Purity in Death (27 page)

"Maybe we should just toss him to the P.A. Let them sink."

"Peabody, that's very harsh."

"If the two of you think you can run the good cop/bad cop routine on me," Snyder began.

"Wouldn't think of it." Eve grinned fiercely. "And just FYI, I'm the bad cop. I'm always the bad cop."

"Bitch," Dukes muttered.

"See, he knows. To respond to the bitch comment," Eve continued, "let me just say, you ain't seen nothing yet, Don. We ID'd your brainchild. We duped it, and we tracked it back to the source. Your little workshop unit. Your fingerprints, your voice prints, your personal code. You and nobody else. Didn't think we could pull it out, did you?"

Now Eve leaned forward. "I've got a couple of techs at my disposal that make you look like a first-year hacker."

"That's bullshit."

"Infected e-mail transmitted from your unit, by you, to Louis K. Cogburn, eight July 2059, at fourteen hundred hours. Infected e-mail transmitted to Chadwick Fitzhugh, eight July, at twenty-three fourteen."

With her eyes on his, she recited every transmission she'd committed to memory. She saw the disbelief wash over his face, then the anger flood it.

She wanted the anger.

"We've got you nailed. They knew we'd hang you when we busted this open. You're not a general, Don. You're not even a soldier to the ones running this show. You're the sacrificial lamb."

"You don't know squat. You're nothing but some dried-up female trying to pass for a man."

"Think so? I'll show you my balls, Don, you show me yours."

"I wish to consult with my client," Snyder interrupted. "Privately. I wish to terminate this interview until I've consulted with my client."

"You terminated them, didn't you?" Eve demanded.

"We executed them." Dukes spat it at her, then swiped out an arm, nearly knocking Snyder out of his chair when the lawyer tried to interrupt. "Shut up. Shut the hell up. You're part of the problem. Just like she is. Enough money and you'd defend Satan. You help put garbage back on the street. I don't need you. I don't need anyone."

"Are you dismissing your legal representation at this time, Mr. Dukes?" Eve asked.

"I insist on consulting with-"

"Fuck you." Dukes surged to his feet. His chair shot out, slammed into the wall. "Fuck all of you. We did something great. You think I'm afraid to go to prison for it? I served my country. I served my community."

"How did you serve your community?"

His mouth twisted. "By exterminating cockroaches."

"Mr. Dukes." With admirable calm, Snyder rose. "I'll ask you one more time to afford yourself of your right to remain silent. Lieutenant Dallas will terminate this interview and we'll go to a consult room to discuss-"

"Get the hell out," Dukes ordered without looking at him. "You and your cockroach brothers are fired."

"Let the record show that Snyder and Associates are no longer attorneys of record for Donald Dukes." Snyder picked up his briefcase, signaled to his two associates. "Lieutenant Dallas."

"On the door," she said, and Peabody walked over to open it and let the lawyers out.

"Donald Dukes, did you conspire to murder Louis K. Cogburn?"

His shoulders were back, his head high. And the hate pumped like sweat out of his pores. "You're damn right, I did."

"Did you conspire to murder Chadwick Fitzhugh?"

"I created the virus. Did most of the work myself. She's a beauty. I shot it into him. Into all of them."

"By your conspiracy to cause these deaths, did you in turn cause the death of Detective Kevin Halloway?"

"Yes. What's another dead cop? We took out that bitch George, Greene-along with the whore in training, whatever her name was, and Geller. That cover it?"

"Who gives you your orders?"

"I don't take orders."

"Did you conspire with Mayor Steven Peachtree to murder the individuals named on record?"

"Figure it out."

"I have," she told him. "You're done. I don't need you. Get him out of here, Peabody. Take him down so he can start living the rest of his life in a cage."

He came at her. A silent, panther leap. Her fist shot out, rammed into his chin. As his head snapped back, she drew her weapon. But Peabody flipped out her stunner and nailed him.

"Damn it." Eve, slapped her hands on her hips when he lay sprawled at her feet. "I wanted to do that."

"So did I, and I beat you. Besides, you got to pop him first. Teamwork."

"Yeah." Eve smiled, but it still didn't reach her eyes. "Nice teamwork, Peabody."

***

Roarke corroborated the opinion when he met her in her office a few minutes later.

"The two of you played him like a violin. That's superior virtuosity when you figure you'd only met him once before."

"I knew him."

"You did, yes. Knew precisely what would get under his skin and push him to pontificate. Well done, Lieutenant."

"Not yet. It's not done yet." She heard the arguments, the raised voices coming through the bullpen toward her office. "But here comes the next stage. You want to hang in for this?"

"I wouldn't miss it for worlds."

"Of which you own several," she murmured before Chang burst into her office like a tsunami.

"You will issue a statement. I've written it. You'll issue this statement
immediately,
taking full responsibility for passing misinformation to a media representative." He slapped both disc and hard copy down on her desk. His hair was wild; his eyes feral.

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I'm telling you to do it. Because this is the last time you'll undermine my work. The last time you'll make a mockery of what I do."

"What you do is a mockery, Chang."

He took a step toward her. She was fairly certain he envisioned clamping his hands around her throat and squeezing until her eyes popped out. But whether it was the dare in her eyes or Roarke's presence, he resisted.

"You leak a story to the media before its time. You use your influence with an on-air reporter to push forward your own agenda. You create a storm to distract from the fact that you've mishandled your own work. To-to plump and preen yourself before the public while leaving me to clean up the mess behind you. Mayor Peachtree has not been charged. He has not yet been interviewed, yet you've seen to it that he's guilty in the eyes of the public."

"Sure looks that way, doesn't it? One small correction, though. I didn't leak the story."

"You think you can save yourself by lying to me?"

She shifted her body weight, and fascinated, Roarke eased back. He wondered if Chang knew how close he was to annihilation.

"Don't call me a liar, Chang. You of all people."

"Who is it who has a personal relationship with Nadine Furst? Who is it who gives regular favoritism to her and Channel 75, with exclusives and tips?"

"That would be me. And you know why? Because I can trust her to think of more than ratings. That relationship is why whoever leaked this saw that the story went to her. That's your kind of maneuver, Chang."

The hand around the throat image was appealing enough that she used it herself. She caught him one-handed, rapped him back into the wall, and lifted him to his toes. "All this spin, all this storm, all this fallout. That's going to keep you a very busy boy for a while, isn't it?"

"Get your hands off me. I'll have you arrested for assault."

"Yeah, you can bet a whole squad of cops is going to rush in here to save your oily ass from me. You're going to get a lot of play out of this-fees, bonuses. Add screwing me over to the pie, and it's real tasty. Did you leak the story, Chang?"

He was turning an interesting shade of puce as he batted and shoved at her hand. "Get away, get away!"

"Did you leak the goddamn story?"

"No! This isn't something you leak until you're prepared. Until the spin is in place. You leaked it."

"No, I didn't." She released him so that he dropped to the flats of his feet with two sharp thuds. "Think about that. Now get the hell out of my office."

"I'm filing a complaint." He yanked at his collar. "You'll read the statement or-"

"Bite me," she suggested and shoved him out bodily.

"That was very entertaining," Roarke commented.

"We're not done yet. Act two should be starting any minute."

"Until it does . . ." He smoothed his fingers over the ends of her hair, then slid his hand around the back of her neck. She stiffened, looked so mortally embarrassed that he laughed. "What?"

"I'm on duty here. Just back off. Really." She turned away quickly and moved to the AutoChef. Even as she programmed coffee, she heard the fast, hard click of high heels. "That's my cue."

Franco swept in. She looked every bit as furious as Chang had, if more elegant. "Lieutenant Dallas." She bit down on the words as if she could chew them to bits. She gave Roarke a brisk nod. "I'm sorry, but I need to speak with the lieutenant privately."

"Of course."

"You may want to go give Feeney a hand, Conference Room B," Eve told him. "He's working on some tech stuff you'd be interested in. One level down," Eve added. "Sector Five."

"All right. I'll leave you ladies to your business." With one casual glance at Eve, he slipped out, closed the door.

"You've gone too far this time." Unlike Chang, Franco kept her voice down, and controlled.

"In what area?"

"Who are you to decide Mayor Peachtree is guilty, to leak information that will ruin his political career, damage his personal life. And all before you've so much as questioned him. You gave him no chance to defend himself."

"Leaking the story screwed him pretty good, didn't it? Coffee?"

"You dare stand there, so arrogant, so goddamn cocky after what you've done?"

"Yeah. Same as you." Eve leaned back on the AutoChef, sipped her coffee. "You leaked the story, Franco."

"Are you mad?"

"No, neither are you. You're a very smart woman. What I can't figure is if you did all this, formed your organization, killed people, ruined a number of lives because you wanted to smear Peachtree or you really believed in what you were doing. I've thought about that a lot this morning, but I'm just not sure. I think it was both."

"If you think you can save yourself by painting me with the same brush you're using to paint the mayor, you're very wrong."

"He didn't make the transmissions."

"What are you talking about?"

"Peachtree didn't make the transmissions from his office to Dukes. You did. You used his office, you used his 'link. The transmission telling Dukes to skip was sent out, from that unit, at sixteen forty-eight. Peachtree left for the day at sixteen forty-two. We have him on security cam. We have him walking out of the building at the time the transmission was generated. Those six minutes make a difference."

Eve gestured with her mug, then took a long sip. "You were still in the office. Dedicated civil servant that you are. His assistant saw you go in a couple minutes after he left. You were the only one who could have contacted Dukes from that unit at that time."

Franco hitched down the jacket of her slate gray suit. "That's nonsense."

"No, that's just niggling details. The kind that usually trip up the bad guy. You probably didn't think we could trace the source, But why chance it? You'd been using the mayor all along, using him as a front. Politics is a weird area for me, but here's how I see it."

Eve walked over, sat on the edge of her desk. "You want his job. Probably more than that, but Mayor of New York's a good place to start. He's fairly popular. Maybe he'll get another term, and it's a pisser to wait, to play deputy when you can be chief."

"Is that what you think?"

"I think you saw an opportunity to remove an obstacle, even to use that obstacle to further your own ambitions-especially when he makes it easy for you by getting tangled with Nick Greene."

"Mayor Peachtree's sexual leanings should be a private matter."

"Should be. Let's go back awhile before that. You keep up with current events. You keep up with community news, polls, opinions. Kids are being exploited out there-future voters, those kids. Their parents, other parents, other citizens, voters are upset, disillusioned and just plain pissed off. Something should be done, and you're just the gal to do it. A lot of control. A lot of power. You've got a law degree. You know some of that scum is never going to pay. You found a way to make them pay. That's a hell of an accomplishment."

A smile ghosted around Franco's mouth. Her eyes were alive with it-and, Eve noted, with arrogance. "Do you really believe you can make any of this play?"

"I've got Dukes." Eve shrugged a shoulder. "I've got Purity in pieces. You slipping by me isn't so hard to take with more than forty other arrests and a closed case on my record."

"So, this little scenario you're writing here is between us."

"Just you and me. Girl talk. Post-game chatter."

"Then by all means." Franco gestured a go-ahead. "Continue."

"It fell apart on you, Franco, but you still had a button to push. Leak the story. Shove the mayor into the muck. Defend him, but carefully. If he's convicted, you mourn the loss of a man who was corrupted by his own power, his own skewed sense of duty. If he's acquitted, you praise the system for exonerating an innocent man. But either way, you step into his shoes and run the city. Maybe, maybe some of it was about your twisted sense of justice. But under it all, it was just politics."

"You're wrong." Franco wandered over, picked up the second cup of coffee Eve had programmed. "Since it's just the two of us here, since I respect you, I won't say you're wrong about all of it. Purity was a solution. An extermination of a plague. It could be again."

She angled her head. "We could have used someone like you. Pushing to have you as a media symbol wasn't an accident. You have impact, Dallas. With your passion, your skills, your presence, you'd keep the story hot as long as I needed. I think I knew when we met in Tibble's office you'd find a way to break it apart. I had to accept that, deal with that. I always pick my battles."

"Why this one?"