This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(12)

Brian eyes Brady. “What does he try to say when it comes off?”

“What would you say?” asks Mathias as he walks in. “If you were in this man’s position, what would you say?”

“I-I don’t know.”

Mathias throws open his arms. “Look at where he is. Who he is with. He came to stay among strangers, accompanied only by a piece of paper accusing him of crimes. What is he going to say? That it is all a terrible mistake. That he did nothing.”

“Then why not just let him say that?”

“Because it grows tiresome. For twenty years, I studied men like this. It is banally predicable. It begins with ‘I am innocent’ and escalates to ‘You are a nasty human being for not believing me’ and continues to ‘Let me go, or I will slaughter you and everyone you have ever loved.’ Tiresome. It is bad enough Casey has to sit here all day babysitting him. Does she need to endure that as well?”

“No, but . . .” Brian sneaks another look at Brady.

“The gag will come off,” Mathias says, “once he realizes he wastes his breath with protestations of innocence and threats of terrible vengeance. Now go.” Mathias waggles his fingers.

Once Brian leaves, Mathias makes a very indecent proposition to me en fran?ais. Then he watches for a reaction from Brady. There is none, confirming that if he does speak the language, it’s probably limited to being able to order champagne in a Monte Carlo casino.

“Are you ready to interview him?” Mathias asks, still in French.

I make a noise in my throat. I’m unsettled by Brian’s visit, seeing a friend and supporter question our decisions.

People want their monsters to look monstrous. At the very least, they want them shifty-eyed, thin-lipped, and menacing—a walking mug shot. But reality is that a killer can be a petite Asian Canadian woman, well educated and well spoken. Or a killer can be a handsome all-American boy, a little soft around the edges, a young man you expect to see on the debate team and rowing team, but nothing overly rough.

When you look at Oliver Brady, you see wealth and privilege, but you don’t really begrudge him that, because he seems innocuous enough, the type who’ll attend a fund-raiser for the Young Republicans on Friday with friends and a Greenpeace meeting on Saturday with a girl.

Mathias opens the cell door. I’m standing guard, my gun ready.

“Step out,” I say to Brady.

I don’t tell him to put his hands where I can see them. It’s not as if he’s hiding a shiv in his pocket. He puts them up anyway and takes exactly one step beyond the cell door. Then he stops. Waits.

I motion to the door leading from the cell to the main room.

“In there, please.”

There’s the slightest narrowing of his eyes as he assesses my please.

He walks into the next room and sits on the chair I’ve set out. He puts his hands behind his back. I ignore that. I’m not binding him.

When I circle around, Brady’s head swivels to follow. I’ve holstered my weapon, but his gaze dips to it, just for a split second, as if he can’t help himself.

“Detective Butler is going to remove your gag,” Mathias says. “If you wish to scream for help, please don’t restrain yourself on my account. It will give her the excuse to replace the gag, and me the excuse to get on with my day.”

Brady grunts. I read derision in that. He looks at Mathias, hears his diction, and smells weakness. Mathias is twice his age. A slender build. Graying hair and beard. An air of the bored aristocrat, the French accent on precisely articulated English adding to that sense of the bourgeois. Brady comes from wealth, but it’s new-world money, won by frontier ingenuity. In Mathias, he sees old-world rot and weakness. An old man, too, compared to him.

Brady’s grunt dismisses Mathias, and the older man’s eyes gleam.

“Remove the gag, please, Detective. Let us begin.”





7





I take off Brady’s gag. He reaches up and rubs at his mouth, wincing as his fingertips massage a tender spot.

Mathias turns away as he pulls over a seat. It’s a deliberate move. He could have placed the chair sooner, but he puts his back to Brady.

Brady’s gaze flicks to me. He expects to see my hand resting on my gun. When it isn’t, he looks back at Mathias, now tugging the chair over, his attention elsewhere. He sees that, and he frowns, as if to say, I don’t understand.

Good.

Mathias sits. I back up to perch on the edge of my desk. Brady looks from me to the older man. As he does, his sweep covers the back and front doors.

His nostrils flare, as if he quite literally smells a trap, as if Dalton and Anders are poised outside those doors, praying he makes a run for it.

“Detective Butler says you have been very eager to tell your story, Oliver,” Mathias says. “Now is your chance.”

Silence. When it reaches ten seconds, I open my mouth, but a subtle look from Mathias stops me. Five more seconds pass. Then:

“Is there any point?” Brady says. “You don’t want to hear it. You’ve all made that perfectly clear by the fact you’ve kept me gagged for seventy-two hours. I try to say a word when it’s removed at mealtime and she”—a glower my way—“threatens me with starvation.”

“She is Casey Butler. She is a detective who has been placed in a very frustrating position, forced to babysit you when she has other work to be done.”