Val entered the observation room, separated from the interrogation chamber by one-way glass, and occupied a chair next to the tech operating the recording equipment. A computer monitor sat on the built-in desk in front of them, large enough for all to see—Val, the tech, and Brenda Petroni.
She’d considered arguing her case for a spot in the interrogation itself, helping to grill Tank Steiger, but decided against it. She had too much at stake to allow herself to become the face of the investigation, with Gil trying to infiltrate the incels, not to mention her longtime relationship with the dojo. Plus, anything that blew up the interview—such as her presence in the room with him—meant risking the entire case. They couldn’t afford the slightest hint of bias that would put him back on the street.
Plus, her head and ribs ached from the beating she took the night before. She wouldn’t be on her “A” game, anyway.
So, she watched, along with the tech and a silent Brenda Petroni, while Jan and Simpson took the lead. How she wished Bobby Grimes could return, even for one hour of interviewing. He was the master at breaking guilty witnesses.
Tank sat in an undersized wooden chair bolted to the floor, wearing khakis, a loose linen pullover shirt, and deck shoes without socks. A lamp hanging from the ten-foot ceiling cast a harsh yellow glow on everything, including the sweat on the two men’s faces. Jan, seated across a thin table from Tank, her chair pushed back six feet, seemed unaffected by the stale, humid air. Val had suffered along with interrogation subjects often enough to sense how uncomfortable the room got, especially on a warm day.
“Would you like some water, Mr. Steiger?” Simpson asked him, and Jan started out of her chair.
“No, I would not like to volunteer to give you my fingerprints and DNA.” Tank scowled. “I’m aware of your dirty tricks, Detective.”
“Very well.” Simpson paced around the room. He’d left his stupid blue toolbox behind for a change. “So, Richard, tell us where you were at nine this morning.”
Tank’s face stayed still, his eyes focused on the small, sturdy table. A bemused half-smile creased his lips. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Detective,” he said, his mouth barely moving. “And I’m not saying another word until my lawyer arrives.”
“Yes, your lawyer. I understand he’s on his way.” Simpson paused for effect. “However, traffic today is terrible, especially downtown. Something about a shooting at Planned Parenthood?”
“Is that so?” Tank’s gaze darted up at Simpson, then fell back to the table. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You don’t watch the news?” Simpson paused in his pacing, hands on his hips.
“Nope.”
“Listen to the radio?”
Tank shook his head.
“Why not? Lot of good stuff on, what’s that channel? WCLA?”
Tank rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, they got that couple on in the morning. What’s their names? Clay and Toni? If that’s their real names.” Simpson chuckled. “I think it’s a put-on, don’t you? Way too close to ‘Clay-ton,’ don’t you think?”
Tank closed his eyes for a second, re-opened them.
Val turned to Petroni, the sergeant’s face impassive. “What’s he doing?” Val whispered.
“Give him time,” Petroni said.
The tech, between them, widened his eyes, said nothing.
“Did you listen this morning?” Simpson asked.
Tank glared at them. “I told you. I ain’t saying nothing until—”
“Your lawyer arrives, right.” Simpson resumed pacing around the room. “Which is fine. That’s your choice. You’re free to make it. However, shouldn’t you wait on that decision until you have full information? ’Cause you’re not aware of everything pertinent to the case.”
“Like, what the case even is,” Tank said. “Why I’m even here in the first place…Tackle Box.” He smirked.
Val started, as did Jan and Petroni. How did he—? Who—?
Simpson stopped pacing again, a flash of anger crossing his face. Then his expression softened and he spread his hands wide. “Detective Morgenstern, why don’t you remind our guest why we asked him nicely to come downtown—”
“Hah!” Tank barked out.
“Certainly,” Jan said after a pause. “You are here for questioning in the matter of three counts of armed battery with a deadly weapon at the Planned Parenthood facility in Clayton around 9:00 a.m. this morning. You were seen leaving the vicinity minutes after the shooting—in a hurry, I might add.”
“Spotted by whom?” Tank’s angry glare turned toward Jan.
Jan stood and leaned over Tank, her palms flat on the table. “By me.”
He shrugged. “Wasn’t me.”
“Oh? You got a twin?”
Tank rolled his eyes again, so hard that Val wondered if they might get stuck, as her third grade teacher always warned.
“Where’d you park your truck?” Jan said. “Our research shows over a half-dozen possibilities less than a ten-minute walk—”
“I don’t own a truck.”
“You drive one.”
“No, I don’t.” His voice exuded confidence and certainty.
“He’s a damned good liar,” Val said, drawing a smirk from Petroni.
“Back to the shooting.” Jan returned to her chair. “One of the victims is a person close to you. Or rather, the mother of that person.”
“Zoom in on Tank’s face,” Val whispered to the tech, who nodded and complied until Tank’s face filled the monitor.
Tank’s head jerked up, real surprise showing on his face. “Who?”
“Alyssa Suwan,” Jan said.
Tank paused, then shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
“Huh,” Simpson said. “You know her daughter, Maya.”
Val, alarmed, shot a glance at Petroni. “That was supposed to stay confidential,” she hissed to her boss.
Petroni grimaced and jotted something on a notepad in front of her.
Val studied the monitor, still zoomed in on Tank.
He blanched, sweat droplets collecting on his brow. “I can’t imagine why Maya’s mother was at an abortion clinic.”
“We’re struggling with the same question, Tank,” Simpson said. “Can I call you Tank?”
“You can call me Mr. Steiger.” A look of satisfaction crossed Tank’s face.
“Very well, Mister Steiger. Why would anyone want to kill Alyssa Suwan?”
Tank shrugged. “No idea. I sure wouldn’t.”
“Can you come up with a reason, Detective?” Simpson asked Jan.
“Alyssa? No,” Jan said. “However, someone who had a relationship with her daughter might have a reason to attack Maya. Can you think of anyone who’s had a relationship with Maya, Tank?”
Tank glanced over his shoulder, as if he expected someone else to appear there, then back at Jan. “Was that question addressed to me? I was confused, since you didn’t address me as Mr. Steiger.”
Jan leapt to her feet and slammed the table with an open palm, the loud Bam! echoing off the flat vanilla-colored walls. “Stop wasting our time. You were there to prevent Maya from entering the clinic, weren’t you?”
Tank’s expression of puzzlement looked genuine to Val, at least on the monitor. “I had no idea Maya was in the clinic, or why she would want to be. Unless she was getting birth control pills or something? She’s got a boyfriend. Perhaps you should be questioning him.”
“Don’t tell us how to do our jobs,” Jan said, her anger flaring.
Val sighed, eyes connecting with Petroni’s. Where Simpson wasted time with irrelevant, indirect questions, Jan attacked her subject with off-putting harshness. Val regretted not pushing harder to take part in the questioning.
“Are you asking me to believe that you didn’t know Maya was pregnant and seeking an abortion?” Simpson said.
Val nearly exploded. “How dare he—”
“Sh!” Petroni said. She pointed at Tank, then her ears. Val understood: if she got loud, Tank would hear them.
All the blood drained from Val’s face. Simpson had revealed Maya’s pregnancy to Tank—not only a horrible invasion of her privacy, putting her life at risk, but a devastating strategic error as well. Tank could now claim, true or not, that he didn’t know until this moment.
Back in the interrogation room, Tank’s jaw dropped for a second, then he recovered. “You expect me to buy that bullshit? No way. You’re a liar. Where’s my goddamned lawyer?”
Val’s stomach turned. Once Tank demanded his attorney, the questioning had to stop.
But Simpson didn’t seem to care. “Like I said, your lawyer’s coming,” he said, waving Jan away from Tank. “Let’s change the subject, then, shall we? Never mind the clinic. Tell us about yourself. Give me reasons to believe you’re telling the truth.”
“I am telling the truth. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”
Jan pushed closer to Tank again. “You served in the armed forces, didn’t you? Defending our country from foreign threats?”
Tank took a few heavy breaths. “You know the answer or you wouldn’t ask.”
“Army, right? Thank you for your service.”
“Fuck off.”
“Infantry?”
“I said fuck off.”
“They trained you on how to use a weapon?”
“For the third time, go fuck yourself.”
“You’re aware, then, that gunshot residue is tough to wash off,” Jan said. “Takes days, sometimes. Multiple washings.”
“Your point?”
Jan edged closer. “That warrant we showed you allows us to test you for GSR and take your prints. And lock your ass in a cell for forty-eight hours while you reconsider helping us find who shot up that clinic. If it wasn’t you, that is. And if it wasn’t, your best bet is to help us find who did. Because otherwise I’m gonna do everything in my power to keep you locked up for a lot longer. A lot longer. Understood?”
Tank heaved a deep breath, nostrils flaring, and he met Jan’s glare with one of his own. “I was meeting with a business associate in his office, which happens to be located a few blocks from Planned Parenthood. Our appointment started at eight-thirty a.m. and lasted over an hour. He will confirm all of that once you ask him.”
“Name, address, and phone number?” Simpson interjected, gesturing to Jan to write it down.
“You’ll get it once my lawyer is in the room and not a moment before. In fact, until he arrives, this conversation is over. One. Hundred. Percent. Over.”
Val pushed back from the desk, sure that her expression matched Petroni’s glum one. That interview yielded nothing. Less than nothing—they’d given Tank more than he’d given them. If that meant letting an angry killer walk—and she felt sure that was the case—that left Clayton’s women in even greater danger than before.
The investigative team didn’t have to wait long. Tank’s lawyer arrived minutes after he refused to speak and chewed out Simpson and Petroni for several minutes for violating his client’s right to remain silent. Petroni pushed back, insisting that they could detain Tank for 48 hours even without charging him with anything. But Jan ran down his alibi and it checked out—Tank’s associate confirmed that they’d been in a meeting in the area until well after the shooting.
“The guy’s a total slime-ball,” Jan fumed to Val, Simpson, and Petroni, “but he gave the same story as Tank without prompting, and stuck to it. He even put his secretary on the phone who repeated the same line, almost verbatim.”
“And they were credible?” Petroni asked.
“Hundred percent.”
“I checked DMV records,” Val added, her mood glum, “and found no trucks of any kind registered to Tank, the dojo, or his MMA gym.”
“And his GSR test came up negative,” Simpson added. “No residue whatsoever. Not even a trace.”
“The fingerprint on that shell casing didn’t match, either,” Petroni added.
“We’re screwed,” Simpson said. “We’ve got nothing. His attorneys know it, and they’re already threatening to go to a judge if we try to hold him.”
Something about Simpson’s tone bothered Val, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. Maybe, she admitted to herself, it was Simpson himself that bugged her.
She couldn’t bear to watch Tank walk out the door, so she and Jan returned to the WAVE Squad office. After Val washed down two acetaminophen tablets to quell her rising headache, they viewed the videos they’d obtained that morning on Val’s computer. Neither showed a clear view of the driver’s face. The two delivery trucks looked almost identical, other than the license plates—which came up as stolen—and the company names painted on the side of the vehicles. Neither had any identifying dents or scratches, although the lettering of “STS” and “HBC” appeared equally shaky.
Then Val discovered a key detail that did line up. “Looks like our driver forgot to disguise the truck’s ID numbers.” She pointed to the black digits printed on the rear of the trucks. “What are the odds that those would match?”
“Zero,” Jan said. “Plus, the driver’s wearing the same stupid hat, glasses, and fake facial hair. It’s the same guy, whoever he is.”
Val’s cell phone interrupted their conversation—a call from Beth. Jan took a restroom break, giving Val privacy.
“I wanted to let you know,” Beth said, “that I’ve made my decision. About the abortion.”
“Okay.” Val took a seat. “Lay it on me.”
“It’s on,” Beth said. “But given what happened today, I think you’ve convinced me not to have it here in Clayton. If that’s okay…I mean, if you’re still up for going with me.”
“Of course. Name the time and place.”
“Tomorrow, one p.m. at the Planned Parenthood in Fairview.”
Val calculated drive times in her head. “So I’ll pick you up around noon, then?”
“Eleven forty-five. They said I should be there a half-hour early.”
“Got it.” Val hesitated a moment. “You’re sure you don’t want to go even farther away? New York, maybe?”
“Nope,” Beth said. “The longer the drive, the greater the chance that I freak out and change my mind again. I want this over and done.”
Val let out a slow breath. The two shootings had taken place in Clayton, six days apart. The odds of another shooting happening the next day, in a random nearby town, were slim to none. “Okay then. I’ll see you at 11:45.”
After hanging up the phone, Val had to fight the urge to call back and argue harder for a more distant clinic. But that could force even more delay and push Beth into the second trimester, which increased a whole different set of risks. Her job was to support her friend, not become an obstacle.
As best she could, she dismissed the uneasy feeling roiling in her stomach and returned her focus to the task at hand: finding the killer, or finding evidence that the killer was the man they’d just let go: Tank Steiger.