This Fallen Prey (Rockton #3)(13)

“And I’m supposed to, what, apologize for the inconvenience of my captivity?”

“No, you are supposed to recognize that Detective Butler has done nothing to deserve the inconvenience of your care. And recognize that she attempted to relieve the indignity and discomfort of that gag, and you called her . . .” Mathias purses his lips. “I will not repeat it. It is rude. Uncalled for in any circumstances, but particularly these.”

“I was pissed off. I vented.” He glances my way. “I apologize.” His gaze swings back to Mathias. “But you aren’t interested in what I have to say. Neither of you is. You’re treating me like a child throwing a tantrum. Let me get it out of my system, and maybe I’ll shut up. Gregory Wallace has convinced you all that I’m guilty, and the only thing that surprises me about that is how easy it was.”

Brady pauses. “No, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen it my whole life. Got a problem? Drown it in money, and you’ll drown all doubts. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth and so on. How much is Greg paying you?”

“Hot tubs,” I say. “He’s paying us in hot tubs and big-screen TVs. Oh, and diamond necklaces, to wear to the next town picnic.”

Brady’s eyes narrow.

I wave at the police station. “Look around. We don’t have electric lights or gas furnaces, and that’s not for lack of money. We have what we need. You’re here because of what you did. Not because we’re being paid to take you.”

“No, I’m here because of what I know.”

“Which is?”

“Does it matter?”

“Your plan is ill-advised,” Mathias murmurs.

Brady turns to him. “And what is my plan? You obviously know, so how about letting me in on it. Maybe it’ll be something I can use, which is a damned sight better than my plan—the naive one where I thought you people might be smart enough to question the lame-ass story my stepfather gave you.”

“It does not seem ‘lame-ass’ to me,” Mathias says. “Uninspired and unoriginal, and yes, that is the colloquial definition of lame, but I believe the word you meant was ‘dumb-ass,’ implying anyone who believes the story is not very bright, rather than that the crimes themselves suggest a lack of intelligence on the part of the criminal.”

“What?”

“Is my accent impeding your comprehension? Or are you simply proving my point?”

“I’m not going to sit here and be insulted—”

“Yes, you will. We are not forcing you to speak. I spent my career interviewing psychopaths, sociopaths, and garden-variety sadists, and I always told them that they were free to cut the session short at any time. Do you know how many did?” Mathias holds up his thumb and forefinger in a zero. “But please, feel free to show some originality in this, if you could not in your crimes.”

Brady seethes, and it is like watching a weasel in a cage, being poked with a cattle prod. All it has to do is retreat to the other side. Instead, it snarls and twists and snaps at the prod. That may feel like grit and courage to the weasel, but to an outsider, it looks like submission. Mathias holds the power; Brady is trapped.

“Ignore him,” I say to Brady, and he starts at the sound of my voice, as if he’s forgotten there’s someone else in the room.

“He’s baiting you,” I say. “He gets little amusement up here, and you’re his entertainment for the day.”

Brady’s lips tighten. He wants to smirk and lean back in his chair and say he isn’t falling for the good cop, bad cop game. But my expression doesn’t look like the good cop’s.

Seconds tick by. Then he makes up his mind and twists to face me.

“I can’t fight a bold-faced lie,” he says. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“Try.”

“How? We’re not in San Jose right now. We’re thousands of miles from it. So how exactly do I prove I wasn’t the shooter?”

Mathias clears his throat, and I know my poker face has failed. Mathias’s throat-clearing pulls Brady’s attention away, and I recover.

“Try,” I say. “Tell me what proof they had against you. What they were using to charge you.”

Brady laughs. There’s a jagged bitterness to it. The weasel has realized that attacking the prod does no good, but it can’t help itself. It has no other recourse. Keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result, knowing how futile that is.

“Greg said I was being charged? Of course he did. It’s not like you can call up the district attorney and ask. Not like you’d expect an honest answer if you did. We can neither confirm nor deny—that’d be the sound bite, and you’d take it to mean yes, they have a warrant out for my arrest, when the truth is”—he meets my gaze—“it’s like me telling this old man that you think he’s hot. You know it’s bullshit. I know it’s bullshit. But he’d love to believe it, and there’s nothing you can say to defend yourself.”

“Actually, no,” Mathias says. “I find the thought rather alarming. I would have to disabuse Casey of it immediately, and inform her that, as lovely as she is, I really do prefer women who were born before I graduated university.”

“Whatever,” Brady says. “My point is that I wasn’t even on the investigators’ radar. Why would I be? What’s my motive? Did Greg even bother to mention that? ’Cause I’d love to hear it.”