Forgotten in Death(76)

Quickly, he turned to Peabody, held out his hands in appeal.

“He will pay someone to murder me. My own uncle will do this. He’s heartless, ruthless. He’ll do this because I have too much heart, and I gave it to women not my wife—a wife he chose for me. He’ll do this because I wanted to give all my children a good life, and a good life takes money. It was only money, and he has so much. It was for my children, and he’ll kill me, and they’ll have no father.

“You understand. I can see you have a heart. You have to help me.”

“You want me to help you?”

Peabody started to reach her hands toward his. Then she slammed her palms on the table as she lurched up. “You want me to help you? You spineless prick of a slug stain. You greedy, brainless ball of pus. You smashed a harmless, helpless woman’s skull in, exploited a desperate addict, then pumped a drug into him so you could string him up without getting your pampered hands dirty.”

While Eve watched with pride swelling in her heart, Peabody rounded the table to push her face in his. “How many others have you killed so you could buy your fancy suits and screw around on your wife? You’re going down, you whiny asshole fuckwit. We’ve got you cold, and you’re going down. Help you? You bet your miserable murdering ass I’m going to help put you in a cage for the rest of your ugly worthless life.”

Eve let the silence hang for a beat. “What she said.” Since Peabody’s outburst threw him off balance, Eve pushed hard.

“We’ve got everything we need to put you away for Delgato. Everything we need to prove you used him to help you steal from your uncle’s company, Singer’s, others. We have what we need to take you down for the murder of Alva Quirk.”

Eve leaned back as Peabody came around the table, dropped down in her own chair.

“We know you killed Delgato because you were afraid he’d talk, he’d tell someone how you killed Alva Quirk.”

Fear, genuine fear, flickered in Tovinski’s eyes before he cut them away.

“You can’t prove it. Maybe he killed the old woman. Then himself.”

“He couldn’t fricking hang himself pumped up with a paralytic, Alexei. Pay attention. You were there. You climbed in the window. Went up the fire escape, went in. Do you think nobody notices some guy in a custom-made suit climbing in a window of a flop?”

She had nothing there, but he didn’t know that, she thought. And she watched the idea of a witness strike him.

“We’ll be rounding up all your associates and accomplices on your skimming scams and we may be making some deals there, right, Reo?”

“Absolutely. I believe I have the list the forensic accountant so kindly provided.” In turn, Reo shuffled through her file. “Yeah, here it is. Small change.” She beamed across the table at Tovinski. “I love making deals with small change to rake in the bigger bucks.”

“But we don’t need them for Alva Quirk. We have her books.”

Eve smiled when she said it, continued to improvise as she saw fear bloom.

“Yeah, I figure you trashed the book you grabbed after you smashed Alva’s head in. The thing is, she’s been keeping those books since she was a kid. She had a hell of a collection. Do you really think the night you killed her was the only time she’d seen you on the Singer site? The only time she’d noted down you were there, where you had no business being?”

“You’re lying.”

“Test me,” Eve invited. “If you live to go to trial, manage to get another lawyer and risk a trial, picture me on the stand reading from one of this sweet, harmless woman’s notebooks. Imagine the chief medical examiner describing the killing wounds—back of the skull. Back of the skull, Alexei, and testifying when our APA here shows the crowbar you didn’t quite clean thoroughly so it still had traces of her blood and brain matter on it.”

“If you put me in prison, I’ll be dead. You’ll be murderers, the three of you. I want a deal.”

“He wants a deal,” Eve said to Reo, and Peabody snorted.

“Here’s how I see it,” Reo began. “We go to trial with evidence so profound I expect the jury would come back with a guilty—all counts—in under an hour. Could be a record. You then spend whatever’s left of your life off-planet. We could keep you in isolation—from now and until.”

“He’ll pay for my death, and my blood will be on your hands.”

“How much blood’s on yours?” Peabody shot back. “You murdering shitbag.”

“Or…” Reo let the single syllable sit a moment. “You make a full confession, a full and detailed confession, on both murders, and we immediately transfer you, under another name, to an on-planet facility. You’ll be provided with another identity, another background. Think of it as witness protection in prison.”

“My children.”

“Would Yuri Bardov harm or cause harm to be done to your wife, the women you’re supporting, or your children? Lies,” Eve added coolly, “cut back on the terms of any deal. Test me,” she invited again.

He met Eve’s steady gaze for an instant, then shook his head. “No, I have no fear for them. He would never harm a child or the mother who tends them. But I provide for them. I visit them. Children need their father.”