The frightened boy fell away, and he smiled. And when he smiled, turning his face toward MacMasters, the shadow of the monster slouched behind his eyes. “Maybe you’ll get intent to rob, but that’s all you’ll get.”
Eve jerked him around so he faced her. “Keep telling yourself that, Darrin.”
“Look what I found.” Baxter held up a pair of the cutaway restraints bailiffs carried in courtrooms. “There’s a recorder here, too, a can of Seal-It, and hmmm.” He held up another vial and a small package of pills. “I bet these contain illegal substances.”
“Bag it, log it, bring it. And the contents of Mrs. Mimoto’s glass. Transport this thing into Central, book him. I’ll be in real soon, we’ll chat.
“Get him out.” She shoved Darrin toward Jenkinson, then walked up to MacMasters. “You did the job. You maintained. We’ve got him now. You should go home, tell your wife we’ve got him now. Be with her.”
“I’d like to observe your interview.” His face was like stone, pale and sharply carved.
“We’ll let him sweat a while. You’ve got time to go home, tell your wife. She needs to hear this from you.”
“Yes, you’re right.” He held out his hand. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“Captain.”
He started for the door, stopped, turned. “I thought about it, even after what we talked about. I could have taken him out. Clean line, one stream. I could have done it. Now I have to think about that.”
“Bastard did his job there,” Eve murmured. “Cracked the foundation of a damn good cop.”
“I think, with some time, the foundation’s going to prove solid. He did the job, like you said,” Peabody pointed out. “It was good, you having him read the bastard his rights.”
“Yeah. Contact the judge, assure her that her mother’s safe, and it’s done. We can contact her father, but I assume she’ll want to do that herself.”
She turned away. “All right, boys and girls, good work. Let’s close it down.”
At Central, Eve formally notified her commander, the PA’s office, contacted Mira with a request she observe. She wrote her report.
She sat, her boots on her desk, and drank a cup of coffee.
Peabody tapped on the doorjamb. “He’s been booked and processed, and he’s been sitting in Interview for an hour.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Reo and the commander are here, MacMasters just came in, and Mira’s on her way.”
“I’m up on that.”
“Don’t you think we ought to start working him?”
“Feeling twitchy?”
“No. Yes. Well, Nadine’s chomping to break the story.”
“Not yet. Nothing yet.”
“Well . . . we’re supposed to be back, you know, with the rehearsal. I know they’re using stand-ins, but if we wrapped this, we could still . . .”
Eve merely turned her head, stared.
“And ah . . . We should talk about how we’re going at him,” Peabody decided on the spot. “And if we leave him sitting too long, he might start thinking lawyer.”
“He’s not going to lawyer. What name is he going to use? What address? His ID’s bogus. Besides, what good did a lawyer do his mother?
That’s what he’s thinking. Fuck lawyers, fuck all of us. He’s too smart to go down. Or, if we get lucky, he’ll go down a hero in his own mind.”
“Well, how do we work him? Oh, let me guess.” Peabody rolled her eyes. “I’m good cop.”