Designed for Murder (Killer Style 4)

He wasn’t alone. Mika looked as nervous as a three-legged cat trapped in a cage with a pack of junkyard dogs. If she twisted her fingers around her hair any harder she was going to break the silky strands in half.

“I want Carlos to stay,” she said.

“That shouldn’t be a problem, unless this isn’t just a friendly chat, right, Reggie?”

The detective eyeballed him, sending a less than subtle fuck-you message before curling his lips into a big fake smile and dropping a folder marked preliminary results on the table. “Knock yourself out, ’Los. We’re all friends here.”

There it was again. Just enough of a push on the word all to communicate that it wasn’t just the three of them. The light on the camera stopped blinking and turned a solid green.

Carlos gave Reggie as small of a nod as possible and sat down in one of the chairs on the left. Following his lead, Mika sat beside him. The move left only one option for Reggie unless he was going to prowl the room. Narrowing his eyes at Carlos, he sat in the suspect’s chair. The detective was playing the part of bad cop to the hilt.

“Thank you for coming in today, Miss Ito. We appreciate your cooperation.”

She curled her fingers around the arms of the chair, her knuckles nearly white. “I’m glad you guys are finally looking into this.”

“I’m sure you are,” Reggie said. “You’re a textile designer, is that right?”

Mika nodded.

“I’m not much of a fashionable guy myself. Does that mean that you import fabrics?”

“No. Designers come to me with a vision of what a garment will look like and a fabric preference. I design the pattern and work with manufacturers to get the fabric created.”

Reggie took down a few notes on his yellow notepad. “Is that done here in the U.S.?” he asked without looking up.

“Not usually,” she said.

Carlos sat back and forced himself into stillness even as the urge to snatch the preliminary results folder up off the table ate at him. This was going somewhere. He hated not knowing exactly where, but he didn’t have much of a choice other than to sit back and watch the action bounce between the two of them. A year ago, being in the background wouldn’t have bothered him—amazing how falling in love with a psycho killer changed things.

“How often do you get together with your LARP group for an event?” Reggie asked, his tone a little too calm for comfort.

Mika felt it. He could tell by the way her back was ramrod straight and the way her nails dug into the chair’s battered Naugahyde arm.

“It depends on the season, but every weekend when it’s nice.”

“And there’s lots of people and commotion at these events?”

“Sometimes as many as a hundred,” Mika said.

“But no outsiders?” Reggie asked. “Only fellow LARPers?”

“We hold the weekends at Central Square Park. The park rangers don’t close it down for us, so there’re usually other people around. Sometimes they end up in the middle of a battle, which is a real pain in the ass.”

“Interesting.” Reggie flipped open the preliminary results folder. “And you made all of the vestments?”

Mika nodded.

Reggie turned over a page in the folder, his finger tracing a line down the middle as if he was looking for a specific bit of information. Finally, he tapped the bottom right-hand corner of the paper and pushed it so it accidentally-on-purpose faced Carlos. Lt. Tom Kilburn. That was the name typed on the bottom of the report, and he knew it well. The Maltese team had identified him as a Diamond Tommy’s probable stooge on the force.

Reggie steepled his fingers and brought them to his mouth as if he were deep in thought. “How long have you been a drug mule?”

The world screeched to a halt.

“What?” Mika’s voice went up an octave.

“The material was soaked in liquid cocaine—the latest way that scumbags are getting drugs across the border.” Reggie stood up, all righteous fury. But in this case, the manufactured kind that allowed him to stand in the surveillance camera’s line of sight and p

ush the open folder toward Carlos without it seeming obvious. “But you know all about that, don’t you?”