The Bitter Season (Kovac and Liska, #5)(45)

Franken swore again and rubbed a big hand across his face. He pushed away from the desk and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wanted to pace, but there was no room to do it.

Kovac knew the feeling. He was losing patience, himself. He stepped a little closer to Franken. “If your guy is our guy, and he’s out there right now killing someone else? I will do everything in my power to get you charged as an accessory. How’s that for upping the ante, Dan? You can lose everything and spend the next twenty years in prison, or you can answer us honestly.”

“Fuck this,” Taylor muttered, scowling. He pulled a pair of handcuffs out and moved toward Franken.

Franken held his hands up. “Okay, okay! Yes, I sometimes pick up extra guys from the rehab. I’m a recovering alcoholic myself. I believe in second chances. Is that a crime?”

“I don’t have a problem with that, Dan,” Kovac said, stepping back, lessening the pressure. “It’s karmic. Somebody helped you out, you pay it forward, and the universe lets you save a few bucks. It’s all good—except that you don’t check these guys out, do you?”

He couldn’t look Kovac in the eye. “I’m a good judge of character.”

“They’re addicts. How do you know how recovered they are?” Taylor asked, irritably. “Or what they might have done when they were using? And you’re sending them into people’s homes?”

“Desperate people do desperate things, Dan,” Kovac said. “Drunks don’t generally steal, but drug addicts will do just about anything to get a few bucks for a fix—sell their own body, sell their own kids. I once got a call-out on a guy who tried to cut off his own arm with a chainsaw just to get the pain meds. Stealing is the least of it.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s not who I pick,” Franken barked back.

“No?” Kovac said. “You’re a f*cking mind reader? Look at my partner here,” he said, hooking a thumb at Taylor. “Good-looking kid. Nice suit. Polite. Do you think he’s a killer? He doesn’t look like a killer. He looks like freaking Channing Tatum. Do you think Channing Tatum is a killer?”

Franken just glared at him.

“Why would anybody that good-looking and clean-cut be a killer? Right? What’s he got to be pissed off about?” Kovac looked at Taylor. “Kid, how many people have you killed?”

“Seventeen, Sarge,” Taylor answered without the slightest hesitation, his green eyes narrowed and unblinking as he stared at Franken.

Kovac shrugged. “I rest my case. Now, who did you send to the Chamberlain house?”

Franken sighed. “One of my regular guys, Greg Verzano—he’s an idiot, but he’s not a killer—and a guy who works at Rising Wings. He’s a good guy,” he insisted. “He’s a vet. He had a drug problem, went through the program, and now he works there. They hired him; why shouldn’t I? I’ve never had any trouble with him.”

“Name?”

“Gordon Krauss. He’s not your guy. I’m telling you.”

“What does he do at the rehab?” Taylor asked.

“Odd jobs. Security. Janitor-type stuff.”

“Have you seen him today?”

“No, but he’s probably over there now. He stays there nights. They’ve gotten broken into a couple of times.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Taylor muttered, turning for the door. “I’ll start the car,” he said to Kovac on his way out.

“You stay here,” Kovac said, pointing at Franken. “And don’t even think about tipping Krauss off.”

The steady drizzle had picked up, Kovac noticed as he left Franken’s office and got back in the car.

“I called for backup,” Taylor said, putting the car in gear. “They’re three minutes out.”

Kovac looked over at him in the glow of the dash lights. “Have you really killed seventeen people?”

Taylor didn’t answer.

They drove slowly, with no headlights on, around the end of the building to the double row of parking in front of Rising Wings. The rehab took up an entire fifty-by-one-hundred-foot building, the last building at the back of the complex. Twenty yards beyond it stood a tall security fence, and beyond that, a lot full of RVs, fifth-wheel campers; pleasure boats on trailers, all covered with tarps for the winter. Security lights scattered sparingly across the lot cast glowing white balls of light that didn’t travel far in the rain.

Warmer lights glowed through the shades in a couple of Rising Wings’s windows, and several cars were parked near the building, but there was no way of knowing how many people might be inside. The building had multiple doors, one on each end and two along the side, probably on both sides. Kovac wanted the exits covered before they approached.

“I don’t want to just sit here,” Taylor said impatiently, opening the car door. “What if he comes out? I don’t trust Franken not to tip him off.”

“The unit’s two minutes out,” Kovac argued. “They’ll be here before I can get soaked to the skin. And there’s a big-ass fence on the other side of the building. Where’s he gonna go?”

Taylor hummed his disapproval and got out of the car, leaving the door ajar. Kovac grumbled and got out, hunching his shoulders and flipping the collar of his coat up in a vain effort to keep the cold rain off his neck. Damn kid. “I’ll watch this side,” he said with resignation. “You take the back.”