we knew that. All we could do was guard against it.
Quinn left to set his part into motion. While he was gone, Evelyn, Jack and Felix compared notes on Wilkes, as they remembered him. Not a conversation I could join, so after twenty minutes I wandered off to the other side of the room to check out the room service menu. Last thing I’d eaten was a sub on the drive to the parade.
“Hungry?” asked a voice at my shoulder. Quinn. “I’ll bet you are. Confront the man the whole country is searching for, and no one even buys you dinner.”
“Did everything go okay?” I asked.
“It’s started. Now we have to wait for a response. Don’t worry. If what I hear about Dubois is right, he’ll at least hear us out.”
“Good.”
Quinn glanced over at Evelyn, Jack and Felix.
“They’re talking about Wilkes,” I said. “I can’t help them there.”
“Me neither.” He took the menu from me. “We can order from this if you’d like, but I saw a place down the road. What do you say I buy you dinner?”
“Sure,” I said.
I grabbed my wallet, shoes and jacket. As I got ready, I glanced Jack’s way, waiting for him to notice I was leaving, but he was engrossed in the conversation.
Quinn called out a “going to grab a bite,” and I thought I heard Evelyn respond, but he only closed the door and ushered me down the hall. If Evelyn or Jack had wanted to stop us, they could have made it to the door before the elevator arrived. No one did, so I took that as permission to leave.
FORTY-SIX
“You know you’re going to have to kill him,” Quinn said as he speared a chicken ball.
We were in Felix’s hotel room-a small one a few doors from ours. Jack might not have minded me going out to eat with Quinn, but I imagined he’d have something to say about our choice of dining area.
Our plans for the restaurant had gone south when we realized it closed at eleven, and we’d arrived at eleven- thirty. That left McDonald’s or a take-out Chinese place. I’d picked takeout, meaning we needed a place to eat. When Quinn suggested Felix’s room, with a hands-lifted “just to eat-no ulterior motives,” I’d agreed.
If Jack was right, the greatest danger I faced being alone with Quinn was that he’d rethink that “no ulterior motives” bit. That I could stop…if I wanted to. So far, he’d kept his word, lying on the opposite side of the bed, with boxes of food laid out between us, as we talked.
“You have to kill him,” Quinn said again when I didn’t answer. “If not you, then me or Jack, but someone has to. It has nothing to do with ‘the bastard deserves to die.’ Give me a choice, and I’d rather see him rot in jail than get a quick ticket out. Problem is, there’s no guarantee he’ll go to jail. You and I know that better than any of them.”
His eyes met mine and I knew he was searching for some look or reaction that would confirm a suspicion.
I wound up a forkful of noodles. “The justice system isn’t perfect. Everyone knows that.”
As I slurped noodles off my fork, Quinn caught my gaze and I let him have it, holding it for at least ten seconds. Finally, he let out a sigh, breath hissing through his teeth.
“Fine, so you’ve
I shrugged. “Everyone’s entitled to a fair trial and someone has to make sure they get it.”
“If the case even gets to trial. The way we’re stringing this thing together, even a pro bono suit could find grounds for dismissal.”
“Sure, but-”
“I’m not knocking the plan. I can’t think of an airtight way to do it, either. But it’s a problem, and the question is: what are you going to do about it?”
I put down my fork. “The question is: can I see a way around it? Do I have a problem with killing Wilkes? Of course not. But what’s more important to me is making sure everyone knows he’s been caught. If he just drops off the face of the earth, this won’t ever go away. The Feds will keep pouring money and man-hours into solving it. The newspapers will keep reminding people that it’s unsolved-in other words, that the Feds ‘fucked up.’ Every time a potential suspect turns up, you risk the public taking matters into their own hands. Sure, it’ll die down eventually, but you can bet that on every anniversary for the next decade, the media will bring it back up, reignite the fear. Then there’s the whole issue of copycats-nutcases thinking they can win instant infamy by pulling one hit and claiming the rest as their own.”
“I’m not saying we off him and dump the body. But what if we could toss Dubois a dead suspect instead of a live one?” When I didn’t respond, he added, “I know, it wouldn’t be as easy as it sounds, but take some time later and give it some thought. Run it by Evelyn and Jack. See what they think.”
“I will. And if we can’t come up with a way to kill him before we hand him over, we could arrange it afterward.” I looked over at Quinn. “I’m sure someone would be able to make sure Wilkes never sees the inside of a courtroom…someone who knows how to do such a thing.”
Quinn went still. “So Jack told you what I do?”
“Jack didn’t tell me a thing. He said it wasn’t his place. I had a hunch.”
“That obvious, huh?”
I took a forkful of rice before answering. “I’ve…heard of things like that. As a cop, you must see things go wrong. Maybe someone offers you money to make it go right.” I shrugged. “It might not seem like such a bad idea.”
He shifted on the bed before continuing. “If that did happen, you’d think it would need to be something really big that set him off, wouldn’t you? One of those awful cases you might see once in a lifetime, the kind most cops go their whole careers and never see.”
I thought of Wayne Franco and his victim, Dawn Collins, and concentrated on getting out the last grain of rice.
He continued. “But it wasn’t anything like that. It was the kind of situation you see so often you almost start forgetting what a tragedy it is, and you sure as hell stop expecting anything like justice to come of it. Woman leaves her husband, guy threatens her, she takes out a restraining order, calls the local cops a few times…sure, they try to help, but there are other priorities. And it seems like half the time when cops
“But this wasn’t one of those times, was it? He killed her.”
Quinn nodded. “It wasn’t my case-that’s not…it isn’t the kind of work I do. But I knew the woman’s father-a friend of my dad’s-and my dad asked me to be there, to explain stuff to the parents. The bastard walked. He leaves the courtroom, grinning and high-fiving his buddies, while her parents are crying, her oldest kid just staring into space, and I’m thinking how goddamn unfair it all is, but that’s really all I think because I’ve seen stuff like that so many times before. Afterward, we’re in the parking lot, and her father asks me to do him a favor.”
“Set things right.”
Quinn nodded.
“And you did.”
“Nope. Told him two wrongs don’t make a right, and I understood how badly he was hurting, but this wasn’t a road he wanted to go down. Two days later, the bastard’s dead, the old man’s in jail, his wife tries to kill herself, and the kids…well, you can bet those kids are fucked for life. And it could have been avoided if I’d taken that job instead of spouting some ‘turn the other cheek’ crap that I knew was bullshit.”
“So that’s what you do then,” I said. “Vigilante for hire.”
Quinn looked at me. His eyes were blue that night. Whenever I saw him, they were blue. I doubted that was his normal color, but he always wore the same contacts when he knew we’d be meeting-the same contacts, the
