Exit Strategy (48 page)

But, as Quinn conceded, if there was a guy who might go for this, it was Martin Dubois. He amended the plan somewhat, building in protections that might sway Dubois, make him feel safer. Even then he warned that we were taking a chance—that Dubois wouldn’t agree, would double-cross us, would back out at the last moment. But we knew that. All we could do was guard against it.

Quinn left to set his part into motion. While he was gone, Evelyn, Jack and Felix compared notes on Wilkes, as they remembered him. Not a conversation I could join, so after twenty minutes I wandered off to the other side of the room to check out the room service menu. Last thing I’d eaten was a sub on the drive to the parade.

“Hungry?” asked a voice at my shoulder. Quinn. “I’ll bet you are. Confront the man the whole country is searching for, and no one even buys you dinner.”

“Did everything go okay?” I asked.

“It’s started. Now we have to wait for a response. Don’t worry. If what I hear about Dubois is right, he’ll at least hear us out.”

“Good.”

Quinn glanced over at Evelyn, Jack and Felix.

“They’re talking about Wilkes,” I said. “I can’t help them there.”

“Me neither.” He took the menu from me. “We can order from this if you’d like, but I saw a place down the road. What do you say I buy you dinner?”

“Sure,” I said.

I grabbed my wallet, shoes and jacket. As I got ready, I glanced Jack’s way, waiting for him to notice I was leaving, but he was engrossed in the conversation.

Quinn called out a “going to grab a bite,” and I thought I heard Evelyn respond, but he only closed the door and ushered me down the hall. If Evelyn or Jack had wanted to stop us, they could have made it to the door before the elevator arrived. No one did, so I took that as permission to leave.

FORTY-SIX

“You know you’re going to have to kill him,” Quinn said as he speared a chicken ball.

We were in Felix’s hotel room—a small one a few doors from ours. Jack might not have minded me going out to eat with Quinn, but I imagined he’d have something to say about our choice of dining area.

Our plans for the restaurant had gone south when we realized it closed at eleven, and we’d arrived at eleven-thirty. That left McDonald’s or a take-out Chinese place. I’d picked takeout, meaning we needed a place to eat. When Quinn suggested Felix’s room, with a hands-lifted “just to eat—no ulterior motives,” I’d agreed.

If Jack was right, the greatest danger I faced being alone with Quinn was that he’d rethink that “no ulterior motives” bit. That I could stop…if I wanted to. So far, he’d kept his word, lying on the opposite side of the bed, with boxes of food laid out between us, as we talked.

“You have to kill him,” Quinn said again when I didn’t answer. “If not you, then me or Jack, but someone has to. It has nothing to do with ‘the bastard deserves to die.’ Give me a choice, and I’d rather see him rot in jail than get a quick ticket out. Problem is, there’s no guarantee he’ll go to jail. You and I know that better than any of them.”

His eyes met mine and I knew he was searching for some look or reaction that would confirm a suspicion.

I wound up a forkful of noodles. “The justice system isn’t perfect. Everyone knows that.”

As I slurped noodles off my fork, Quinn caught my gaze and I let him have it, holding it for at least ten seconds. Finally, he let out a sigh, breath hissing through his teeth.

“Fine, so you’ve
heard
things can go wrong. Cops fuck up, lab fucks up, prosecutors fuck up, juries, judges…everyone’s human, and as hard as people try, sometimes they make mistakes. Wilkes’ll get himself a defense lawyer who’d put Manson himself back on the streets if it meant a new car for his mistress.”

I shrugged. “Everyone’s entitled to a fair trial and someone has to make sure they get it.”

“If the case even gets to trial. The way we’re stringing this thing together, even a pro bono suit could find grounds for dismissal.”

“Sure, but—”

“I’m not knocking the plan. I can’t think of an airtight way to do it, either. But it’s a problem, and the question is: what are you going to do about it?”

I put down my fork. “The question is: can I see a way around it? Do I have a problem with killing Wilkes? Of course not. But what’s more important to me is making sure everyone knows he’s been caught. If he just drops off the face of the earth, this won’t ever go away. The Feds will keep pouring money and man-hours into solving it. The newspapers will keep reminding people that it’s unsolved—in other words, that the Feds ‘fucked up.’ Every time a potential suspect turns up, you risk the public taking matters into their own hands. Sure, it’ll die down eventually, but you can bet that on every anniversary for the next decade, the media will bring it back up, reignite the fear. Then there’s the whole issue of copycats—nutcases thinking they can win instant infamy by pulling one hit and claiming the rest as their own.”

“I’m not saying we off him and dump the body. But what if we could toss Dubois a dead suspect instead of a live one?” When I didn’t respond, he added, “I know, it wouldn’t be as easy as it sounds, but take some time later and give it some thought. Run it by Evelyn and Jack. See what they think.”

“I will. And if we can’t come up with a way to kill him before we hand him over, we could arrange it afterward.” I looked over at Quinn. “I’m sure someone would be able to make sure Wilkes never sees the inside of a courtroom…someone who knows how to do such a thing.”

Quinn went still. “So Jack told you what I do?”

“Jack didn’t tell me a thing. He said it wasn’t his place. I had a hunch.”

“That obvious, huh?”

I took a forkful of rice before answering. “I’ve…heard of things like that. As a cop, you must see things go wrong. Maybe someone offers you money to make it go right.” I shrugged. “It might not seem like such a bad idea.”

He shifted on the bed before continuing. “If that did happen, you’d think it would need to be something really big that set him off, wouldn’t you? One of those awful cases you might see once in a lifetime, the kind most cops go their whole careers and never see.”

I thought of Wayne Franco and his victim, Dawn Collins, and concentrated on getting out the last grain of rice.

He continued. “But it wasn’t anything like that. It was the kind of situation you see so often you almost start forgetting what a tragedy it is, and you sure as hell stop expecting anything like justice to come of it. Woman leaves her husband, guy threatens her, she takes out a restraining order, calls the local cops a few times…sure, they try to help, but there are other priorities. And it seems like half the time when cops
do
respond, the couple is making up in the bedroom when they get there.”

“But this wasn’t one of those times, was it? He killed her.”

Quinn nodded. “It wasn’t my case—that’s not…it isn’t the kind of work I do. But I knew the woman’s father—a friend of my dad’s—and my dad asked me to be there, to explain stuff to the parents. The bastard walked. He leaves the courtroom, grinning and high-fiving his buddies, while her parents are crying, her oldest kid just staring into space, and I’m thinking how goddamn unfair it all is, but that’s really all I think because I’ve seen stuff like that so many times before. Afterward, we’re in the parking lot, and her father asks me to do him a favor.”

“Set things right.”

Quinn nodded.

“And you did.”

“Nope. Told him two wrongs don’t make a right, and I understood how badly he was hurting, but this wasn’t a road he wanted to go down. Two days later, the bastard’s dead, the old man’s in jail, his wife tries to kill herself, and the kids…well, you can bet those kids are fucked for life. And it could have been avoided if I’d taken that job instead of spouting some ‘turn the other cheek’ crap that I knew was bullshit.”

“So that’s what you do then,” I said. “Vigilante for hire.”

Quinn looked at me. His eyes were blue that night. Whenever I saw him, they were blue. I doubted that was his normal color, but he always wore the same contacts when he knew we’d be meeting—the same contacts, the same hair color, the same overall disguise—as if he wanted to show me something consistent.

With Jack, I could look him full in the face and still not have the faintest clue what was going on behind his eyes.

The doors were closed. With Quinn, there were no doors, probably never had been, and I could imagine that it had only taken one look around for the victim’s father to know the best person to approach with his offer.

Now, as Quinn watched me, his feelings were written over every feature—the creases around his mouth, the line between his brows, the anxiety in his eyes as he mentally replayed those words “vigilante for hire,” and tried to interpret my tone.

I moved the take-out boxes aside, folding each and laying it on the table.

“So, you, uh…” He rubbed his chin. “You think…”

“What do you want me to say, Quinn? That I’m impressed? That it puts you a cut above guys like Jack? Like me?”

He grabbed the last box. “No. Absolutely not. I don’t kid myself that it’s some noble cause. I get paid for it…well, not always, but, yeah, you’re right. Vigilante for hire. Maybe it’s a fucked-up way of looking at the world if I think that makes me any better than the guys I off. I just…That’s what I do, and I wanted you to know…” He let the sentence trail off.

“Because…?”

He scooped up the forks and shrugged. “Maybe I just wanted you to know because I wanted you to know.”

I watched him as he dropped the forks into the garbage, his hand hovering there a moment even after the forks had thumped into the bottom, as if reluctant to turn toward me, dragging the distraction out as he tried to think of what to say next. His jaw tightened and relaxed, as if practicing a line.

My gaze slid down to his arm, muscles so tense I could see the tendons against the fabric of his shirt, and I had to fight the urge to slide over there, put my hand on the dip between his shoulder blades, rub away the tension. I resisted, but not because I was afraid where that would lead, because I was pretty sure where it would lead and, at that moment, I was almost as sure I’d let it. I held back because I couldn’t tell him it was all right, when I wasn’t sure that it was. But there was one thing I could say, and honestly, so I did.

“Thanks,” I said. “For telling me.”

A half-smile and a nod, then he moved back onto the bed. As he did, his hand brushed my foot, stopped, and squeezed in a slow rub.

“You might not want to do that,” I said. “I spent half the day in boots.”

A burst of laughter, not—I’m sure—because it was terribly funny, but just because it gave him something to laugh about. He took a better hold on my foot and kept rubbing.

When I arched my brows, he laughed again.

“Don’t worry. This isn’t step one to seduction. I meant what I said earlier. I won’t push.”

“No, you said you didn’t have any ulterior motives.”

“And I don’t. There’s nothing at all secret about my motives. I think I’ve made them perfectly clear.”

“Ulterior motive doesn’t mean ‘hidden agenda.’ It means planning to do
more
than you let on. In other words, bringing me here for more than dinner.”

“Damn.”

I smiled and shook my head. When he let his hand wander up my calf, I gave another head shake, then another smile.

“Not that I’m averse to the idea in general…” I said.

“But this isn’t the time or the place. I know that, despite what Jack thinks.”

“He said something to you?”

“With Jack, it’s not what he says. It’s all about the body language, which has been screaming ‘don’t even think about it.’” He moved back. “This is probably a dumb thing to ask, because even by bringing it up…But I have to, because I know how it probably looks, me chasing you when I have a beef with Jack, and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this is all part of that, another bit of the…you know, rivalry.”

“Well, if it is, then you’re wasting your time because there’s nothing going on between Jack and me. Like I said, to him, I’m a partner, maybe a student, but that’s it.”

“Yeah, I knew you two weren’t…well, I didn’t
know,
but I figured if there was, he’d be doing more than shooting me nasty looks. And I can’t imagine—You don’t seem the type who’d be here if there was someone else.”

“I thought I was just here for dinner.”

“And talking.” He slid over to me. “Talking’s good.”

“And dinner was good.”

“Wasn’t bad. Not exactly the victory meal I had in mind…”

“Better than McDonald’s.”

“That’s good.”

He leaned over and kissed me. The first touch was soft and light, his lips barely brushing mine, ready to move back fast at any sign of rejection. I hesitated and, for a moment, we seemed to hover there, lips touching, looking at each other. Then I closed my eyes. His arms went around my waist, mouth pressing against mine, lips parting.

He leaned into me, not squeezing, not pulling me closer, just…kissing. A very nice, sweet kiss. No pressure, no urgency. Like embers in a campfire, you can see the glow, feel the heat, but there’s no danger there, not unless you want it.