“He was a violent escaped convict,” Gus said. “How could a scrawny little thing like Tara break his neck?”
“The same way she put a BurgerZone fry cook in the hospital,” Coules said. “In a way, she did us all two great favors with Marichal-she took a wanted criminal off the streets, and she’s going to send you away for a long time.”
The door swung open, and Chief Vick came in, looking stern. “I’m not convinced about that yet, Mr. Coules.”
Gus felt his heart lightening. Maybe they weren’t completely alone in the world. Maybe they had one friend.
“Which part?”
“We have sufficient evidence to hold Tara Larison on suspicion of murder in the death of Dallas Steele,” she said. “But we have no hard evidence tying her to Marichal’s death yet.”
“Except her prints at the scene.”
“Two of my detectives were with her there long after the murder,” Vick said.
“Because these two were trying to corrupt the crime scene.”
“If we killed John Marichal, why did someone try to kill us when we went back to the impound lot to investigate?” Shawn said.
“This is the first I’ve heard of that,” Chief Vick said.
“We meant to report it, but we got a little busy,” Shawn said.
“What he means is they didn’t have any reason to make it up before,” Coules said.
“If you think we’re making it up, go check it out for yourself,” Gus said. “Look for bullet holes and broken glass in a bunch of cars from the sixties.”
“Right,” Coules said. “Kids never use wrecked cars for target practice. So any evidence we find of gunshots is proof someone was shooting at you.”
They turned to Chief Vick for help. She shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid he’s right. If you had come to us right after it happened, maybe we could have done something.”
“Next time don’t wait so long to manufacture your alibis,” Coules said.
Chief Vick turned back to the district attorney. “The only thing you have tying Tara to Marichal’s murder is your belief that Mr. Spencer and Mr. Guster were angry at him,” she said. “And your belief that she was psychically compelled to do his bidding.”
“ Her belief, not mine,” Coules said. “I refuse to endorse the ridiculous notion that this man is actually psychic.”
“In which case, you need to prove conspiracy,” Vick said. “You’ll need to demonstrate that Mr. Spencer made it known to Miss Larison that he wanted these victims dead.”
“That’s going to be easy with Steele,” Coules said. “He’d called a press conference to expose Spencer as a fraud. When I worked in Florida, I put away an entire drug cartel with less evidence than this.”
“That is troubling,” Vick said. She turned to Shawn and Gus. “I guess there’s no way out of this for you, is there?”
“You say that like you think we should be able to come up with an answer,” Shawn said.
“Only if you’re innocent,” Vick said. “Otherwise I’m going to have to put you under arrest and let Mr. Coules hold you until trial. If only you could find a flaw in his otherwise excellent logic.”
Gus’ mind spun. Chief Vick was trying to throw them a lifeline. But as far as he could see, the rope was still hanging just out of reach.
The realization hit Shawn and Gus at the same time.
“I guess there’s no way out for us,” Shawn said.
“None at all,” Gus agreed.
“You’ve got us,” Shawn said to Coules. “We wanted Steele dead, and Tara acted on that desire, just like she did on all the others.”
“I wonder how she knew so well what you wanted all the time,” Gus said.
“Like she said, she took my psychic orders.”
“But that can’t be,” Gus said. “Coules refuses to endorse the ridiculous notion that you’re actually psychic.”
“Good point,” Shawn said. “Then we must have told her we wanted Steele dead before the press conference started.”
“Of course,” Gus said. “I can’t remember-how did we do that again? Because we were locked in the North Tower all night. She didn’t come up there, did she?”
Chief Vick shook her head. “We’ve been studying the house’s security logs for that night. It turns out that most of the doors and windows are monitored. Thanks to that, we believe that Tara broke in through the underground garage and went straight to the auditorium. As far as we know, the door to the north tower didn’t open between the time Shepler took you up there and the time he brought you down.”
“That would certainly clinch our innocence,” Shawn said, “if only it weren’t for modern technology.”
“That’s right,” Gus said, his spirits rising. “We could have plotted the entire thing out on our cell phones.”
“Except there’s no reception anywhere within five miles of Eagle’s View,” Vick said.
Coules’ glare shifted from Vick to his two prime suspects. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing-”
“We’re not playing. We’re trying to help you,” Shawn said. “Where were we again?”
“You were explaining how you conspired with Tara Larison to kill Dallas Steele,” Vick said.
“Right,” Gus said. “All we need is to pinpoint the moment when we gave her the order to commit the murder, and we’re going down.”
“I’ve been working through the time line, and I can’t see any point where we could have communicated to Tara after we got to Eagle’s View,” Shawn said.
“That’s easy,” Gus said. “Clearly we gave her the order after Shepler picked us up.”
“That could work,” Shawn said. “Does make us look pretty stupid, though.”
“Why is that, gentlemen?” Vick said.
“Well, when Shepler came for us, we thought Dal wanted to see us because we had made him a fortune,” Shawn said.
“And we were going to share in that fortune,” Gus said. “Ten percent of all profits were supposed to go to us.”
“There were no profits,” Coules growled. “That’s one of the reasons you hated him.”
“Yes, definitely,” Shawn said. “After he told us that, we certainly were miffed.”
“If only he’d told us before we went up to see him, this all would have been so much easier to arrange,” Gus said.
“I guess it’s possible that we hated Dal so much that we arranged to kill him before we collected our vast profits, even though his death would probably mean we’d never see a nickel,” Shawn said.
“So we told Tara she should follow us everywhere we went, just in case we popped up to Eagle’s View, so she could murder Dallas Steele in the exact time and place that would put the biggest burden of guilt on us,” Gus said.
“That must have been what we did,” Shawn said. “Except that it’s not only incredibly stupid-it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“I’m sure it will to a jury,” Gus said.
“As long as the jury is made up completely of idiots,” Shawn said. “Think they can arrange that?”
Coules was breathing heavily, and his hands were shaking. Chief Vick pulled him aside gently.
“I don’t think you’re ready to charge them yet,” she said.
“They’re guilty, and everyone in this room knows it,” Coules said through gritted teeth.
“If you want to charge them, I can’t stop you,” Chief Vick said. “But in two minutes they’ve been able to poke huge holes in your case. Wouldn’t it make more sense to release them now and rearrest them when you’ve got everything lined up?”
“By which time they’ll be in Argentina.”
