“Jesus fucking Christ. It was all to protect me, don’t you get it?”
“You egotistical son of a bitch!” blurted Alicia. “I wasn’t trying to protect you. I was trying to kill you.” Heat had certainly figured Delamater to have been part of the incident in that marina parking lot. But as an eyewitness, at best; an accessory, at worst. Shooting the gun, and not just hiding it, was bombshell enough. But this. This was a twist even Heat had not seen coming. From his face, neither had Keith Gilbert.
“Fuck it. If I’m getting arrested for shooting at someone, at least it’s going to be for the right person.” Alicia continued to rail, imploring Heat to understand, “Keith and I reconciled after the restraining order. At least I thought we had. But then he cut me off when he officially decided to run for senator. Then he called me that thing again.” Nikki silently pronounced the words as Delamater said them aloud. “A political liability.”
“Leesh,” said Gilbert in a bedroom voice, “we don’t need to—”
“Suddenly, I’m fucking off the boat.” Alicia clapped her hands together. “Just like that.”
Rook jumped into the conversation. “So you used the payoff as a setup to kill Keith and make it look like Beauvais did it?” He turned to Nikki. “Sorry, I just kinda got caught up in this.”
Heat said, “Was that the idea, Alicia?” And when she nodded, Nikki asked, “And you wounded Fabian by accident, or were you going to kill him, too?”
“I didn’t need to kill him. Who’d believe him? I mean, come on.” The ugliness of the statement matched the actions.
“Alicia, Goddamn it, I helped you.”
“You helped yourself, as usual. You weren’t protecting me. You kept quiet because if it ever got out what happened, all the questions would hurt your stupid campaign. So don’t fucking insult me.”
Stunning as it was, this version worked for Heat. She could even picture how Alicia got the Ruger. Back when Detective Aguinaldo responded to the prowler call at Cosmo, and Gilbert had his gun out, Delamater was there. Which made it feasible that she not only knew he kept the .38 locked in a desk, but she saw him get the key from the cabinet. Sneaking onto the property weeks later to get it would have been no problem. Even Topper the guard dog wouldn’t stop Alicia because he knew her.
The pragmatist in the commissioner weighed in. “Detective, I think what’s happened here is that I am now exonerated from any wrongdoing in the shooting of this illegal. In fact, I’m technically the victim, aren’t I?”
But the wounding of Beauvais represented only one piece of the entire case jigsaw, and Heat moved forward to the next. “Except with Fabian Beauvais running around as a loose end, you had to do something about that.” Heat’s attention turned to Zarek Braun and Seth Victor, who remained stoic. “Am I right?”
“Bullshit.” Gilbert flung a hand in the direction of the prisoners. “Why are these guys here, anyway?”
“Are you saying you don’t know them?” asked Heat.
“Nope. Don’t.”
“Are you certain?”
Gilbert leaned toward them and glowered. “I have never seen them before this moment.”
Nikki moved on. All things in time. “What was Fabian Beauvais’s shakedown about?”
“I have no idea.”
“Mr. Gilbert, we know that a complaint got called in to the Midtown North Precinct by your security at your corporate office building when your extortionist, Fabian Beauvais, was seen trespassing.”
“Trivia like that wouldn’t come to my attention.”
“I expect not. But the reason for his trespassing was that he routinely stole documents for use in ID theft and fraud. I want to know what he scored that made you want to pay him off, and when that failed, to kill him.”