Shireen made a frustrated gesture with her tablet. “So far we’ve found enough incriminating stuff to screw that Vance guy into the next millennium, but we’ve got zero, zip, nada on the organization he’s been working for. And the clock is ticking. If they don’t know he’s been taken into custody yet, they’re going to find out soon. And then they’ll be gone.”
“So we need him to cooperate.” George didn’t like that. Unlike Ronald Wallace, Vance had called a private lawyer, meaning he probably wasn’t as easily intimidated as Ronald. Plus, even though they could link him to Wallace, they couldn’t place him at the storage unit. They didn’t have much to work with. Depending on how good his lawyer was, Vance might even opt to say nothing at all. The mere thought made George angry. The pictures of all the girls and boys he had been trafficking were something to build on, though. Sadly enough, human trafficking didn’t weigh as heavily as murder, but it was leverage. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Do you have anything else we could use to our advantage?” George intended to go into that interrogation as well prepared as possible.
Shireen started tapping away on her tablet. “There’s this conversation with a dude saved under ‘Trigon’—stupid but fitting, if you ask me—which could be something. It’s in code, and I’m almost sure it’s about a shipment. I haven’t cracked it yet, though. Could take me a bit to get all the details.”
“If you haven’t cracked it yet, how do you know it’s about a shipment?” George looked at her incredulously.
“First of all, I said almost sure. Not totally. Second, I’ve been doing this for a while, and they didn’t go to the trouble of coding the numbers. There’s a lot I can gain from numbers alone. Like this line.” She magnified a block of three numbers on the screen. “That’s tomorrow’s date. And this one—” She drew their attention to the next block. “—is the time. One hundred. I bet my Ankh protection amulet he’s not planning to visit Mommy dearest an hour after midnight.” Shireen beat a staccato rhythm on the side of her tablet. “The million-dollar question is who is he meeting and where?”
“You can’t find out?” Andi’s voice sounded pleading.
Shireen pursed her lips. “I’m going to try. Run cross-references, check where he’s been the last few weeks to get a pattern, but with just these random letters, I can’t guarantee I’m going to find anything within the less than thirty hours we have. Sorry.”
Andi shook his head. “It’s fine, Shireen. Just do your thing and we’ll try and do ours.” He turned to George. “Shall we?”
George nodded. They waved at Shireen, who was already busy with her tablet again, the rest of the world forgotten to her. When they stepped into the corridor leading back to the interrogation room, George stopped Andi with a hand to his shoulder. “How are we going to play this, Andi? I’ve seen my share of interrogations, and this one won’t be pretty. Technically, Vance has us by the balls. And given how smug he’s been since we booked him, he knows it.”
Andi closed his eyes for a moment, which made the black circles seem even more prominent. George also noticed how Andi’s cheekbones protruded from his face like scythes, making him look like death warmed over. All of a sudden cracking their suspect was no longer number one on George’s priority list. “Hey, man, are you okay? You look even worse than you did this morning.”
Andi dragged his hand over his face. “Just tired. As I said, it was one hell of a night.”
“You should call the cops on your neighbors.”
Andi smiled weakly. “Would you come to my rescue?”
“Maybe.” George winked at him. “If it means I don’t have to watch you drag your tired ass through the day… I might be tempted.”
“Thank you so much. You’re a real ray of sunshine, aren’t you?” Andi punched his shoulder, though without much heat. “As for how we play this—I don’t know. Let’s just roll with it.”
“You sure that’s wise?”
“Probably not. But we know nothing about this fucker. He’s not as dumb as Wallace, though that’s not a feat. He sure knows to lawyer up, which is a problem, as you well know.”
“This one not under your spell?” George dug his elbow into Andi’s ribs.
“No, unfortunately not. I know her, though. Alice Springton. Ambitious, sharp, and quick-witted. Never underestimate her, and never ever talk to her outside the interrogation room. She’s like a shark and smells weakness ten miles downwind.”
“Let me guess, you had a run-in with her already?”
Andi snorted. “She tried to dismiss some of the evidence I had gathered for one of my cases. Claimed I hadn’t gotten it legally. She lost.”
“Have you?”
Andi raised a brow, feigning ignorance. “Have I what?”
“Gotten it illegally?”
“I already told you, nothing about the way I solve my cases is illegal. Case in point, the lawsuit she—or rather her client—lost. She couldn’t prove a damn thing.” Andi sounded smug. George decided to let the subject drop and focus on their current problem.
“So I let you do the talking, and if I pick up on anything, I weigh in?”
“If you want. We can do it the other way around as well.”
That surprised George. While he was pretty sure by now that Andi was the least alpha male of all the detectives he’d ever met, he hadn’t expected him to give up the reins so easily.
“You wouldn’t mind?”
