“Think about it,” I insisted. “If it’s not one of the Families or their associates, it sure looks like someone with a grudge against them. And who has a bigger grudge than LE?”
“It could be anyone from the cartels to the gangbangers. You have no reason at all to think that this has anything to do with anyone working in law enforcement.” The thing was, Villiers lacked any conviction in what he was saying. He didn’t even look at me while he was speaking, twisting the glass of whiskey in his hands, watching the ice melt.
“You agree with me,” I said, coming closer finally. If he’d wanted to shoot me, or have me arrested,reallywanted me taken down, he would have done it already, or called the cops on me. “Don’t you?”
He passed a hand over his face, and then seemed to come to a decision. “As it happens, Flynn, I do. But I still don’t know why you’re here. The best thing you can do for yourself and for this case is to hand yourself in.”
“I’m here because I trust you,” I said simply. “I trust you to do the right thing, and I know you trust me, too, despite everything else you say.”
“If I give you information, I’ll end up like Hanson,” he grunted. “That’s the way your hero works, Flynn. Don’t you see that?” He looked up at me, his eyes sad.
“You said yourself Angelo didn’t—”
“Whether Messina killed Hanson or not, I can assure you of one thing: Hanson died because he got too close to that monster. You’re a fool if you think he won’t kill you, too, in the end.”
Time was running out. The longer Angelo was waiting in the car on the street, the more chance he had of being sighted. “I’m not here to argue about him. Please. Can you just…” I raised my arms and let them flop back, feeling the cold rush of defeat through me. Villiers wasn’t interested in anything I had to say. “Iknowyou want justice.”
“Justice? Justice is a tricky thing, Flynn.” He gave a humorless laugh. “There won’t be any justice in this case.”
I sat down in the sofa chair opposite him and leaned forward. “Why?Whydo you think that?”
He regarded me for a moment, my jiggling knee that I tried to keep still under my hand, waves of exhaustion rolling off him. Exhaustion and alcohol, in fact, which wasn’t like Villiers. He rarely drank, and never to excess. “Because even if it is Walsh, there’s no way to take him down.”
“But if we can prove it, really prove it...” I trailed off, waiting. Hoping. Villiers stared beyond me, at the dark window that was just about the same view from my own old apartment.
I’d been tempted to go into my old place, but there was no time, and it would only cause more attention. Give the task force more reason to think I was guilty.
“Alright,” Villiers sighed at last. “I’ll tell you this one thing I know. And you’ll see why it doesn’t matter one way or another.”
Villiers got up to pour himself another drink but then returned to the sofa chairs. At least he didn’t take his gun with him, I thought. That showed that even if he didn’ttrustme, he wasn’t threatened by my presence.
“The other day I was looking for a hard-copy file,” he began. “Can’t even remember which one, now. Someone said Walsh’d had it last, so I ducked into his office and had a look. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but I decided to check his desk drawer, just in case the file was in there.” The look he sent me told me it was a lie. Whatever excuse Villiers had found to go through the Captain’s desk was just that—an excuse.
“And?” I prompted.
“There was a false bottom in the drawer.”
That confirmed it—Villiers had definitely been snooping if he’d found that.
“When I opened it up, he had a couple of gold shields in there. I checked the numbers later. They belonged to Hanson and Bachman.”
I felt a swelling sureness in my gut, but I tried to stay objective. “So? He’s Captain. Maybe they were returned to him as—”
“No.” Villiers finished off his drink and set the glass back on the coffee table with a sharp crack. “That’s what I wanted to believe, too. But I checked the scene-of-crime reports, and they noted that the badges of both LE victims had been removed from their person, while the wallets, phones, everything else was left behind. There was no reason Walsh should have them, unless…”
“Unless he was the killer and took them as trophies,” I breathed.
For all my accusations and arguing with Angelo in the safe house about Walsh as a suspect, it hadn’t seemedrealuntil that moment. He was a Police Captain, for God’s sake. The head of a joint task force. But now, it seemed, I could addmultiple murdererto his C.V. And not just the murder of mobsters, either—I could see how Walsh’s twisted thinking might have gone, that these criminals were walking around free, that he was simply cleaning up Central Park. But to pick off two of his own task force members? To set Bachman up, order him to his own death?
My head spun.
“I know,” Villiers said sadly. “I didn’t want to believe it, either. But the shields were there, plain as day.”
“But that’s unusual for spree killers,” I said slowly. “To take trophies. Someserialkillers take trophies of course, but—oh, excuse me, sir. I certainly don’t have to tellyouthis.” I felt my face warm.
“No, but I’m still glad to hear you talk like that,” Villiers said, his voice finally sounding like his old self, slightly ironic, warm, understanding. “I feared you’d lost yourself, Flynn. Lost all sense of who you really are, and who you want to be.”
I had to look away from him, unable to keep looking him in the eye. “I haven’t forgotten,” I muttered.
