She smirked at me.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “Yes, it’s obvious. But not necessarily stupid.”
“Not stupid, but I don’t think it would be unfair to call it a desperation move. I think Shagnasty was the perp’s ace in the hole. I think that when Morgan escaped, the perp figured out where he was headed, the pressure got to him, and he played his hole card. Only when Shagnasty found you, you weren’t actually with Morgan. He got spooked when you and the werewolves nearly pinned him down, and ran off.”
“The perp grabs one of his other tools,” I said, nodding. “Madeline. Tells her to find me and take me out, make me talk, whatever. Only Thomas beats her senseless instead.”
“Makes sense,” Murphy said.
“Doesn’t mean that’s how it happened.”
“Had to happen some way,” she said. “Say we’re in the right ballpark. What does that tell us?”
“Not much,” I said. “Some very bad people are in motion. They’re tough. The one guy we’ve managed to grab won’t tell us a damned thing. The only thing we’re certain we know is that we’ve got nothing.”
I was going to continue, but a thought hit me and I stopped talking.
I gave it a second to crystallize.
Then I started to smile.
Murphy tilted her head, watching, and prompted, “We’ve got nothing?”
I looked from Murphy to the door to the interrogation room.
“Forget it,” she said. “He isn’t going to put us on to anyone.”
“Oh,” I drawled. “I’m not so sure about that…”
Chapter Thirty-one
Murphy went back into the interrogation room. Twenty minutes later, I came in and shut the door behind me. The room was simple and small. I A table sat in the middle, with two chairs on each side. There was no long two- way mirror on the wall. Instead, a small security camera perched up high in one corner of the ceiling.
Binder sat on the far side of the table. His face had a couple of bruises on it, along with an assortment of small cuts with dark scabs. His odd green eyes were narrowed in annoyance. A foot-long hoagie sat on the table in front of him, its paper wrapper partially undone. He’d have been able to reach it easily-if he could have moved his arms. They were cuffed to the arms of the chair. A handcuff key rested centered on the edge of Murphy’s side of the table, in front of her chair.
I had to suppress a smile.
“Bloody priceless,” Binder said to Murphy as I entered. “Now you bring this wanker. It’s police torture, is what it is. My solicitor will swallow you whole and spit out the bones.”
Murphy sat down at the table across from Binder, folded her hands, and sat in complete silence, spearing him with an unfriendly stare.
Binder sneered at her, and then at me, presumably so I wouldn’t feel left out. “Oh, I get this now,” he said. “Good cop, bad cop, is it?” He looked at me. “Stone-cold bitch here makes me sit for bloody hours in this chair to soften me up. Then you come in here, polite and sympathetic as you please, and I buckle under the stress, yeah?” He settled more comfortably into the chair, somehow conveying an insult with the motion. “Fine, Dresden,” he said. “Knock yourself out. Good cop me.”
I looked at him for a second.
Then I made a fist and slugged his smug face hard enough to knock him over backward in the chair.
He just lay there for a minute, on his side, blinking tears out of his eyes. Blood trickled from one nostril. One of his shoes had come off in the fall. I stood over him and glanced at my hand. It hurts to punch people in the face. Not as much as it hurts to get punched in the face, granted, but you know you’ve done it. My knuckles must have grazed his teeth. They’d lost a little skin.
“Don’t give me this lawyer crap, Binder,” I said. “We both know the cops can’t hold you for long. But we also both know that you can’t play the system against us, either. You aren’t an upstanding member of the community. You’re a hired gun, wanted for questioning in a dozen countries.”
He looked up at me with a snarl. “Think you’re a hard man, do you?”
I glanced at Murphy. “Should I answer that one, or just kick him in the balls?”
“Seeing is believing,” Murphy said.
“True.” I turned to Binder and drew back my foot.
“Bloody hell!” Binder barked. “There’s a bloody camera watching your every move. You think you won’t get dragged off for this?”
An intercom on the wall near the camera clicked and buzzed. “He’s got a point,” said Rawlin’s voice. “I can’t see it all from here. Move him a couple of feet to the left and give me about thirty more seconds before you start on his nads. I’m making popcorn.”
“Sure,” I said, giving the camera a thumbs-up. Odds were good that it would fold if I was in the room for any length of time, but we’d made our point.
I sat down on the edge of the table, maybe a foot away from Binder and, quite deliberately, reached over to pick up the hoagie. I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Mmm,” I said. I glanced at Murphy. “What kind of cheese is that?”
“Gouda.”
“Beef tastes great, too.”
“Teriyaki,” Murph said, still staring at Binder.
“I was really hungry,” I told her, my voice brimming with sincerity. “I haven’t eaten since, like, this morning. This is excellent.”
Binder muttered darkly under his breath. All I caught was “… buggering little bastard…”
I ate half the hoagie and put it back on the table. I licked a stray bit of sauce off of one finger and looked down at Binder. “Okay, tough guy,” I said. “The cops can’t keep you. So that leaves the sergeant, here, with only a couple of options. Either they let you walk…”
Murphy made a quiet growling sound. It was almost as impressive as her grunt.
“She just hates that idea.” I got off the table and hunkered down beside Binder. “Or,” I said, “we do it the other way.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’ll kill me-is that it?”
“Ain’t no one gonna miss you,” I said.
“You’re bluffing,” Binder snapped. “She’s a bloody cop.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Think about that one for a minute. You think a police detective couldn’t work out a way to disappear you without anyone being the wiser?”
He looked back and forth between us, his cool mask not quite faltering. “What do you want?”
“Your boss,” I said. “Give me that and you walk.”
He stared at me for half a minute. Then he said, “Set my chair up.”
I rolled my eyes and did it. He was heavy. “Hell’s bells, Binder. I get a hernia and the deal’s off.”
He looked at Murphy and jiggled his wrists.
Murphy yawned.
“Bloody hell,” he snarled. “Just one of them. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
I snorted. “Looks to me like you aren’t in any immediate danger of starvation.”
“You want cooperation,” he spat, “you’re going to have to show me some. Give me the bloody sandwich.”
Murphy reached out, picked up the handcuff key, and tossed it to me. I unlocked his left wrist. Binder seized the sandwich and started chomping on it.
“All right,” I said, after a moment. “Talk.”
“What?” he said through a mouthful of food. “No soda?”
I swatted the last inch or two of hoagie out of his hand, scowling.
Binder watched me, unperturbed. He licked his fingers clean, picked a bit of lettuce out of his teeth, and ate it. “All right then,” he said. “You want the truth?”
