery gunman on a grassy knoll. We have you.”

“I never mentioned a grassy knoll.”

“Are you listening, Ms. Sinclair? We have you. You’re looking very, very good for the murder of Dylan Garrick.”

Abby gave up on Michaelson and looked at Tess for support. “You know that’s not my style.”

Tess took a long moment to respond. “Honestly, Abby, I don’t know what to think about you anymore.”

Silence in the room, broken finally when Abby heard herself say words she had never spoken before. “Maybe I’d better call a lawyer.”

Michaelson gestured for Tess to rise. “There’ll be time for that later.”

“Hey. I’m supposed to get a phone call. It’s in the Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence, or some old document under glass.”

Tess walked out of the room without answering.

“It could be the Magna Carta,” Abby added helpfully. “You might check there. You hear me? I want a lawyer.”

Michaelson gave Abby a dismissive backward glance. “Later,” he said.

The door shut behind him, and she was alone.