“Wake up, Hunter.”
A pair of hands clap by my ear. “I’m not sleeping,” I say, keeping my eyes shut. “I’m thinking about how fun it will be to watch your career disintegrate for this shit.”
“Think about this,” the voice says. “You confess, and maybe you’ll be able to cut a deal. It’s not you we want. It’s your father. We want the organ grinder, not the monkey.”
I open my eyes, looking around the interrogation room that’s been my home for the last God knows how many hours. Gun metal tiles and steel table bolted to the floor. Two steel chairs. A mirror that no doubt has half the station behind it watching this, watching the master at work.
Brody thinks he can break me, but he’s got nothing. That much is clear. Not a scrap of evidence links me to Oswald’s murder. “We have footage of him entering your garden,” Brody says. “We have footage of you leaving an hour later to go to your wedding. Plenty of time for you to have killed him.”
“But none of my prints on him or the gun, right?”
“So you used gloves. So what?”
“So maybe you’re so obsessed with putting me away that you’re refusing to consider the possibility that someone else might have killed him.”
“In your garden? The ex-partner of your new bride? The man is under a restraining order, but who’s been stalking her for months? Years, maybe. Who else would want him dead but you? You kicked the shit out of him in Rome. Time to finish him off, right? The only bit I don’t get is how come you didn’t use a knife like you did with Sofia?”
I look at him, narrowing my eyes to examine him as he tries to chip away at me. He thinks keeping me awake for this long means my guard will be down, that I’ll confess just so I can get some sleep or maybe a glass of water. I close my eyes again, thinking hard.
Who stands to gain the most from my arrest?
Who walked into the church with Brody?
Who inherits everything if I go down for murder?
This all points to one man. My father told me to think. I’m thinking. “Where’s my lawyer?”
“We don’t need lawyers fucking all this up. Come on, Hunter. You give me your father, and I’ll make you a deal. We’ll let the charges drop.”
Course you will,I think. Because my father will be dead long before the case gets to court, Ernesto will have his wife pregnant by then, and I’ll lose everything.
There’s a knock on the door in the corner. Brody gets up and crosses to it, unlocking it and pulling it open. “I said not to disturb me,” he snaps, but Toby shoves him out of the way.
“Not letting me see my client,” he says. “Might get you suspended, that kind of shit.” He shoves a document into Brody’s hand. “That’s from Judge Reinhart. Either my client is in the car with me in three minutes, or you’re up in front of him to explain holding an innocent man with no evidence. Get those fucking cuffs off him now.”
Brody reads the document, his face turning into a snarl. He barks at someone outside the room. “Get the cuffs off him.”
A rookie comes in, hands trembling as he unlocks me. I lift myself up, towering over him. “Relax,” I tell him. “I’m only interested in that son of a bitch.”
“Was that a threat?” Brody whines. “I can charge you with threatening an officer.”
“Maybe go find the man who killed Oswald,” Toby says. “Let’s get out of here.”
I walk past Brody without looking at him. We pass through the station and down the steps to the waiting limo. I climb into the back, and Toby gets in with me.
“How’d you get the judge to sign that thing?”
“Reminded him of the footage we got last time he came to our strip club on Juniper Drive.”
“Shit, you told him we had that?”
“Now seemed as good a time as any. They had four witnesses lined up to say you killed Oswald, but those witnesses are disappearing as we speak. Without them, Brody’s case crumbles. No physical evidence tying you to the scene. He’s got nothing. He was fishing in the hope you’d rat out your father.”
“Then the commission takes me out for ratting, which leaves the way for Ernesto to take over without even having to compete with me.”
“Exactly. What do you want to do now?”
“How long did he keep me in?”