Zarek Braun’s concentration never left the spot he had chosen under the mirror. Not even when he heard the sucking sound as Heat came through the air lock that buffered the observation room from Interrogation-One. “Something different about you this morning, Mr. Braun.” She ducked her forehead toward his and squinted into a playful face. “What is it, now? Is it the orange jumpsuit? Not as flattering as your black phony SWAT outfit, is it? No, something else…Oh, I know. The manacles. You are incarcerated.” She tossed her files onto the tabletop and took her place. “Just as you will be for the rest of your life. Which may end up being shorter than you had planned.”
That brought his eyes off the wall. She winked. “That’s a topic yet to explore. First, I want to ask you some questions. Number-one is sort of a public safety issue. Are there any more members of your urban black ops cadre out there? Because I would sure like to get them off the street.” His gaze drifted front again. “That’s OK, because we’re finding out lots about that from your boat skipper in the other room. I just thought I’d give you a chance to get ahead of the rush for leniency from cooperative goodwill.”
She could have put Braun and his Zodiac captain, Seth Victor, in the same interrogation box together to play them off each other. Her decision, though, was that the Cool Customer would have intimidated his underling into silence. So she went with divide and conquer. Maybe Victor didn’t know as much as Braun, but his paranoia about getting sold out might loosen him up. This one would be a challenge, though; she knew that before she came in.
“Look, let’s keep it real. We both know you’re going to try to stonewall here. And, unlike you, we don’t go for torturing our prisoners. Although, I have thought of it, Zarek.” Addressing him by his first name brought a tiny flex to his mouth. “Not so much a thought, as a fantasy.” Heat brought up a hand to count off fingers. “Let’s see, you killed my captain. You killed a patrol officer. You killed Reese Cristóbal. You killed Fabian Beauvais, too, didn’t you?” She waited. The Cool Customer remained passive. “And you also killed Jeanne Capois. And the old man she kept house for. Look: out of fingers. Am I leaving anybody off?”
He seemed amused by some private joke. Then he spoke. “You have lovely eyes. Bedroom eyes.” His words came softly in a Polish accent, which, under other circumstances, Heat might have found sexy.
“And you know what they see ahead for you? Let me lay it out. New York does not have a death penalty, I’m sure you’ve thought that through. But guess what we’ve been busy doing. Letting our pals at Homeland Security do some checking on you. We like to cooperate. Not just with each other but with our allies in foreign lands. A little birdie told me about Operation Dream Catcher. You were a bad boy in the desert. A very bad boy. Let me ask you something. If our friends in Afghanistan want an extradition so they can repay you in all the ingenious ways they can imagine, what do you think I should tell them?”
A minuscule flare of his nostrils. A scalp flex that moved his ears. Small tells gave away his unease and let her know she’d had some impact. So Nikki tested it for the money. “I want you to tell me about Keith Gilbert. I want to know everything. I want you to tell me why Keith Gilbert wanted Fabian Beauvais dead. I want you to tell me how you killed Fabian Beauvais for Keith Gilbert.”
She gave him an opening to respond, but he didn’t take it. “Did you notice there’s a theme here? Keith Gilbert. Wealthy men have no problem hiring men like you to do their scut work. Keith Gilbert even told you to kill me, didn’t he? And you tried. Twice. Oh, and how did that work out for you, Zarek?”
Heat sat facing him, waiting. And waiting some more. She stood. “Fine. You keep it zipped like that, being all cool. Styling your orange duds and your bracelets and chains. Know what I’m going to do? Go Google the weather forecast for Kabul.”