Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [28]
“You need me, Hank.”
The laugh caused Carson some pain. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself? The truth you keep avoiding is this: You need me far more than I need you. If you bail on me now there will be dire consequences. You knew from the very beginning, when you’re in, you’re in for life. Your decision is irrevocable.”
The president shook his head. “That was then. From where I’m sitting now—”
“You’re sitting in the perfect place for what needs to be done. Fate had a hand in this, the same fate that took Eddy from me. Scales of justice.”
Now it was Crawford’s turn to laugh. “What a hypocrite you are, Hank. There is no justice in this world. It’s men like you who see to that.”
* * *
OUT ON the street, there was no sign of O’Banion or Willowicz. Jack called in to the Metro detectives’ unit. Willowicz and O’Banion existed, Carson’s lawyer had been read their jackets, but the real Willowicz and O’Banion were on temporary leave. So who were these two masquerading as the Metro detectives, and who were they working for? The only way to find out was to ask them, so Jack sent McKinsey and Naomi out to search the surrounding blocks. Maybe the bogus detectives got careless and left some trace behind, though he doubted it. Those two were hardened professionals who left nothing to chance.
He stayed behind, preferring to check the crime scene without distractions. While he studied the two new victims, his mind was feverishly at work. First Billy Warren gets himself tortured and killed, but not before the perp goes to the trouble of setting Alli up as the killer. Then Arjeta Kraja goes missing. Billy, Alli, and Arjeta were all seen here at Twilight, and now the manager and bartender, the two people who might have had some information about the trio, wind up murdered by two goons pretending to be O’Banion and Willowicz.
He bent down to check that his finding here with the bartender was the same as the one he’d noticed on the manager. Yes, it was true: In both cases the bone just below the left eye socket had been fractured, just as it had been on Billy’s face.
He recalled the fracture beneath Billy’s left eye. Ever since then he’d been going under the dubious hypothesis that Arjeta Kraja had killed Billy. After all, excluding Alli, she was the prime suspect in the triangle, and, further, if she were in love with Billy, she’d have reason to want to pin the murder on Alli. It was a shaky premise because the fracture was precise. It couldn’t have been made by someone in a rage. Further, the theory didn’t explain Billy’s torture. If she loved him, she might, in a rage, kill him. But torture him? No way.
And now, with these two murders, the hypothesis was evaporating altogether. Arjeta Kraja killing these two in league with O’Banion and Willowicz? It didn’t track for him. Of course, O’Banion and Willowicz could be behind all three murders, but how to explain the deliberateness of the fracture?
The bogus O’Banion and Willowicz were obvious muscle; working stiffs. Someone far more clever than they had mapped out this scenario. Something was horribly wrong, but even with racking his brain, he couldn’t figure out what. He didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle yet.
One thing was for certain, however: The link between these murders and Billy’s completely exonerated Alli. So he called in to his office to get the crime scene covered. He directed them to have the three corpses sent to his old friend Egon Schiltz, an ME he trusted absolutely. He was about to head out onto the street in search of McKinsey and Naomi when an image flashed through his mind, and he turned back.
The manager’s left hand was on the table, the palm open as if offering something when he was killed. His right arm hung down at his side, partially obscured by the table. Jack went around and took a longer look at what his brain had glimpsed the first time. The manager’s left hand was a fist, so tight