The deputy nodded, and looked at the other deputies, and shrugged. He put his nightstick under his left arm and took a pair of cuffs off the back of his belt.
“We got to do it,” he said to me. “Hard or easy, up to you.”
I said, “Hard, I think.”
The deputy shrugged again, took the nightstick out from under his arm, and Martin Quirk walked into the cell. Everybody stopped in mid-motion and stared at him. He was as immaculate as always. Blue blazer, white Oxford button-down, maroon and navy rep striped tie, maroon show hankie, and gray covert slacks. He had his badge in his left hand. And he held it out so people could see it.
The partner had gotten himself upright, still breathing heavily, and turned so he was leaning his back on the wall.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
“Detective Lieutenant Martin Quirk, Commander, Homicide Division, Boston, Massachusetts, Police Department.”
“We’re in the middle of an investigation, Lieutenant,” the partner said. “And, you know, this isn’t Boston.”
He had his breathing under control again, but he still leaned on the wall. And when he moved he did so stiffly. Quirk looked at him. There was something in Quirk’s eyes. The way there was something in Hawk’s. It wasn’t just dangerous. I’d seen that look in a lot of eyes. It was more than that. It was a contemptuous certainty that if there was any reason to he’d kill you, and you had no part in the decision. Under all the tight control and the neat tailoring, and the pictures of his family on his desk, Quirk had a craziness in him that was terrifying when it peeked out. Here in the cellar of the Alton County Courthouse it not only peeked, it peered out, and steadily.
“I don’t care what you shit kickers are doing,” Quirk said, and what you saw in his look you could hear in his voice. “I want this guy, and I’ve come to get him.”
Vest, who hadn’t caught the look, and was too stupid to hear the sound in Quirk’s voice, spoke while still looking at me.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” he said. “Tough shit, huh? He’s our prisoner and we are in the middle of interrogation. Whyn’t you wait outside? Huh? Or maybe wait in Bahston.”
Quirk stepped in front of Vest and put his face about an inch away from Vest’s.
“You want to fuck around with me, dick breath?” Quirk said softly.
Vest stepped back as if something had pushed him. Quirk glanced around the cell.
“Before I came down here to this hog wallow, I talked with the U.S. Attorney in Boston, who put me in touch with the U.S. Attorney in Columbia. They both know I’m here.”
He looked at me, and jerked his head. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Certainly,” I said.
And we walked unhurriedly out of the cell and down the corridor under the ugly ceiling lights and up some stairs and into the Alton County Sheriff’s substation. Quirk demanded, and got, my personal stuff, including my gun, and we walked unhurriedly out onto the courthouse steps, where the sun was shining through the arching trees and the patterns of the heavy leaves were myriad and restless on the dusty street.
chapter twenty-four
QUIRK HAD PARKED his car in the fenced-in county lot back of the courthouse. We got in, and he pulled the car out the only exit, and parked on a hydrant across the street. He let the engine idle.
“How’d you get in there?” I said.
“Bullied the desk clerk,” Quirk said.
“You’re a scary bastard,” I said.
“Lucky for you,” Quirk said.
We were quiet.
“This a rental?” I said. Quirk shook his head. “Federal guys in Columbia lent it to me.”
“So why are we sitting here in it?”
“I thought we ought to see if we could get a read on the two suits in there,” Quirk said. “I’d like to know who sent them.”
From where we parked, we could see the front door of the courthouse and the parking lot entrance on the side street.
“We going to follow them?”
“Yeah.”
“And they spot us?”
“They won’t spot us,” Quirk said. “I’m a professional policeman.”
“Sure,” I said.
Quirk grinned. “And if they do,” he said, “fuck ‘em.”
Some cars came and went from the parking lot, but none of them contained Vest or the Partner. People went in and out of the courthouse, but they weren’t ours.
“Why didn’t you send Farrell?” I said.
