Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(103)

“But then I wouldn’t have, what is it, about ten years of training, instruction, practice. Wouldn’t have a former Army sniper and SWAT officer indulging my hobby.”

“Hobby, my ass!” Teeth bared, Willow shoved forward. “And it takes more than training, instruction, takes more than practice. All that’s important, sure, but it takes talent, it takes innate skill.”

“So you were born to kill.”

Easing back, Willow smiled again. “I was born to hit what I aim at.”

“Why aim at her?” Eve tapped Ellissa Wyman.

“Why not her?”

“Just random, just because?” Eve angled her head, shook it. “I don’t think so. Come on, Willow, she was a type, just the type you can’t stand. Out there showing off, day after day, like it mattered she could do a few spins and jumps on a pair of blades. Like being pretty made her somebody.”

“Now she’s just a body.”

“How did it feel to make her just a body? To cut off her life with one pull of the trigger with her out there in her show-off red suit? I think it got you off. It got you juiced so your aim was off with the main target, with Michaelson.”

“Bullshit.” Insult, rage, a wash of disgust skimmed over Willow’s face. “He went down the way I wanted him to go down. Gut shot, bleeding out on the ice. Feeling it, knowing it.”

“You wanted him to suffer?”

“He did, didn’t he? I don’t miss, got that? Do you got that? I gave him time for pain, time to know he’d never get up again. If the old bastard had put us first, my father would still have his eyes and hands.”

“Then he wouldn’t need you to do his work. He wouldn’t need you.”

“I’m his. I’m his first. His only.”

“You wouldn’t have been his only if Susann hadn’t run into traffic.”

“She was an idiot.”

Eve widened her eyes. “You killed all these people over an idiot?”

In her default gesture, Willow shrugged, looked up at the ceiling.

“I know you must have loved her.” Peabody infused her voice with just enough pity. “To do all this, I know you must have loved her, thought the world of her.”

“Oh please.” Derision dripped through the two words. “She could barely remember how to put her own shoes on every morning. Totally loserville. Sooner or later my old man would’ve walked away from that. Winners walk away. But he didn’t get the chance.”

“These people are dead because your father couldn’t walk away a winner.” Eve considered it. “Maybe that’s part of it. You killed Wyman fast, aimed so Michaelson could suffer, then—what about Alan Markum?”

“Don’t know him.”

“Your third.” Eve nudged the photo closer.

“Right. Didn’t like his face. Laughing and smiling while he stumbled around the ice with the bitch. I could’ve taken her out, too. Two for one, but I didn’t want to push my father right off. We’d agreed on three.”

“Lay it out for me.” Eve gestured. “How the two of you planned it, picked the nest, stalked Michaelson.”

“Seriously? What’s the point?”

“The record. You’ve got nothing better to do.”

“Anything’s better.”

But with a huge sigh, Willow laid it out.

She spoke of her father drinking, starting on illegals after Susann died. His anger, depression.

“Just sitting around the apartment most of the time, half-drunk, half-stoned, especially after that fuckhead lawyer told him no chance for a suit, for his day in court. I pulled him out.” Fiercely, Willow jabbed her fingers at her own chest. “I got him out of that hole.”

“How did you do that?”

“Crying’s for losers. He needed to get pissed. Take action. They fucked with us? We fuck with them, and we fuck harder.”

Eve leaned back. “You’re trying to tell us it was your idea? This mission? Killing Michaelson, Officer Russo, Jonah Rothstein, and the others on the hit list—including innocent bystanders of your choice—was your idea?”

“Is something wrong with your hearing? Do you need me to speak louder?”

“Watch your tone.”

Willow merely flicked a sneer at Peabody’s order. “Oh, fuck you and your tone. You want me to lay it out because you’re all too stupid to see it. I’m laying it out.”

“Why not start with Fine?” Eve demanded. “He’s the one who killed Susann. He was driving the vehicle that struck her.”

“What, are you brain dead? We hit Fine, even an asshole cop could make a connection to Dad. We end with Fine.”

“He wanted to save Fine until last.”

Once again Willow leaned forward, sneering. “Did you get the part where I said he was drunk and stoned most of the time? Crying into his brew the other half? I figured the who and where and when. You think he could come up with a mission? He couldn’t get out of his own way until I pulled him out of it.”

“You pulled him out by suggesting you kill the people you felt were culpable in Susann’s death.”

“You could say I laid it out for him—and put conditions on it.” Picking up her fizzy again, she gestured with it. “He had to cut back on the booze and the funk, pull himself to-fucking-gether. He mostly stopped drinking altogether. Funk’s harder, but he throttled back a little. And when my old man’s himself, he knows how to plan ops.