Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(19)

“That’s a load of crap. Take your platitudes and shove them.”

“Do you think you’ll get away with this one, too, Mr. Street? Maybe someone saw you. Maybe you left something in that garage. Maybe you made a mistake. Or maybe your hillbilly friends will turn on you and rat you out.”

“You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Justice loves a rat. I’m surprised you don’t keep a few of them around, maybe carry one on your shoulder. It’d be a good look for you.”

She made a horrid sound, a sharp cackling that I realized was laughter. “You’ll make a mistake soon. And when you do, I’ll be waiting.”

My eyes opened, and there was only darkness. I listened to the hum of the bedside fan and thought about what I’d done and the utter lack of emotion or empathy I felt when I was pounding rounds into Fraturra. It was like I had tried to tell Grace: I killed out of necessity, but I also had to admit that I took some pleasure in it. It wasn’t like a duty. It wasn’t like I was akin to a soldier who had been ordered to clean a latrine. I chose to kill.

I managed to drift off, slept fitfully, and climbed out of bed at five in the morning. I spent the next day cleaning the house and running errands—doing mindless tasks just to keep myself busy. I listened to newscasts all day, wondering when and if they would report Fraturra missing. That night, I drank a pint of bourbon and sat in front of the television. There was a baseball game on, but I had no idea who was playing and didn’t care. I passed out sitting on my couch around eleven o’clock, woke up at four in the morning, and staggered into the bedroom. Grace and the baby didn’t appear that night. Two hours later, at 6:00 a.m., I heard a loud knock at the front door, and I immediately thought to myself, Cops.

I looked through the peephole on the door. Someone was covering it, so I walked into the kitchen and leaned forward over the sink. I could see the front stoop. There were four of them standing out there, all men in ill-fitting suits and sporting bad haircuts. I was right. They were definitely cops. I went back to the door and said in a loud voice, “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Tennessee Bureau of Investigation,” a deep, rough voice said. “Open the door.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Open the fucking door or we’ll kick it down.”

I walked back to the bedroom and grabbed up my cell phone, turned on the video recorder.

“Go ahead,” I said as I came back to the door. “But just so you know, you’re going to be on audio-and videotape. Got a warrant?”

“Open the door, Street. We’re not dicking around with you.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Do you have a warrant? Because if you don’t and you kick that door in, I’ll sue all four of you and everyone else I can think of.”

“You’re wanted for questioning,” another voice said.

I almost laughed out loud. “Wanted for questioning? That’s nice. Wanted by whom? The TBI? And what would the TBI like to question me about?”

“We’ll talk about it at our place.”

“No, we won’t,” I said. “I don’t want to be questioned by you or anyone else. Even if you had a warrant, which you obviously don’t, I wouldn’t talk to you. I have this constitutional right to remain silent. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“We have reason to believe that you may be holding someone against their will in your apartment,” the first voice said.

“Holding someone against their will?” I said. “Are you kidding? Don’t take offense if I start laughing.

“Listen, guys, the intimidation thing didn’t work, okay? It isn’t going to work. I’ve been there, done that many times. And if you really had evidence that I was holding someone against their will, you would’ve already kicked the door in. You also would have brought a warrant and a tactical team. So just go on back to your office and tell your supervisor I wouldn’t let you in and wouldn’t talk to you. I’m going back to bed now. I have a headache.”

“Morris isn’t going to let you get away with this,” the rough voice said.

“Get away with what?”

“You know damned good and well what I’m talking about.”

And that’s when I decided to drop it on them. Granny’s suggestion. I knew it would freak them out, and I knew I’d get a kick out of it.

“Morris is up for reelection in November,” I said through the door. “You guys go tell him he’s finished. Tell him Darren Street is going to be the new district attorney general in Knox County, Tennessee.”

I could almost feel the air being sucked through the door as I turned, walked into my bedroom, and closed the door behind me. I sat down on the bed and began to smile. I wished I could have seen the looks on the cops’ faces when I said it. And seeing the look on Stephen Morris’s face when they told him? That would have been priceless.

But as far-fetched as Granny’s idea may have seemed at first, the more I thought about it, the more it appealed to me. I actually had some things going in my favor. Morris was smug, not well liked, and a lot of people thought he’d done a lousy job as the district attorney, including me. I’d had much more press than he had, and much of it was extremely sympathetic. I’d been wrongly convicted of a murder and managed to get myself vindicated. My mother had been murdered. My girlfriend and baby had recently died in what most people thought was an unavoidable medical tragedy. Practically everyone—or at least practically every potential voter in the county—had heard my name on television or read about me in a newspaper. And the thought of actually beating Morris and taking his job, making him experience the humiliation of being rejected by voters in his own county, was appealing. I’d read stories about how emotionally and psychologically devastating political losses can be to candidates. It occurred to me that beating him might even be better than putting a bullet in his brain.