Flawless (New York Confidential #1)(25)

“How many inmates?” she asked.

“At any given time? More than thirteen thousand, but with guards and staff, including civilian employees, there may be as many as twenty thousand people on the island—even more on some days. It’s like a city unto itself.”

“You’ve been here before, obviously.”

He nodded. “Too often.” He glanced her way. “This whole place is a mess. You’ve got New York prosecutors, federal prosecutors, even Jersey prosecutors, working here. But we’re the ones charged with getting and presenting evidence. Any prosecutor’s success always comes down to the evidence and statements—and ideally confessions—we can give them. Of course, they’re also the ones who make the deals in spite of that evidence.”

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I just haven’t been here before.”

“But this is what you do, right?” he asked. “Work with criminals.”

“So far I’ve only dealt with people who might be charged,” she said. “And usually the situation is sad. I think I told you—I talked with a couple suspected of killing their baby, but the expert physician who was brought in agreed that the child simply stopped breathing. Crib death. Not smothered, poisoned, ignored... I write a lot of reports,” she added. “Interview witnesses. It’s amazing how people can be in the same place at the same time and see completely different things.”

“Because everything is perception,” he said. “Everything we see is filtered through the way we perceive it.”

“And here I liked to think I went to school for something useful,” she said.

He laughed. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you didn’t. Your help with the crime-scene footage was pretty amazing—you saw a lot that I didn’t. But that more or less proves my point.”

“Will their attorneys be present?” she asked.

“No, oddly enough, I think they actually want to talk. They seem to want to convince us that they might be thieves, but they’re not murderers.”

They arrived, headed through security and then went on to the building where the suspects were being held.

They went through another security check, where Craig turned over his gun. He seemed to know the guard who escorted them to the room where a man in jail coveralls was handcuffed to a table, waiting for them to arrive.

Kieran realized that it was the driver, Mark O’Malley. He looked at Craig Frasier with deep distrust and eyed her suspiciously, as well. She was still surprised that he hadn’t asked that his attorney be present, then realized that while he might want to prove his point, he might not be at all certain that he really trusted them, so he would prefer to keep things somewhat off the record.

“Ah, so it’s Black Widow and the Hulk,” he muttered, looking away and shaking his head. He hesitated and then said in a hurt tone, “You were there. You know we didn’t stash any real guns anywhere. You know that! They want our blood. Yes, we robbed people, but we never killed anyone.”

There was a seat opposite O’Malley, and Craig Frasier indicated that she should take it. He remained standing, then took a step back.

“What?” O’Malley asked him. “You’re antisocial?”

“I’m just here to watch out for Miss Finnegan. She’s here to listen.”

“Miss Finnegan?” O’Malley stared at Kieran. “You’re not with the Feds?”

She shook her head, studying O’Malley in return. He was young—late twenties to early thirties. He wasn’t a bad-looking man. He had the air, though, of one who had come from nothing, who had scratched his way up since birth and dreamed of something better. Blue-eyed, blond-haired...in another world he could have been a California beach bum.

“You weren’t a plant in the jewelry store?” O’Malley asked her.

She shook her head again.

He started to laugh. “Well, hell. Done in by a girl shopping for diamonds!”

Except she hadn’t been a girl who’d wanted a diamond; she’d been trying to get rid of one.

“I’m a psychologist,” she said.

“A shrink, huh?” O’Malley asked.

“Psychiatrists are shrinks,” she said. “I’m more like someone you...someone you talk to.”

That brought a pained smile to his lips. “Yeah? Could have used you a few years ago. Not much to talk about now, is there? My family has pretty much disowned me, and I have a baby for a lawyer who wants me to confess to what I didn’t do... A little late for talking, I guess.”

“Not at all. If you really didn’t kill anyone, then you shouldn’t confess to it,” Kieran told him.

“You know what we were carrying,” he said. “But some district attorney wants to charge us with first-degree murder, though I don’t get the first-degree part at all, something to do with the laws about armed robbery. Not that it matters. I swear, we didn’t kill anyone. And I was always in the car.”

“I’m pretty sure that, in the car or out of it, you can all be charged, since the murders occurred during the armed robbery and you were part of the robbery,” Kieran said.

“Except we weren’t armed. And we didn’t kill anyone. Someone is imitating us.”

Kieran didn’t agree or disagree with his words; whether he and the others could prove themselves innocent of the murders, she didn’t know. “At the moment, not many people believe that theory. You appeared to be armed, after all. Anyway, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not here to argue the law. I’m here to talk to you, and if you didn’t kill anyone, then I’m also here to help you. I’m one of the few people open to the idea that you didn’t,” she added softly. “I suspect that there really is a copycat group out there,” she said. “Unless you were copying them?”