Backfire

Eve said, “Was it Clive who targeted Mark Lindy for you? Or did some foreign agent set you up with Lindy? Did you know, Cindy, that those top-secret materials were headed for a foreign government?”

Cindy Cahill didn’t leap to the bait this time, but she couldn’t keep the rage from her eyes. She tried on a sneer for size, but she couldn’t mask the mad. “You’re making up a story. The same story that ridiculous CIA operations officer told, too. Do all of you read off the same script?

“Listen up, little girl. What I mean is that Clive is my husband, my partner.” She gave Clive Cahill an adoring look and patted his hand, making the chains rattle again. “He’s my sweetie pie, not my boss, never my boss.”

Eve arched an eyebrow, gave her a yeah, right look. “Your sweetie pie didn’t mind you sleeping with Mark Lindy so long as there was a big payoff? Sorry, Cindy, but come on, now—that was your only role, wasn’t it? That is, until something went wrong. What happened? Did Mark Lindy realize what you were doing and threaten to call the police? And so you gave him the last cocktail of his life?”

Cindy gave Eve a girl-to-girl smile. “In my experience, guys usually prefer beer.”

Eve sat back in her chair. “That wasn’t a bad comeback, Cindy, but maybe Clive could give you a cooler line, since he’s smarter. Hmm, I wonder what your folks would think about how you’ve grown up, what you’ve finally done.”

Cindy Cahill never looked away from Eve’s face. “Since dear old Dad started coming to my bedroom when I was eleven years old, I don’t think he’d care one way or the other.”

Interesting, Savich thought. Did the shrinks know she’d been abused? He started to rein it back, since he didn’t want the Cahills to demand their lawyer, but he wanted to see what Eve would say next. He gave her a small nod.

Eve said, “Clive, if it wasn’t you running the show, what were you doing, anyway? Did Cindy have you fetch her coffee, slide her slippers on her dainty feet, make up her schedule of seduction for her?”

Clive was shaking his head, looking from his wife to Savich, then finally back at Eve.

Eve continued. “Then what is she doing with you, Clive? You’re nearly old enough to be her father, aren’t you, nearly as old as her father who abused her? Tell me the truth, now, Clive, I know it must be tucked in the back of your brain. You’re afraid of her, aren’t you? Afraid she’ll tire of you, afraid she’ll start seeing a guy who’s younger than you? Afraid she’ll take her chances and talk to us, leave you here by yourself on death row?”

Clive’s pale face turned red. He yelled, heaving, he was so mad, “I am not afraid of her! She’s my wife. She’d never do anything to hurt me! I’m the one who found her, who taught her everything—”

“Did you teach her how to kill? Probably not, since the scene at that murder was a mess, not well done of you at all. Poison doesn’t always make a person just fall over and die. No, Mark Lindy fought when he realized what you’d done to him. He tried to take you down, but the poison got to him first, and it wasn’t at all pretty, was it, Cindy? And that, Clive, led the police to both of you.”

Cindy Cahill squeezed Clive’s hand hard. “Don’t you get all bent out of shape about anything, Clive. She’s only trying to play you.” She shook her head at them. “Aren’t you two the cool team? How long have you worked this routine together? Have you ever had any luck with it?”

Eve sat forward now, clasped her hands in front of her. “Do you know, Cindy, one thing I’d never do is kill someone by poison. It’s so—mean-spirited, cowardly, really, you know what I mean? And it’s so tacky. So low-class. Give me a knife any day and let me face down the person I’m going to kill.”

“I am not tacky!”

“No? Then what do you call using your body whenever Clive wants you to? Without the money, without the trappings, who would think you’re worth any more than a fast in and out with a streetwalker against a wall in an alley?”

“You bitch! I’m not a whore. Sue thinks I’m perfect!”

Sue? Who is Sue? What is this?

Savich broke in, hard and fast. “And Sue is walking around outside in the sunshine while you two are on the road to a lethal injection. Was it Sue who tried to kill Judge Hunt?”

Cindy and Clive Cahill looked at each other again and pulled it together. Cindy studied her fingernails and sounded bored. “There is no Sue, it’s a name I made up. As for Judge Hunt getting shot, I don’t know any more than anyone else who saw the news on TV. I have no idea who shot him.”

Eve said, “Come on, game’s up, Cindy. Did Sue shoot Judge Hunt?”

“I’ll tell you again—there is no Sue,” Cindy said. “There wasn’t even a reason for us to shoot the judge, was there?”

Savich said, “Are you so unimportant, Cindy, that Sue didn’t even tell you why she wanted Judge Hunt dead?”

“There is no Sue,” Cindy said yet again, calm as a stone now. “Like I already told you morons, why would we want the frigging judge dead? There’s no payoff for us, you said so yourself. Me, I was sort of sorry to hear it. Judge Hunt was hot, the way he looked at me—” Her husband didn’t say a word, only stared at the wall behind Savich’s head. “I bet he doesn’t look so hot now, does he?”

Eve wanted to leap over the table and punch her out. She forced herself to draw a deep breath instead.

Savich said, “Did Sue kill the prosecutor like you did Mark Lindy?”

Clive shrugged. “We don’t know anything about the judge, and we don’t know anything about the prosecutor. How could we? We’re in jail, Agent Savich, not out drinking beer and dancing at clubs.” He sat back in his chair and smirked. “That prosecutor, what a schmuck. O’Rourke would never have proven a case against us.”

But Cindy was still enraged. “All the accusations—it’s entrapment, nothing more. We didn’t kill anyone—if that ridiculous judge hadn’t stopped the trial, we would have been acquitted! Somebody else shot him—probably someone he put away.” She turned to Clive. “You know what, darling? This has been fun, but we got to put an end to it. Agent Savich, we want our lawyer.”

Eve wanted to kick herself. She’d been the one to screw it up, to push it too far.

Savich said as he rose, “I was hoping you two were behind the attempt on Judge Hunt’s life, that you’d hired an assassin to kill him, with the help of your lawyer paying him from some offshore account we haven’t found yet. Now I see that’s impossible.” He flattened his palms on the scarred table. “After spending some time with the two of you, the fact is I don’t think either of you has the brains to pull it off by yourselves.”

“We could do anything we wanted to,” Clive shouted. “And what we want now is our lawyer!”

Eve rose and stared down at him, then at Cindy. “Why don’t you tell us about Sue? You really don’t have to take the fall for her, not if she approached you, not if she’s the go-between to sell the material you stole off Mark Lindy’s computer.”

Neither of them said a word.

Savich said, “Do you know Mark Lindy always liked to say he wasn’t a wackadoodle, like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory. He was more like Leonard, funny and kind?”

They looked at Savich blankly.

Savich shrugged. “Mark’s sister Elaine said he readily admitted he was a nerd, and he’d laugh, say he loved Spock as much as the next nerd, but she said Mark knew he saw people more clearly, interacted with them more easily, than most nerds did. But he didn’t see you clearly, did he, Cindy? And it cost him his life.”

Still no word from either of them.

How had Savich known that? From the murder file, of course. Eve said, “Did this Sue tell you to poison him, Cindy? Clive? Did she watch you do it?”

Cindy said, her voice vicious, “There is no Sue, you little dyke.”

Eve smiled at Cindy, turned to the door, and said over her shoulder, “You could be a model, Cindy, but not for much longer. Not if you stay in here.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a model. What idiot would want to live on yogurt and look like a refugee camp survivor?”