Неизвестный - 5. Justice Served Страница 20

“It’s all right, darling,” Michael murmured, smiling weakly. “I’m Þ ne. It’s Þ ne. I was asleep when Rebecca came. I’m just not quite awake yet.”

“You’re not hurt? Not sick or anything?” Sloan passed trembling Þ ngers over Michael’s cheek.

“No. I’m really all right.” Michael stroked Sloan’s arm, then covered Sloan’s hand with her own, placing a ß eeting kiss on the palm.

With one protective arm still around Michael, Sloan looked from Rebecca to Watts in confusion. “Then what are you doing here?”

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Rebecca was about to answer when a voice called from the other side of the room, “Hey, what’s going on?”

Sandy shufß ed into view, Mitchell’s T-shirt brushing her thighs mere inches below her panties. Mitchell was right behind her in a PPD

T-shirt and boxers. “We heard voices. Problem?”

Watts took one look in Sandy’s direction and immediately glanced away. “Jesus Christ. No one around here has any clothes on.”

“What do you sleep in?” Sandy mumbled as she walked past him in the direction of the kitchen. “Ugh. No, never mind. Forget I asked.”

“We needed to talk to you, so we thought we’d come by,” Rebecca said to Sloan. “Where have you been?”

Mitchell and Sandy returned, each holding a cup of coffee. Sandy curled up on the sofa on Michael’s left. Mitchell stood uncertainly midway between Sloan and Rebecca, who sat facing one another across the expanse of living room.

“What the fuck’s going on?” Sloan said sharply.

“I need to know where you were tonight, from the time you left here until now.” Rebecca’s face was a blank, her voice still calm. But now, a core of steel crept into her tone.

“Same question goes. Why?”

“Just answer the question, Sloan,” Watts urged in a surprisingly gentle voice.

Sloan jumped to her feet so rapidly that only Rebecca’s quick reß exes prevented her from being taken off guard. She surged upright just as quickly, so that she and Sloan ended up only a few feet apart.

“Do you think I don’t recognize an interrogation when I hear one?” Sloan’s body vibrated with fury. “You have the fucking balls to come here in the middle of the night and question my lover?”

“Sloan,” Michael said gently, standing as well. She placed her hand in the center of Sloan’s back. “Darling, let Rebecca talk.”

“She’s done talking. She’s leaving now. ” Sloan took another step in Rebecca’s direction, one hand raised as if to shove Rebecca aside.

“You don’t want to do that, Sloan,” Rebecca warned.

With surprising grace, Watts gained his feet and insinuated himself between them in one ß uid motion. His face was an inch from Sloan’s, his voice like granite. “You dumb fuck. If she hadn’t stood up for you tonight, you’d be downtown in a locked room with Clark right now. So

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put your dick away and answer the questions. Then we can all get back to work.”

Sloan stared into his eyes for a long moment. Whatever she saw in their hard, cold depths must have extinguished the blaze of fury consuming her reason, because the tension in her broad shoulders eased visibly. She took a long breath and shifted her gaze to Rebecca’s. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“No. I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer.”

Rebecca needed the interview to be by the book if it was to be credible to Avery Clark. She waited, wondering how far Sloan’s tenuous trust would extend. Wondering, not for the Þ rst time, what had happened during those lost years in Sloan’s past.

“I was here until just after two,” Sloan stated in a ß at, uninß ected tone. “I woke up thinking about the computer traces that Jason and Mitchell have been running. I haven’t had a chance to go over any of their data because I’ve been so busy at Police Plaza with the…other situation. So I decided to have a quick look at what they’ve got. I dressed and went downstairs.”

“Is there any way to verify that?”

“No. Michael was asleep.”

“What about a time stamp on the security cameras?”

Sloan shook her head. “The internal cameras are turned off when we’re home.”

Mitchell spoke up quietly. “There should be a record of when you logged on the system downstairs.”

“Circumstantial,” Sloan replied. “Doesn’t prove it was me.”

“It’s corroboration,” Rebecca said. “There are only a limited number of other people who it might’ve been.” She scrutinized Michael, then Sandy and Mitchell. “The only real possibility is Mitchell.”

“Dell was with me from one thirty on,” Sandy said immediately.

“Did either of you hear Sloan leave?” Watts asked.

Mitchell shook her head. Sandy replied, “We were talking, and then we were…busy.”

Watts snorted.

“So we wouldn’t have noticed,” Sandy added sweetly as Mitchell blushed.

Watts looked glum. “Perfect.”

“All right.” Rebecca made a notation in her notebook. “You were

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with Michael all night. Went to the ofÞ ces just after two.” She turned to Mitchell. “I want you to secure the computer logs. No one touches the system until you’re done.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell said smartly. “I’ll get dressed and get right on it.”

When Sloan opened her mouth to protest, Michael said softly,

“Let Rebecca help you, darling.”

Sloan reached for Michael’s hand, nodding silently.

“You weren’t here when we arrived at four Þ fty-Þ ve,” Rebecca stated. “There was no answer. Where were you?”

“I went for a walk after a couple of hours of scanning the data.”

Rebecca stared at her, and Sloan held her gaze unß inchingly.

Finally, Rebecca said, “At four in the morning?”

Sloan shrugged. “I was awake. I was restless. I went for a walk.”

“I don’t suppose you have any way of proving that?” Watts interjected.

“Not real…” Sloan slid her hand into the front pocket of her jeans and extracted a crumpled slip of white paper. “I bought a cup of coffee at the diner at Third and Market around ten minutes to Þ ve.”

“Christ, she couldn’t have been any closer to the scene and not tripped over one of us,” Watts muttered.

Rebecca took the offered receipt, smoothed it out, and noted the time and date in her notebook. She then placed it carefully in the breast pocket of her shirt. “Is someone there going to remember you?”

“The waitress. Jenny. She knows me.”

Watts looked skeptical. “She’s a…what? Friend?”

Sloan gave him a withering look. “Acquaintance.”

“There’s nothing between the two of you that might bring her veriÞ cation of your alibi into question?” Rebecca asked as discreetly as she could.

“No. Nothing. I’ve never even seen her outside of the diner.”

“Good,” Rebecca muttered.

“Look,” Sloan said irritably. “I’ve told you where I was. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“George Beecher was murdered about three blocks from here sometime in the last six hours,” Rebecca informed her, watching Sloan’s face intently. As she had anticipated, Sloan’s expression never changed,

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but her violet eyes darkened to nearly black. Rebecca was convinced she hadn’t known.

“And you think I did it?” Sloan’s voice was cool, her posture relaxed.

“No,” Rebecca replied. “I don’t.”

“But Clark does,” Sloan murmured, Þ lling in the blanks.

“Darling, what is this all about?” Michael asked quietly. “Who is George Beecher?”

“No one.”

“No one who someone thinks you might want to ki—” As if a sudden realization had struck, Michael faltered and looked from Sloan to Rebecca. “Is this the person who might have had something to do with my accident?”

“That’s right.” Rebecca was curious as to just how much Michael knew. Although she believed Sloan innocent, she was too much a cop not to examine all the evidence from every angle.

“Sloan would never have done anything to him,” Michael said with absolute conviction.

“Why do you say that?” Rebecca asked.

“Because she promised me she wouldn’t.”

Watts laughed. “That will certainly go a long ways in court.”

Michael turned solemn eyes to his. “If you don’t understand why that matters, then you don’t know Sloan very well, Detective Watts.”

Watts blushed and actually ducked his head. “Sorry, ma’am.”

At that moment, Mitchell returned in black chinos and a navy shirt. “I’ll head downstairs, Lieutenant.”

“Good,” Rebecca said. “Watts, go with her and take Sloan. Make sure you document everything that Mitchell does.” She turned to Sloan.

“You don’t touch anything down there. If there’s even the possibility that you’ve altered the data, none of it will help us. All I want you to do is walk them through as much as you can remember of what you did and when.”

Sloan nodded. “Okay.” She kissed Michael, murmured something that none of the others could hear, and followed Mitchell and Watts to the elevator.

“I’m sorry to have upset you, Michael,” Rebecca said.

Michael sank onto the sofa. “I understand.”

Sandy leaned close. “You okay? How about I get some tea?”

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“That would be lovely. Thank you,” Michael replied gratefully, giving Sandy a small smile. Then, to Rebecca, she added, “Thank you for being so patient with her. I know you’re trying to help her.”

“I’m trying to do my job,” Rebecca rejoined. “If I thought she were guilty, I would do the same.”

“Yes, I know. And so does Sloan.” Michael shook her head. “She’ll realize you’re on her side when she’s feeling less threatened.”

“Don’t you mean pissed off?”

“Oh, that’s part of it, to be sure. But it’s coming from something far more serious. She was betrayed, Rebecca, by someone she loved.

Abandoned by the system she believed in. Incarcerated by those she thought she could trust.” Michael sighed. “She keeps expecting it to happen again.”

“It won’t,” Rebecca said empathically. “You’ll never betray her.

And I won’t let anyone make her a scapegoat. I promise that no one will touch her.”

“You didn’t say ‘if she’s innocent.’”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Thank you, Rebecca.”

“I’d better go—I want to catch that waitress at the diner. And I really am sorry to have put you through this.”

Michael shook her head. “No, you needn’t apologize. Not when you’re helping Sloan.”

“Thanks.” Rebecca turned and started for the elevator. She stopped as Sandy approached with two mugs of tea. “Anything?”

“Maybe.”

“I’ll call you later.”

Sandy shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

v

When Rebecca left, Sandy returned to her spot on the sofa by Michael’s side, tea in hand. “Maybe you should go back to bed.”

“I can’t. I want to be here when Sloan comes back upstairs.”

“It could take a while.” Sandy didn’t add that if Sloan ended up downtown for questioning, it could take all day. “And you look kind of…tired.”

“I’m all right. I don’t do very well yet when I haven’t had enough

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sleep, that’s all.” Michael sipped the tea absently, her attention Þ xed on the elevator doors, willing them to open and Sloan to appear. “I can’t believe she has to go through this again.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Proving her innocence.” Michael closed her eyes, both hands clenched tightly around the mug on her lap. “God, it makes me so angry.”

“Frye is a great cop. She’ll Þ gure this out.”

“I hope so, because I can’t stand to see her hurt like this.”

“They’re not so tough, are they,” Sandy said. “They just kinda want you to think they are.”

Michael took Sandy’s hand, needing the comfort and the connection. “Sometimes I think the more tender the heart, the more easily it’s broken.”

“Yeah,” Sandy whispered, remembering Dell’s tears on her breast.

“You got that right.”

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Friday

The elevator doors slid open a few minutes before 8:00 a.m.

Mitchell exited, followed by Sloan. Mitchell headed directly down the hall toward the guest bedroom and disappeared. When Michael started to get up from the sofa, Sloan shook her head.

“No, stay there.” Quickly, she crossed the width of the living room and settled beside Michael, extending an arm to pull Michael into the curve of her body. She kissed Michael’s forehead and then leaned her head back with a sigh. “How do you feel?”

Michael nestled her cheek against Sloan’s shoulder, one arm wrapped around her waist. “Tired. No headache. I’m all right.” She lifted her chin to kiss the undersurface of Sloan’s jaw. “What happened downstairs? Is everything…cleared up now?”

Lids partially closed, Sloan stared at the exposed pipes overhead, idly following the branching pathways as they disappeared into walls and behind the high ceiling. When she worked at the computer, her mind’s eye saw the same pathways, highways of data, streaming within and between way stations in the network—a cyberuniverse as real to her as the concrete and stone that made up her physical world. “Mitchell’s done dicking around inside my system. She got everything there is to get.”

“Will it be enough?” Michael asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Sloan admitted with a sigh. “It’ll depend on what the crime scene unit turns up—time of death will make a big difference.

Rebecca will know later today.” She didn’t add that even if the time of death placed her at home with Michael, she had only her lover’s word as an alibi. Not exactly ironclad.

“It’s ridiculous for anyone to think that you murdered that man.”

Sloan laughed softly and kissed Michael’s forehead again. “Baby, everyone knows I wanted that guy dead. And every cop—federal, state,

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or city—knows that the most likely suspect usually turns out to be the guilty party.” She stroked Michael’s arm, as much to comfort herself as her lover. “In this case, I’m the prime suspect. Christ,” she muttered disdainfully, “even I can’t blame Clark for going after me. I’d do the same in his shoes.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Michael said vehemently. “You wouldn’t because you don’t take the easy way out. You do what’s right, not what’s expedient.”

“I’m not that noble, baby,” Sloan murmured. She buried her face in Michael’s hair, and some of her tension eased. Michael was the calm at the eye of her storm. She was the one Þ xed point in the swirling tide of Sloan’s anger and pain. “It feels so good when you hold me.”

With surprising strength, Michael rose, keeping her arm around Sloan’s waist and drawing her upward. “Let’s go back to bed. You haven’t had any sleep, and I need very much to have you in my arms.”