Gated Prey (Eve Ronin #3)(66)

“It was no accident that Colter is here,” Eve said. “He’d just walked into a trap and saw two of his friends get killed. He blamed Grayson for it. Colter carjacked a vehicle and fled. But when he realized that there was no chance of escaping, he veered into the shopping center and decided to use his last moments of freedom to confront him.”

On the screen, they could see Colter at the end of the aisle, holding a vodka bottle in one hand and his gun in the other, half turned away from Eve toward the back of the store, where Mumford was hiding.

Colter said, “I know you’re here. Show yourself. Don’t be a coward.”

Eve, on the video, stepped into the aisle and said, “Here I am.”

Colter turned toward her and that’s when Grayson stepped out and shot him.

Eve paused the video.

“It wasn’t me that Colter was calling out. It was Grayson. I distracted Colter for a split second, and Grayson saw his chance to save himself. He executed Colter to keep him from talking.”

Lansing said, “And that’s the guy I chose as the first civilian in history to get our Medal of Valor. What a fucking mess.” He stood up and looked at Shaw. “Eve did the right thing calling this meeting and briefing us all at once.” Shaw held his hands up in surrender, but Eve was sure he’d still hold a grudge. “Let’s set aside, for the moment, how this looks for the department.” Lansing shifted his gaze to Burnside. “Do we have a case?”

“Against Green, yes,” Burnside said. “But not against Mumford.”

“He gunned down Colter,” Duncan said.

“To save Eve,” Burnside said. “You can’t prove Colter was calling out Mumford and not the relentless cop who’d chased him from Vista Grande.”

“Okay,” Eve said. “So we arrest Green and get him to flip on Grayson in return for a lighter sentence.”

Burnside shook her head. “There’s still no case. Mumford’s attorney will argue that Green is lying in a flagrant and despicable attempt to reduce his sentence and tarnish the reputation of a true hero. The sheriff gave Mumford, a civilian, the Medal of Valor, for God’s sake.”

“No need to rub it in,” Lansing said, pacing in front of Shaw’s desk.

“The defense attorneys and the media certainly will,” she said, “so you might as well get used to it.”

Shaw cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “There’s another alternative.”

Everyone looked at him. “We arrest Green and tell him his only hope for leniency is if he gets Mumford to implicate himself.”

Lansing stood in front of Shaw’s desk and looked at him. “You want Green to meet with Mumford and wear a wire?”

Shaw leaned back in his chair. “We have nothing to lose.”

Eve thought about it a moment, then said, “We don’t know who else at Green’s company is involved in the robberies. What if Grayson gets word that Green has been arrested from someone in his office or among his landscaping crew?”

“We raid Green’s Greenery tomorrow,” Shaw said, “when they are closed and his crew isn’t around, and we arrest him at home. We make the deal and have Green set up the meet right away.”

“And if he doesn’t take the deal?” Eve asked.

Burnside answered before Shaw could. “He’ll take it. Guaranteed.”

Lansing turned and addressed the room. “It was all an elaborate charade.”

Eve said, “With all due respect, sir, I think Grayson was improvising as he went along.”

“I’m talking about the Medal of Valor ceremony,” Lansing said. “That’s how we explain it. We say we suspected Mumford was involved in the robberies from the start. But if we hadn’t acknowledged his heroism, he would have suspected we were onto him. It was all a charade on our part. We wanted to lull him into a false sense of security, and the Medal of Valor did that spectacularly.”

Burnside chuckled. “Do you really think the media will believe that?”

Lansing glared at her. “Do you have a better idea, Counselor?”

“Tell the truth. It’s a lot more convincing.”

Eve had to give Burnside credit for backbone, but the ADA could afford to be blunt with the sheriff. She didn’t work for him.

“The DA would love it if I did that,” Lansing said. “It would give him one more thing to embarrass me with when he runs against me for mayor.”

Burnside stood up and brushed imaginary wrinkles from her tennis shorts. “Politics aren’t my concern, Sheriff. Let me get to work on the warrants.” She turned to Eve. “What do you hope to find at Green’s place of business?”

“Stolen goods, the phony Amazon van, weapons, ammunition, and the cars belonging to the three dead assailants.”

“Why would their cars be there?”

Duncan explained what they’d learned from tracking the cell phones of all three assailants and how each man had turned off his phone before leaving home on the days of the invasions. He told her their theory that it was done so nobody, if one of them was caught, would be able to track where they’d left their cars.

“Very clever,” Burnside said. “You’ll have the warrants by the end of the day.” She looked at Shaw. “When do you think you’ll make your move?”