Miguel shook his head, but James stabbed the sentence with this index finger.
“Knox hired it out?” he said. “Who took the job?”
“How the fuck would I know?” Dave spat out. “What’s up with all the questions?”
“I just want to make sure I’m out of the line of fire,” Miguel said.
“That shouldn’t be a problem since Malcolm’s down in southern Arkansas.”
Miguel glanced up at James, who slowly shook his head in warning.
“Yeah,” Miguel said. “He’s down south, but if he comes up here, I hope Nixon offs him and gets a bonus.” Then he ended the call.
James stared down at Miguel. “Who’s Tate?”
“I don’t know,” Miguel said. “I made it up.”
“So why didn’t Dave call you on it?”
“Dunno.”
“Bullshit. What do you know about Knox’s deliveries?”
“I’m tellin’ you I don’t know shit about nothin’. Not since I came back and went legit.”
A vein in James’s forehead began to throb and he said through clenched teeth, “This is uncooperative, Miguel.”
“I don’t know!” Miguel shouted, his eyes wide. “I swear to God! Rumor has it that Knox is movin’ girls, but I swear I don’t know shit about anything.”
And there was Knox’s link to trafficking. But if this had been hush-hush before, and James had trouble getting any information last year, why did someone like Miguel know about it now?
James lowered his gun and patted Miguel on the cheek with a hard smack. “Good job. Sorry you won’t get your wish to see me dead.”
“The day’s young, Malcolm,” Miguel spat out with a defiant glare.
James cocked a brow and gave him a hard stare. “Am I gonna have to watch my back on my way out, Mig? Should I eliminate any threat from you now, so I don’t have to give you a second thought?”
Miguel’s face paled. “My guys saw you walk in. If you kill me, they’ll know it was you.”
“But will they tell the cops it was me?” James asked in a dull tone. “Or will they claim they don’t know anything?”
Miguel swallowed.
“That’s what I thought.” James reached for the doorknob behind him, still keeping his eye on the man at the desk. “I have no beef with you, Mig. Let’s keep it that way.”
Miguel gave a sharp nod of agreement, but he didn’t look happy about it.
James opened the door and backed into the hall, keeping his eye on Miguel. I got up and did the same.
“Have a nice day, Miguel,” I said cheerfully as I rounded the corner, not waiting for a response.
We headed to the waiting room and then outside. Once we were in the car, James started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. Frowning, he said, “I’m waitin’ on your critique of my interrogation methods.”
I turned to him in surprise. “Are you expecting me to blast you for your threats? You don’t have a badge. Miguel needed an incentive to talk. You threatened him, but you didn’t hurt him. He bought your bluff.”
“Nothin’ I said was a bluff, Harper,” he said in a dark tone. “I would have followed through on any of it.”
I took a moment to let that sink in, trying to determine how I felt about it. I didn’t believe in torture, and as far as I was concerned, harming someone during an interview or interrogation was torture. Not to mention it was unreliable. Still, I knew James was capable of getting results, which meant I needed to let him do as he saw fit. Then again, I hadn’t witnessed him hurt anyone other than the man who had killed my sister nearly twenty years ago. Yes, he’d killed men since we’d met, and if I believed in vigilante justice, they had all deserved it.
