Apprentice in Death (In Death #43)(84)

“Including his own daughter.” Peabody said it just loud enough to be heard, and in a voice that rang with emotion. “That’s what I can’t get under, can’t get through. She’s just a kid, and he used her, he screwed her up. You destroyed her, Mr. Mackie. How is she ever going to live with what she’s done? What you, her own father, told her to do?”

“You don’t know anything about my Will.”

“I know at fifteen she should be thinking about boys and music and schoolwork and meeting friends for pizza and vids. I know she should be angsting over what to wear.”

“Not my Will.”

“Not your Will,” Peabody repeated, with disdain. “Because you wouldn’t approve. You think all those things are frivolous, aren’t important, but they are. They’re building blocks, they’re rites of passage. They’re part of the childhood you stole from her. Now she’s a murderer, a fugitive. Her life’s over.”

“Just beginning,” he replied.

“He thinks she’s going to Alaska,” Eve tossed out with a deliberate smirk, “to live off the land, free as a . . . What the hell do they have in Alaska?”

“Bear. Moose. Wolves, too, I think. Deer. Lots of deer.”

“There you go. Like a deer. But people hunt deer, don’t they? Don’t they do that up there? Isn’t that part of living off the land?”

Eve leaned back. “I’m hunting her right now—like a deer. I’ve got some of my best trackers on her. She’s left a trail, Mackie.” Eve opened a file, read off the addresses of the three nests. And saw his trembling hands close into trembling fists. “Already got a wit at one of them who saw her exiting the building. Here’s what I wonder. Did you tell her to get her ass to Alaska when you sent her off, or did you tell her to finish the job first?”

“My client denies any and all allegations pertaining to his daughter, Willow Mackie. She is missing due to her fear of the police, due to your department’s false accusations against her.”

“Right. I’ll wade through the lawyer bullshit all day. A decent father would have told her to run, run far and fast.”

“He’s not a decent father,” Peabody put in.

“I’m a good father!” Insult and rage flashed hard color into Mackie’s cheeks. “I’m a hell of a lot better than that useless prick her mother married.”

“That would be the useless prick with the good job, the nice house.” Eve studied his ruined and furious eyes through the goggles. “The one who’s not a funky-junkie. Yeah, that’s a burn on the butt all right.”

“He’s not her father.”

“Nope, but she lived with him half the time. You were working to change that, to get full custody, then oops, dead wife. That got messed up.”

The trembling of Mackie’s hands increased. Red splotches came and went on his face.

“I figure you said run. ‘Get to Alaska. Live a little.’ Then you’re the sacrifice, the distraction. She can come back in a couple years, finish the mission: Marta Beck, Marian Jacoby, Jonah Rothstein, Brian Fine, Alyce Ellison. But, hey, that’s a teenager, isn’t it? Defiant, rebellious. She disobeyed Daddy. Now eighteen more people are dead.”

Eve opened a file, spread out the photos. “Eighteen people who did nothing but go to a concert.”

She watched his gaze skim over the photos, back and forth.

“Their bad luck this time. Bad luck they were in the same place at the same time as Rothstein. He’s a lawyer,” she told Pratt. “Like you. Mackie hired him to try to sue the driver who hit his jaywalking wife, and the cop who gauged the scene correctly. Just a lawyer, like you, doing his job, like you. But he couldn’t get Mackie what he wanted, so he was supposed to die.”

“My client denies—”

“But she missed.” Eve watched Mackie’s shielded eyes jerk up. “That’s her oops. Got so excited, I guess, and missed the target.”

“Will never misses.”

Eve leaned forward. “How would you know? Have you ever seen her aim at a human being?”

“I said she never misses. Where’s his picture?” He shoved at the dead. “Where is it?”

“Who chose the collaterals? Did you let her pick? You picked the main target, so did you let her pick the rest?”

“Where is Rothstein’s picture?”

“I said she missed.”

“You’re lying. Will can pick the left ear off a rabbit at a half mile.”

“Mr. Mackie,” Pratt began, laying a hand on his arm.

Mackie shook him off. “I want to see his picture on this table.”

“It was crowded. Night, late, crowded.”

“I trained her.” Not just his hands shook now, but his arms, his shoulders. “She wouldn’t take the shot unless she was sure.”

“Maybe it’s different when you’re not there to give her the green. You were there, giving her the green for the ice rink, for Times Square.”

“It’s no different, not for her. She doesn’t miss.”

“But you were there before, giving her the green, to kill Dr. Michaelson, to kill Officer Russo. Yes or no.”

“Don’t answer that,” Pratt insisted.