Dominance and Deception (5 page)

If I can keep Laura focussed on Leigh rather than our relationship, this might just work.

If.

Casting a glance through the glass at her, I took a second to collect my thoughts, feeling a slight pang of loss at the way things had turned out between us. She was pretty, despite the harsh fluorescent lighting and the split lip I'd had to give her when she attacked me. Before I'd found out what a duplicitous bitch she was, I really had liked her. Not that it mattered now.

Taking a deep breath, I left observation and went into the interrogation room. Laura raised her head from her hands, her expectant look becoming a scowl when she recognised me. “Back for more?"

Her eyes flitted to the one-way glass, and I realised she thought Pierce had put me up to this. That was easy enough to fix—I leaned over to flip off the light, and the effect of the one-way mirror reversed to reveal the deserted observation room. “He's not there."

And he would have had a serious glare ready for me if he'd known I was alone in a room with a woman who'd been talking about killing me an hour ago, but I wasn't about to bring that up.

Laura gazed through the glass, then up at me. “Didn't know those things did that."

I turned on the light again, and the glass became a mirror once more. “Whichever side is brightest gets the mirrored effect. And Zach is in the other room, talking to your husband."

Her eyes widened slightly as I sat down opposite her, and I shrugged.

"We can hold both of you if Zach charges him. Him as a murderer, you as an accomplice. Or the other way around, depending on if he says
you
were the one who killed him."

"I have to be somewhere tonight,” she snapped, and I gave myself a mental pat on the back for breaking her composure so quickly.

Not a bad interrogation technique for a forensic scientist!

"Zach doesn't care about that."

"Damn right, he doesn't! That bastard put my brother away in the first place."

"That's where you're going? To visit him?” I watched her carefully. Okay, so Pierce would have been way more observant in this situation than I was, but I hoped I could pick something up.

"He's innocent,” Laura said, with a stony glare that challenged me to contradict her.
She really believes it—whoa. Denial is a scary thing.

"He's a serial rapist!"

She surged upright, knocking her chair to the ground, and grabbed my shoulders, hissing into my face, “John is a good man who took the fall for an evil son of a bitch! Your
Zach
did that to him. I don't know how, or why, but he manipulated the evidence and let an innocent man go to jail!"

Maybe it'd be like waving a red rag at a bull, but I thought I might be able to get through to her. “Do you really think I'd let him screw around with my evidence reports?"

"You'd let him do anything he damn well wants.” The double entendre, caught on tape, wouldn't have been obvious to anyone but Pierce, Laura and me. I had to divert her before she said anything too explicit, though, and I summoned my own anger to counter hers.

How
dare
she question my scientific integrity?!

"Maybe when it comes to a lot of things, but
not this
.” I pulled her hands away from my shoulders and shoved her a pace back, out of my personal space. “Now sit the hell down and listen to me!"

She wasn't the girl I'd thought she was, but she was still submissive enough to react to my tone of voice. Shooting me a murderous glare, she set her chair upright again, sat down and shut up.

"Zach Pierce is an amazing detective,” I said. “He
loves
truth and justice. Why would he want to send a man to jail for something he didn't do?"

"Isn't it obvious? He's protecting someone!"

I snorted at the absurdity of
that
statement. “The other suspects in the case were a junkie with an armed robbery conviction and a strip joint bouncer, Laura! If Zach was gonna break the law to protect anyone, it would've been your brother!"

She had nothing to say to that—her eyes filled with doubt.

"If Zach charges a man with a crime, that man is guilty. End of story. Now tell me why you picked Leigh's pocket, damn it!"

For a long moment, she just stared at me defiantly, but then her shoulders slumped. “Garth asked me to do it."

Finally, we're getting somewhere...

"Your husband knew the victim was gonna be there?"

She seemed exhausted all of a sudden, though I was wary of buying into her emotions in case this was another act. It was what came out of her mouth that counted. I kept my distance and let the question hang in the air—maybe I could have been a cop, after all.

"He owed Garth money. Not a ton, but some. My husband runs a...poker ring, downtown."

The case was finally starting to make sense. “Is he violent?"

"Not if I do what he tells me,” Laura said bitterly.

Ouch.

I was tempted to go over and give her a hug—forgiveness is one of my strong suits—but I still didn't completely trust her. “I...actually meant towards people who owe him."

Shrugging, she answered, “I don't ask. He doesn't tell me."

I was in a little over my head, now.

Give me a quadratic equation or some mystery fluids to test, and I'm your girl, but an evasive woman who may or may not be telling the truth about her possibly abusive husband's gambling business? Get me out of here.

"Laura...did he tell you to get with Zach?"

A brief hesitation, then she nodded. When I asked her why, she only shrugged. “God knows why he tells me anything he tells me. He insisted Zach was crooked—said he took a bribe from the real criminal to make it look like John did it."

"He didn't,” I told her, holding her gaze. “I swear to God."

"Which would you prefer to believe?” she asked, her eyes narrowing. “That your brother's a sick bastard who's committed multiple rapes, or that Zach is a lying, manipulative sack of shit?"

Double ouch.

I decided not to ask her what she'd been planning to do to mess up Pierce's life before he'd broken up with her—I didn't wanna know, and anyway, I felt kinda sad for her. “I'm sorry. I really am."

"Yeah, yeah.” With a wave of her hand, she dismissed me. “Go run to Zach and tell him whatever you want."

Compassion and caution staged a swift battle in my mind, and compassion won out. After a brief hesitation, I stepped closer and kissed the top of her head. “Thank you. I mean it."

"I don't need your pity,” she spat back at me, and I backed off, a little hurt. Vulnerable or not, she still wasn't the Laura I'd thought she was.

It took only a couple of seconds to zip into the observation room, stop the recording equipment and send a simple text message—'911, observation 1'—to Pierce. I wasn't suicidal enough to call and interrupt his interrogation twice in one day, and our agreed signal for important evidence would be enough to grab his attention, especially on this case.

It took him less than two minutes to arrive, his eyes darting between me and the one-way glass. “What do you have?"

Grinning, I cued the playback, and as it began he shot a disbelieving stare at me. “You went in there alone? She could have—"

"Oh, please,” I interrupted him, my fingertips tingling a little as I realised his irritation masked anxiety. “I have, like, twenty pounds on her, and she already tried that on me once today."

He looked me over, checking for signs I was hiding injuries, but there was nothing to see. Dropping the subject for the time being, he turned his attention to the video, and slowly he lost his pissed off demeanour as he realised I really
did
have something.

His jaw tightened at the end, when I kissed the top of Laura's head, but I wasn't sure whether he was jealous or just worried for my safety. When the tape ended, I waited for his reaction, feeling a slight flutter of apprehension in my stomach.

Pierce was quiet for a moment, processing the new information, but then he leaned in close, brushing his lips softly across my cheekbone. My knees went weak...and was it my imagination, or did he linger for longer than he should have?

Before I could work out an answer to that, he was striding towards the door, his parting words sending a jolt of accomplished pleasure through me. “That's good work, Faye."

Alone again, I leant back against the technical desk, murmuring to the empty doorway, “Thank you, Sir."

Pierce

Standing at the door to Interrogation Two, I took a second to collect my thoughts. What Faye had done had been reckless and damn stupid—
what if Laura had been serious about killing her?
—but the result was something I could work with.

I'd taken an instant dislike to Morgan, and not just because he was Laura's husband. My instincts had told me from the start not to trust him, and it looked as if I'd just been proved right.

I stepped back inside the room and slammed the door behind me, drawing on my anger that, even if he was innocent of murder, this guy had committed domestic violence. “Just had a conversation with your wife."

He hadn't known we had her in custody, and his face paled a little. He was guilty as hell—all I had to do was prove it. “Tell me about your poker ring.” As he opened his mouth to deny it, I held up a hand. “And let's skip the part where you pretend you have no idea what I'm talking about."

"What about it?” Morgan said. “I get together with a few friends now and then, play a few hands. All legal and totally above board, and nothing for goddamn cops to get involved in."

"Sam Leigh owe you money?” I shoved the dead man's photograph across the table. “That why you sent your wife to lift his wallet?"

"Nope.” He'd got hold of himself, and now leant back in his chair, giving me his best poker face. “If she took it, that's her business, not mine. She knew Sam owed me. Maybe she just figured she was helping me out."

"And she thought he'd have enough on him to pay you back?” I sat down opposite him and leaned over the table, invading his personal space just a little. “You don't kill someone for pocket change. And there's no way your wife had the strength to give that beating."

"Hey, I know nothing about this, man. Believe it or not, it's the truth."

Shrugging, I pulled his water glass away from him, using only my finger and thumb to pinch the rim. “Then you won't mind if I take this for fingerprint and DNA comparison."

Morgan grabbed the glass so violently it overbalanced, spilling water into his lap. With a muttered epithet, he got up from his chair and swiped at his wet jeans. “I want my goddamn lawyer."

I'd learnt to hate those words. “Lawyer or no lawyer, we're gonna place you at that scene."

He leant back against the wall and folded his arms. “Lawyer."

He wasn't gonna give me anything else for now, so I left him to stew for a while, taking the details he scrawled down and heading back into observation. “Layton, get the lawyer here, then take a break. Santoro, get a warrant for his house and find out how much our dead guy owed him. Take Beaumont with you."

I watched them file out, then headed back into the interrogation room. I'd need to wait for Morgan's lawyer for some of my answers, but not others.

"Got a question for you."

"And until my lawyer gets here, you're not getting another word out of me.” Morgan had taken my seat, since he'd spilt water on his own, so I took up his former position against the wall.

"Personal question, not business. Your lawyer's on his way. Until then, I wanna know why you told your wife to get involved with me."

Morgan's eyebrows shot up, and I couldn't help but be amused by his shock. “Yeah. Laura told me that, too."

"Is there a reason I should tell you?” he drawled.

Shrugging, I pushed off the wall and took a step towards the door. “I'm not gonna play games with you. This is your one chance to tell me what I did to piss you off. Take it or leave it."

After a brief hesitation, he decided the benefits outweighed the risks. “I knew Johnny Collier for years before I met Laura. By the time he introduced me to his kid sister, we'd been through college together. We were frat brothers. We were practically related."

Two things crossed my mind simultaneously. The first was that though I could understand the brotherly bond between cops, who watched each other's backs in dangerous situations every day, I'd never get why frat brothers acted the same way.

The second was the thought I chose to voice. “So you married your frat brother's sister. And that didn't seem a little incestuous to you?"

Morgan's face contorted with anger and he balled his hands into fists atop the table as he gave me the usual spiel about shutting the hell up about things I didn't understand. Recognising the warning signs, I lay a cautious hand on my service weapon until he calmed down enough to let me get a word in.

"How many times did
Johnny
assault women while you were frat brothers? I'm betting he started before you married Laura, and if you two were as close as you say you were, there's no way you didn't know about it."

Morgan's gaze wavered, and my gut kicked. Mentally adding the aiding and abetting of a serial rapist to his rap sheet, I pushed him a little more—he wouldn't talk until his lawyer arrived unless I really rattled him. “So I send Johnny to jail, and you decide to get even with me by...sending your wife to my bed? I gotta tell you, Garth,
that
showed me."

It was more Santoro's interrogation style than mine, but it worked.

"She was just getting to know what really mattered to you when you kicked her to the kerb. And once you did, she went straight for that little bitch you'd die for. I was away on business when it happened, and that's why Faye Tate is still untouched. Within a few more days, I'd have ruined her life and broken her mind, and
that
would have been my revenge."

Chills rippled over my skin, and I remained stock-still to counter the urge to knock him to the ground and drive my foot into his ribs. I could deal with this information later—for now, I shoved aside the instinct to pre-emptively defend Faye and took stock of the conversation.