From Chilton’s reporting and the posts, Dance deduced that the blogger had found out about the man’s Las Vegas connections, which suggested organized crime, and the man’s private real estate dealings, which hinted at secrets he might not want exposed.
“Ready?” Dance asked Carraneo as she logged off.
The young agent nodded, and they climbed from the car.
She knocked on the door.
Finally the red-faced entrepreneur — flushed from the sun, not booze, Dance deduced — answered the knock. He was surprised to see visitors. He blinked and said nothing for a moment. “From the hospital. You’re…?”
“Agent Dance. This is Agent Carraneo.”
His eyes zipped behind her.
Looking for backup? she wondered.
And if so, for her backup? Or Brubaker’s own?
She felt a trickle of fear. People who kill for money were the most ruthless, in her estimation.
“We’re following up on that incident with Mr. Chilton. You mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“What? That prick filed charges after all? I thought we—”
“No, no charges. Can we come in?”
The man remained suspicious. His eyes avoiding Dance’s, he nodded them inside and blurted, “He’s crazy, you know. I mean, I think he’s certifiable.”
Dance gave a noncommittal smile.
With another glance outside, Brubaker closed the door. He locked it.
They walked through the house, impersonal, many rooms empty of furniture. Dance believed she heard a creak from nearby. Then another from a different room.
Was the house settling, or did Brubaker have assistants here?
Assistants, or muscle?
They walked into an office filled with papers, blueprints, pictures, photographs, legal documents. A carefully constructed scale model of the desalination plant took up one of the tables.
Brubaker lifted several huge bound reports off chairs and gestured them to sit. He did too, behind a large desk.
Dance noticed certificates on the wall. There were also pictures of Brubaker with powerful-looking men in suits — politicians or other businesspeople. Interrogators love office walls; they reveal much about people. From these particular pictures she deduced that Brubaker was smart (degrees and professional course completions) and savvy politically (honors and keys from cities and counties). And tough; his company apparently had built desalination plants in Mexico and Colombia. Photos showed him surrounded by sunglassed, vigilant men — security guards. The men were the same in all of the pictures, which meant they were Brubaker’s personal minders, not provided by the local government. One held a machine gun.
Were they the source of the creaks nearby — which she’d heard again, closer, it seemed?
Dance asked about the desalination project, and he launched into a lengthy sales pitch about the latest technology the plant would use. She caught words like “filtration,” “membranes,” “freshwater holding tanks.” Brubaker gave them a short lecture on the reduced costs of new systems that was making desalination economically feasible.
She took in little information, but instead feigned interest and soaked up his baseline behavior.
Her first impression was that Brubaker didn’t seem troubled at their presence, though High Machs were rarely moved by any human connections — whether romantic, social or professional. They even approached confrontation with equanimity. It was one aspect that made them so efficient. And potentially dangerous.
Dance would have liked more time to gather baseline information, but she felt a sense of urgency so she stopped his spiel and asked, “Mr. Brubaker, where were you at one p.m. yesterday and eleven a.m. today?”
The times of Lyndon Strickland’s and Mark Watson’s deaths.
“Well, why?” A smile. But Dance had no idea what was behind it.
“We’re looking into certain threats against Mr. Chilton.”
True, though not, of course, the whole story.
“Oh, he libels me, and now I’m accused?”
“We’re not accusing you, Mr. Brubaker. But could you answer my question, please?”
“I don’t have to. I can ask you to leave right now.”
This was true. “You can refuse to cooperate. But we’re hoping you won’t.”
“You can hope all you want,” he snapped. The smile now grew triumphant. “I see what’s going on here. Could it be that you got it all wrong, Agent Dance? That maybe it isn’t some psychotic teenager who’s been gutting people like in some bad horror film. But somebody who’s been using the kid, setting him up to take the fall for killing James Chilton?”
That was pretty good, Dance thought. But did it mean that he was threatening them? If he was the “somebody” he referred to, then, yes, he was.
Carraneo stole a brief glance at her.
“Which means you’ve pretty much had the wool pulled over your eyes.”
There were too many important rules in interviewing and interrogation for any of them to be number one, but high at the top was: Never let the personal insults affect you.
Dance said reasonably, “There’s been a series of very serious crimes, Mr. Brubaker. We’re looking into all possibilities. You have a grudge against James Chilton, and you’ve assaulted him once already.”
“And, really,” he said in a dismissive tone, “do you think it’d be the smartest thing in the world to get into a public brawl with a man I’m secretly trying to kill?”
Either very stupid or very smart, Dance responded silently. She then asked, “Where were you at the times I mentioned? You can tell us, or you can refuse and we’ll keep investigating.”
“You’re as much of a prick as Chilton is. Actually, Agent Dance, you’re worse. You hide behind your shield.”
Carraneo stirred but said nothing.
She too was silent. Either he was going to tell them or he was going to throw them out.
Wrong, Dance realized. There was a third option, one that had been percolating since she’d been listening to the eerie creaks in the seemingly deserted house.
Brubaker was going for a weapon.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he whispered, and, eyes wide in anger, yanked open the top desk drawer. His hand shot inside.