Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [9]
“What did he know?”
“Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it,” O’Banion said. “The other is that there was a single killer. A crime of passion.”
“You’re still at this angle,” Alli said.
“We go by the odds,” said Willowicz. “In these cases, the person closest to the vic is the perpetrator.”
“Not this time.”
Both detectives regarded her stonily.
Naomi Wilde, never far from her since she had stumbled, said, “We thought you might be able to shed some light on what happened here.”
Alli said nothing, but delivered an Et tu, Brutus glower. Then, she turned to the corpse and looked into Billy’s face, trying to stare past the terrible beating he had sustained, into the mind of the boy she had known, briefly but wildly. Even before she had been traumatized by her kidnapping and brainwashing two years ago, she had had difficulty with intimacy. She was embarrassed and ashamed of her body, which was small and immature. Now, through first Jack’s and then the academy’s help with physical training, her arms and legs were toned. But to her they still looked like a girl’s limbs, totally lacking the womanly curves of her contemporaries.
Naomi wrapped an arm around Alli’s shoulders. “Whatever you know, you have to tell us.”
“All I know is that I had nothing to do with this monstrous … this atrocity.” She shook her head. “It’s beyond me how anyone could do this to another human being.” If Jack were here he’d know that for a lie. During her time with him and Annika in Russia and the Ukraine she had witnessed examples of the hatred and contempt for human life some people harbor deep in their hearts or just beneath their skin. And with the Russian agent Annika, at least, she had discovered depths of human betrayal she had not even been able to imagine, even growing up in the snake pit of American politics.
“Ms. Carson,” Willowicz said, “no one believes you don’t know what happened here.”
Alli felt her heart constrict. “How can you say that?”
“You and the victim were having an affair—illicitly, as it happens, on the grounds of the academy. But two days ago something happened. The two of you were seen in an argument—rather violent, from all reports—in a bar in town. Harsh words were exchanged. As a result, he stalked out.”
“So, what, you think I tortured him and strung him up like an attic ham in revenge?”
“The theory tracks,” O’Banion said. “It hits closest to home.”
Alli shook her head. She had fallen down the rabbit hole, and now was sinking deeper and deeper into Nightmareland.
“Maybe he had another girl on the side and you found out. Maybe he was fed up with you.” O’Banion shrugged, as if whichever motive it turned out to be made no difference to him.
Alli stared at him. “You’re an idiot.”
When he took a step toward her, Naomi intervened. O’Banion’s eyes were yellow and feral as he squinted over the agent’s shoulder. “You think because you’re the president’s daughter you can talk to us like that? Fuck you!”
“Now, hold on,” Naomi said.
“And, by the way,” he said to Alli, “your old man was a dickhead.”
McKinsey became a shield between the detective and Alli. “Calm down.”
“And fuck you, too, sonny! You better tell her to watch her mouth.”
“Back off, Bluto,” Naomi said.
“Screw you, nanny dearest.”
When the detective remained rooted as a tree, she lowered her voice. “I said back the fuck off, or I will take you in for disobeying an order from a federal agent.”
A pulse beat furiously in O’Banion’s temple, then he turned his head and spat onto the ground. “Remember what I said.” He pointed to Alli as he returned to his previous position.
Willowicz, who had observed the escalating emotions through skeptical eyes, now stepped up. “This is a homicide—a civilian homicide. As I see it, you and the woman are here to ensure the safety of the late