“What do you want, Max? I can’t change anything. I wish I could. I really do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve put my own gun in my mouth over that one.”
He began looking around as if searching for his gun. The kick must have disoriented him, because he didn’t think to look under his car. When he couldn’t find it, he dropped his head and asked, “What’re you going to do with that recording?”
“You’re not getting out of this, Reece.”
Reece put his hands on his thighs, and shook his fallen head. “I had to do it, Max. I had no choice. I . . . I fucked up.”
“We all have choices, Reece.”
“I didn’t. Just like I don’t have a choice now.” Reece slowly rose to his feet.
“Don’t move. I will shoot you.”
He held out his arms, “Please. Go ahead. Get it over with.”
I tensed my finger against the trigger.
“You think I’m scared of your gun? I’d welcome a bullet. Come on, Rupert. Shoot me!” He walked toward me, his chest open and ready to take a bullet. When he got too close, I hit him in the head with my gun again. He fell to the ground, blood trickling down his cheek and neck. “That’s what I thought. You don’t have the balls to shoot me.”
“I’m just not ready to shoot you yet,” I said.
“Does Vang know about the tape?”
I thought about his reason for asking that question. I think he wanted to know how widely dispersed his crime had become. Was there a chance of stopping the spread—maybe by killing me and Niki?
“Niki knows,” I said. Whitton wouldn’t have believed me if I said otherwise. “So does Chief Murphy, the county attorney, and a couple of folks in the City Attorney’s Office.” I added to the list to protect Niki, just in case things went south for me in the next few minutes.
“Damn,” he said. He rose to his feet again and brushed the snow from his pants. “Well, that’s that, I guess.” Whitton turned and walked away from me, shuffling his feet in a slow dirge until he reached the wall on the outer edge of the parking ramp.
“Don’t do it, Reece. God dammit, don’t you do it.”
The wall had two parts, a concrete stub about waist high and a two-foot metal rail anchored atop the concrete. Whitton stopped at the wall, his chin resting on top of the rail. “I’m not going to prison, Max. And I’m not going to stick around to watch this all play out on the evening news.”
Whitton climbed onto the wall, slipping one leg over the metal rail.
I put my gun away. “Reece, wait!” Now it was me with my hands out. I stepped closer to him. Reece had one leg on either side of the wall. “At least tell me why you killed her,” I begged.
He looked over the wall, at the alley eight stories below. Through the snow I could see tears trickling down his cheeks. “I have parents,” Whitton said. “I’m their only son, and they think the world of me. I know you don’t care, and I don’t blame you, but when I’m gone, you have no reason to tell anyone about this. For their sake, please don’t . . .”
“Reece, come down off there. We can talk.”
Reece lifted his chin into the slight breeze and stared at nothing. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. He paused and closed his eyes. I thought about rushing him, pulling him back from the precipice, but then he sat up and smiled at me and said, “You know, Max. I never did like you.” With that, he leaned into the nothingness and disappeared from my view. I heard the pop of his body hitting the ground. I didn’t need to look over the wall to know that Reece Whitton was dead.
Before walking back down the corkscrew exit, I retrieved Whitton’s gun from under the car and laid it on the seat, making sure that a round was chambered. The snow was already starting to hide the evidence of our scuffle. With any luck, the investigation would conclude that Whitton went there to commit suicide, choosing to jump instead of shooting himself.
As I walked back down the corkscrew, I replayed those lasts few seconds of Whitton’s life. I could have grabbed him, pulled him back to safety. I could have shot him to disable him. I could have told him that I wouldn’t send the recording anywhere. I had all of those options in my head as I watched him climb onto that wall. There could have been a different outcome. But in the deepest recesses of my conscience, I didn’t want any other outcome.
I left the parking ramp, climbing over that same chain-link fence by the dumpster, and entered the alley only a few feet away from Whitton’s shattered body.
CHAPTER 33
It was strange to find Ana still sitting on my couch when I came home. Before I walked in, I peeked in through a small window pane on my back door. I could see that she was going through my investigation file on Zoya. She held the picture of her dead sister in her hand, pressing it against her lips. At the sound of the door opening, Ana put the photograph down and sat up, her attention focused sharply on me.
Neither of us spoke at first. She appeared to be reading my face, trying to ascertain what had happened at the parking ramp. I was stalling because I didn’t know how I would tell her about Whitton’s death.
It was Ana who broke the silence.
“You met with my husband?” she said in a flat tone.
“I did.”
“And did he tell you what you wanted to hear?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but the words did not come out. I sat down on the couch next to her. If she had been lying to me about her hatred for Whitton, this moment would bring that lie to the surface.
“Ana, I have some bad news.”
I paused, looking for a reaction. Her facial expression did not change.
“Reece is dead,” I said.
She inhaled a small gasp. Then she closed her eyes and sighed, a slight smile edging up in the corners of her mouth. “How did he die?” she asked.
“He . . . jumped off the roof of the parking ramp. It was an eight-story fall.”
“He jumped? You did not push him?”
I was taken aback by the question. This woman does not mince words. “No, I didn’t push him.”
“I would not have been upset if you had,” she said. “Did he tell you anything about Zoya’s death before he . . . jumped?”
“He didn’t tell me all that much. I’m afraid our conversation took a bad turn right away. You think he killed Zoya?”
“Mikhail is the one responsible for Zoya’s death. Not Reece.”
“How do you know?”
Ana looked at the photo in her hand. “Nothing happens to one of Mikhail’s girls without Mikhail’s permission. She was not even supposed to be in this country. He promised me. We had struck a bargain. I kept my end of the bargain. He did not.”
“I need to know everything you can tell me about Mikhail. I need to go to him tonight, before he finds out that Reece is dead.”
Ana cast her eyes down and shook her head. “You will not find him tonight. He is gone. When he saw me in the club—and he saw you pull me out—he knows. He sent Reece to meet with you. They want to know what you know. They want to see how close you are to the truth about Zoya. By now, Mikhail is on his way to Canada.”