Orchid Beach

CHAPTER

44

At eleven o’clock the phone on Holly’s desk rang. She let it ring a couple of times, then picked it up and said, “Holly Barker. Hold on a minute, will you?” Then she pressed the HOLD button. She knew it was Barney Noble, and she wanted him to sweat a little.

“Hello?” she said finally.

“It’s Barney.”

“Hi, Barney,” she said brightly. “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Mosely will be in your office at eleven-thirty with his licenses,” Barney said. “I want your assurance that you won’t charge him with anything.”

“Barney,” Holly said, “I’m not giving you any assurances about anything. I run this department, not you, and if you ever try to go over my head with the city council again, you’re going to find out just how hard I can make your life.”

“Don’t threaten me, Holly.”

“I’ll threaten you all I like,” she said. “How would you like me to have all your people’s gun licenses pulled and then come out there and confiscate all your firearms? I can do that, you know, and you can’t do a goddamned thing about it.”

Barney was suddenly placating. “Now, Holly, let’s not get into a pissing match here.”

“We won’t have any problem, Barney, as long as you understand that you are operating in my jurisdiction, and not the other way around.” She didn’t know quite why she was pushing him so hard, but every instinct in her body told her to do it.

“All right, all right,” Barney said. “Mosely will be there in half an hour. How long are you going to keep him there?”

“As long as I want to,” Holly said, then hung up. She called Harry Crisp’s cell phone.

“Yes?” Crisp said.

“Come now.”

“Right with you.”

Two minutes later Crisp walked into the police station, gave his name and asked for Holly.

Holly’s intercom rang. “Put Mr. Crisp into interview two,” she said. She hung up and watched as Harry was led down the hallway.

At eleven-thirty, her intercom rang again. “Yes?”

“A Mr. Mosely to see you.”

“Put him in interview one,” she said. Now she got her first look at Mosely. He was just as big as Jackson had said, and just as ugly. She let him wait ten minutes, then stood up. “Come on, Daisy,” she said, “let’s you and I interview Cracker Mosely.” She picked up a file folder, put the dog on a leash and walked down the hallway toward the interview rooms. She opened the door of number two. Harry Crisp was sitting quietly at the two-way mirror, looking at Mosely. “The volume control is right there, Harry.”

“Got it,” Crisp replied. “He’s mean-looking, isn’t he?”

“You bet.”

“I’ll shoot him through the glass if he gives you a hard time.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Holly said. She opened the door to interview room one and was nearly dragged off her feet by Daisy, who had her front paws on the table, trying to reach Mosely. “Daisy! Back off! Back off!”

It was the first time that Daisy had not obeyed her instantly. It took her the better part of a minute to get the dog calmed down. When she was satisfied that the dog was completely under her control again, she unhooked the leash and took a seat.

Mosely was staring at the dog, fear on his face. “Put him back on the leash,” he said. “I don’t want to have to kill that dog.”

“Tell you the truth, Cracker, my money would be on the dog, and I’d give long odds.”

Daisy made a rumbling noise in her throat, imitating Holly’s tone.

“Stay, Daisy. Guard!”

Daisy moved from a prone to a sitting position, staring intently at Mosely.

Holly was intrigued by Daisy’s reaction to Mosely, but she didn’t make a point of it. “Let’s have the licenses,” she said, without further ado.

Mosely shoved an envelope across the table.

Holly opened it and examined the two pieces of paper; the gun license had been laminated. “Good,” she said, looking up at Mosely and smiling a little. “Now all I have to decide is whether to send you back to prison.”

Mosely’s jaw dropped. “Barney said that wasn’t an issue.”

“Gee, I don’t know where Barney got that idea,” Holly said. “As far as I’m concerned you’re all mine, if I want you.”

“I don’t get it,” Mosely said. “I applied for the licenses, and they were issued.”

“Yeah,” Holly said, opening her file folder, “I have copies of your applications right here. Both of them ask the question, ‘Have you ever been convicted of any crime?’ And your answer, on both applications, was no.”

“That’s what I was told to put,” Mosely said.

“Told by whom?”

Mosely looked away. “A friend advised me.”

“Well, Cracker, when Barney advised you to lie on your application, he advised you to commit a felony.”

“What?”

Holly shoved the gun application across the desk. “Look right down at the bottom there. It says, ‘I swear, under penalty of perjury, that all the statements I have made in this application are true.’ Perjury is a serious crime, Cracker; it’ll get you five years, easy. And of course, when you perjured yourself, you violated your parole. And you’ve still got, what, ten, twelve years left on your sentence?”

Mosely’s mouth was working. “I want a lawyer,” he said.

“Nah, you don’t want a lawyer, Cracker. I haven’t read you your rights yet, and you were a cop long enough to know that until I read you your rights, whatever you tell me doesn’t count.”

“What do you want?” Cracker demanded.

“Ah,” Holly said. “Now you’re getting the picture.”