“He killed Carter Bissel and Felicity Kade.”
“Who?”
“Blair! Blair Bissel killed Carter Bissel and Felicity Kade. He sniffed a little Zeus to give himself some backbone and sliced them up.”
“Why? Give me some juice so I can drown him in it.”
“He was going to disappear, with a big chunk of change. Set up the wife so the cops closed the book. Open, shut. Shoulda been open, shut.”
“You sent Reva the photographs of Blair and Kade?”
“Yeah. I took them, dropped them on her when the rest was in place. I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my legs.”
“Hold on. Just hold on. I’m recording this, Sparrow. You’re going on record. You’re going to put him away for doing this to you. Why’d he kill Kade?”
“Needed her to tie the bow on the package. And she knew too much about both of us. Couldn’t risk it.”
“You were the brains in this. You can’t tell me that jerkoff thought this up on his own.”
“I had it all worked out. Should’ve been a walk. Couple more weeks, I’d be on a beach sipping fucking mai tais, but he just kept screwing things up.”
“Kade was in on it? She pulled the brother in.”
“Know a hell of a lot, don’t you?” He stared at Eve with dead eyes.
“I’m putting it together. I’ve got to be straight with you. You deserve that. A deathbed confession . . .” She trailed off, watching his face blanch and crumble. “Well, you know the weight of that. You’ll be the one to lock the cage on him. I want to give you that last act. Professional courtesy. Felicity Kade drew Carter Bissel into the mix.”
“Pulled him in.” Sparrow’s breath wheezed in, wheezed out, and Eve had the sudden thought that the bastard might die on her just through the power of suggestion. “Had the stupid son of a bitch convinced he was working for the HSO. Going to take over his brother’s position. He bought it. Change his face, make a few deliveries. Get to sleep with his trainer. He was a dunk.”
“I bet. Who took out the guy who did the face and body work? Kade?”
“No. No, she wouldn’t get her hands dirty. She had Bissel do it—Carter. She was good at getting men to do what she wanted.”
“But you were the architect, right? Not Kade, certainly not Blair Bissel. You’re not stupid enough to go around killing people right and left, but you knew how to pull the strings. He thought he had the comp worm. He thought he could sell it. Live off the proceeds the rest of his life. But he never had it.”
“Can’t have what doesn’t exist. I made it up.” His smile turned to a grimace. “I can’t take this pain, Dallas. I can’t take it.”
His whine set her teeth on edge, but she gave his hand another bolstering squeeze. “It won’t be much longer. There’s no worm?”
“Yeah, there’s a worm. It’s just not as advertised. I invented it, hyped it, documented the skewed data and intel. Doomsday’s been trying to create one, a fricking decade. Works in theory, but in practice it just self-cannibalizes or mutates when it hits the shields. You insert at port, it’ll mess up a unit, fry its ass, but it won’t network, and won’t infect by remote. But if it did . . .”—his pale, battered face shone for a moment with pleasure—“ . . . it’d be worth billions.”
“So it was all just a con—on HSO and the global agencies, on Doomsday. You created the intel that supported the myth that the worm was real, that it was a threat. Then you planted your man with the project head of the company who nabs the Code Red. Feed the HSO data, sell same to interested parties. You’re raking it in on both ends, and all over something that doesn’t yet exist, and may never exist. But Securecomp’s working on it, and they might just create the worm for you. Yeah, you’re smart.”
“They were getting close. Roarke’s got some brain trust at Securecomp. I get what they’ve got together with what I’ve got, what I’m pulling from Doomsday, maybe I can put it together and get myself a nice bonus. You know what you make annually as an AD? You make shit. Just like a cop.”
“And being as we’re so underpaid, you didn’t figure the cops would dig too deep into the Bissel/Kade murders.”
“Served it up so neat and pretty. But things went wrong.”
“You could stall, though, pressure to have the locals turn over the investigation. And you had your goat with Bissel. He tries to sell the disc, and it’s worthless.”
“Figured the buyer would execute him, bury the body, once they figured out the worm wasn’t what he claimed. That would take some time, put some distance between him and me. He wiggled out of that, though. He talks a pretty good game.”
“But he can’t access his money without sending up a flag, to you. And even if he got desperate enough to try, we started finding and freezing his accounts. So he stages McCoy’s suicide. What did she have that he wanted?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where she fits. He should’ve slipped off, counted his losses, but the stupid son of a bitch panics, kills her, kills that stupid orderly, steals the body. What’s he think the cops’re going to do? Might as well have taken out a fricking ad on an airblimp.”
“How long have you two been doing the corporate espionage on the side?”