Lifeguard - James Patterson [65]
Special Agent in Charge George Moretti. FBI.
Ellie’s boss.
“So, Mr. Kelly,” Lawson said, squeezing into a wooden chair across from me. “What are we going to do with you?”
“What am I being charged with?” I asked.
He spoke in a slow, relaxed drawl. “What do you think we should charge you with? You left us about the whole criminal statutes book to choose from. The murder of Tess McAuliffe? Or your friends?” He consulted a sheet. “Michael Kelly, Robert O’ Reilly, Barnabas Flint. Diane Lynch?”
“I didn’t do any of that. . . .”
“Okay, plan B, then,” Lawson said. “Burglary. Interstate traffic of stolen goods, resisting arrest . . . The death of one Earl Anson, up in Brockton . . .”
“He killed my brother,” I shot back. “And he was trying to kill me. What would you have done?”
“Me, I wouldn’t have gotten into this mess in the first place, Mr. Kelly,” the cop replied. ”And just for the record, it was your prints off that knife, not his. . . .”
“You’re in a shitload of trouble,” the FBI man said, pulling up a chair. “You got two things that can save your ass. One, where are the paintings? Two, how was Tess McAuliffe connected to any of this?”
“I don’t have the paintings,” I said. “And Tess wasn’t connected. I met her on the beach.”
“Oh, she was connected,” the FBI man said, and nodded knowingly, leaning close, “and, son, you don’t come straight with us now, your whole life as you knew it is going to be a memory from this point on. You know what it’s like in a federal prison, Ned. No beaches there, son, no pools to tend.”
“I am being straight with you,” I interrupted. “You see a lawyer here? Did I ask for one? Yes, I got involved to steal those paintings. I set off alarms around Palm Beach. Check. You got reports of several break-ins around town prior to the theft that night, didn’t you? I can give you the addresses. And I didn’t kill my friends. I think you know that by now. I got a call from Dee that the art wasn’t there. That someone had set them up. Someone named Dr. Gachet. She told me to meet them back at the house in Lake Worth, and by the time I got there they were dead. So I freaked. I fled. Maybe that was wrong. I’d just seen my lifelong friends carried out in bags. What the hell would anyone do?”
The FBI man blinked. He sort of narrowed his eyes at me, like, Enough of the yuks, kid. You don’t even know the trouble I could cause you.
“Besides,” I said, turning to Lawson, “you’re not even asking the right questions.”
Chapter 79
“OKAY,” THE COP SAID with a shrug, “so tell me the right questions.”
“Like, who else knew the art was going to be stolen?” I said. “And who was in Tess McAuliffe’s suite after me? Who sent that punk up to Boston to kill my brother. And who is Gachet?”
They looked at each other for a second, then the FBI man smiled. “You ever stop to think that’s because we know the answers to those questions, Ned?”
My gaze hardened on him. I waited for him to blink. They knew. They knew I didn’t kill anybody. They had me in there, grilling me, and they knew I didn’t kill Tess or Dave. They even knew who Gachet was. The longer he waited to answer, the more I was sure he was going to say, Your father is Dr. Gachet.
“The ballistics matched,” the Palm Beach detective said, grinning. “The gun we found at Stratton’s. Just like we suspected. It belonged to Paul Angelos, the Strattons’ bodyguard. Same gun was involved in the Lake Worth murders. He was sexually involved with Liz Stratton. Another of Stratton’s men confirmed it. He was doing her dirty work. She was setting up her husband. Seems pretty clear to us. She wanted the money; she wanted to get away from Dennis Stratton. She was linked to Tess McAuliffe. You want to know who Gachet is, Ned? You want to know who sent that guy to Boston? It was Liz. Special Agent Shurtleff said she basically admitted as much at the restaurant.”
Liz . . . Gachet? I looked at them incredulously.