Page 36 of Shield
“Always the crying ones,” I muttered as we stared in at her.
She wasn’t crying now. We’d left her sitting there, back straight, staring at the door with a dead expression. Gone was the simpering and the crying and the innocent act. Instead, she’d demanded a lawyer and clammed up.
Her financial records were on their way, and not the surface stuff we’d already requested, but a deep dive into where the hell she was keeping the money she’d skimmed from the clinic. Turned out, she’d been laundering money as donations through Haven of Hope, and Ivan was about to go down.
He just didn’t know it yet.
“Think we should go in and harass Ivan now?” I asked.
Mack scratched the red whiskers on his chin and nodded. So, we eased out of our chairs, gave Dennis a pat on the shoulder, and made our way to interrogation room 4. Dennis would be watching and recording what went on throughout the conversation, as he would be with several other interrogations. Technology had made the old one-way mirror a thing of the past.
We sauntered in as if we had no cares in the world. Ivan’s shark-like eyes darted from his hands resting on the cold steel table to us.
“I want a lawyer,” he said immediately.
“You’re not under arrest, Ivan,” I pointed out while lowering my tired-as-fuck ass into a chair across from him. “We brought you in for some routine questioning in relation to the murder of one of your employees. A Periapsis Lane.”
“Never heard of him. I want my lawyer,” Ivan barked, his upper lip damp with perspiration.
“Sure, sure, of course you do, and she’s on the way. Lawyers hate early wake-ups,” Mack said as he shoved a cup of black coffee across the table to Ivan with his most engaging smile. Ivan wasn’t buying our nice cop routine. He was smarter than the average bear, or the average hood, who got easily identifiable tattoos, then attacked innocent people. “Have some coffee. It’s not great, but it’s free.”
Ivan glowered at my partner, then turned his sights to me. “You’re violating my rights.”
“Are we? I don’t see how. When we arrived at your home at five-fifteen a.m., your wife let us in of her own free will. You agreed to come down and shoot the shit. So now, here we are, having a little talk.”
“I got nothing to say to either of you until my lawyer arrives.”
“Aw, that’s too bad. We have so many things to talk with you about, Ivan. I enjoy chit-chatting and discussions with upstanding citizens such as yourself. Sometimes, I learn new words and phrases when I spend time bullshitting with others. Just the other day, I discovered that the Korean word for horse is mal, but it’s pronounced my, or that was how it sounded to me.”
Ivan’s eyebrows knitted. “You hauled me from bed to talk Korean?”
“No, we’re talking about new words and phrases. I have one for you.” I leaned over the table just a little. “Do you know what the term probable cause means?”
His thin lips pressed tightly together.
“No idea? Well, it means that the police, that’s us, can bring in people whom we strongly suspect have been involved in a crime. Sometimes, like this morning, the police get a warrant to enter the home of a low-level guy who beat up a veteran in a medical center. Then they find all kinds of incriminating stuff that some poor slob left lying around his place. Stuff like journals with the names of people they work for and what kind of jobs they were hired to do because that person liked to think of themselves as a writer. Can you imagine anyone being so stupid as to work for a criminal sort, then jotting down his daily activities? Me either, and yet here we are, me, you, and Mack here, sitting on four notebooks full of that incriminating evidence that has your name in just about every entry. Ain’t life funny that way, Ivan? So, want to tell us why you hired an attacker to go after Joseph Quinan?”
Ivan grew eerily quiet. I saw that brief glimmer of worry in his feral gaze.
“Did you know that we found all kinds of evidence of… well, hell, what is that phrase, Mack?”
“Money laundering?” Mack supplied, then took a sip of coffee.
I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. Money laundering. Your boy Periapsis was a religious note taker. You’d think that he might have been trying to protect himself in case something untoward happened to him. Anyway, those notes tell a really interesting story about medical fraud, Ivan. Yep, I know, I was shocked as well. Seems your name came up a lot, as well as the name of one Heloise Grant, who takes care of the books at the Haven of Hope clinic. We haven’t had time to sort through it all yet. Oh we will, rest assured, but there're all kinds of hinky stuff going on. Phantom billings, over billings, and even a shell company owned by your wife in which you seem to be the sole member of the governing board. How on earth did that happen, do you think?”
Ivan began to sweat in earnest. Yeah, morning chats with felons were great fun. Not. Neither was watching some scumbag walk away after paying tons of cash for bail, but that was part of the legal system. Even dirtbags deserved a day in court to be judged by their peers.
* * *
Chatswith your partner later in the day, however, weren’t half as much fun.
“Okay, so here’s the thing,” I opened with. “My relationship with Oliver crossed a line last night that I cannot step back from any longer, nor do I want to.”
Mack looked gutted. “Was that what the big talk with Franks was earlier?”
I nodded. “I told him that I was developing feelings for Oliver Cowan, and he for me, and asked to be removed from the case. I assume either you’ll get the nod, or the dynamic Boomer duo will. That’s Franks’ call, obviously.”
“I told you not to get involved with him,” he moaned as we sat outside the precinct on a stone bench donated by the family of an LAPD officer killed in the line of duty fifteen years ago. The sun was bright, the winds warm, and my mood bittersweet.
