CHAPTER FORTY
“Kyle Grant. I gotta say. You rock the orange jumpsuit. Brings out the crazy in your eyes.”
Kyle leaned forward across the table and tried to grab at Jack, but his handcuffs stopped him. They rattled against the metal table. “Fuck you and your brother, McBride. These charges are bullshit. I didn’t try to kill your brother, though if I saw him right now, I might.”
His public defender put her hand on Kyle’s arm. “Mr. Grant.” When Kyle sat back, the woman extended her hand to the federal prosecutor sitting next to Jack. “I’m Andrea Armstrong. Mr. Grant’s attorney.” She was in her mid-thirties, at least, and didn’t look harassed or beaten down by the system. Jack guessed she was starting her second career.
“Tanya Porter,” the prosecutor said, her west Texas drawl as thick as the day-old coffee in the Styrofoam cups front of them. Jack had worked with Tanya many times. She was a by-the-book pitbull. He had done a mental fist pump when he saw her purposely striding down the hall to the interrogation room.
“Threatening to kill his best agent like that isn’t the best way to endear you to Special Agent Hunter back there.” Jack jerked his thumb at the glass behind him.
Kyle sat back. “I told Michelle not to trust him. But she was too busy sucking his dick to listen to reason.”
“Really, Kyle. There are ladies in the room.”
“Don’t mind me. I’m not easily offended,” Andrea Armstrong said. Jack didn’t need to see Tanya roll her eyes to know she did it.
Jack tilted his head. “Or are you jealous? Michelle throw you over when my brother came to town?”
Kyle looked away. Bingo.
“You’ve been here before. You know how this works.”
“I know the Feds lie, promise you shit they never intend to give, then throw you to the wolves.”
“And that’s not the way to ingratiate yourself to me,” Tanya said.
Jack continued. “As soon as Michelle and Joe Doyle hear you’ve been picked up, they’re going to pretend they don’t even know who you are. Norman Davie will twist things around so much Ms. Armstrong won’t know which way is up.”
“Don’t count on it.” Jack heard the smirk in Andrea Armstrong’s voice.
“You’ll take the dive for everything we have on them, and they’ll pin things we don’t even know about on you.”
“I don’t think you have anything on them.”
Jack knew the only bluffs that ever worked were the big bluffs. “You do know this investigation isn’t just me and county, right? The DEA and FBI were looking at Doyle way before I ever even heard of Stillwater. They’ve got wiretaps, informants up and down Texas and down to Mexico. Heard of Diego Vazquez? He sang a good song about Buck Pollard and Joe Doyle. They’ve got Doyle for a laundry list of stuff. I couldn’t care less. Let the DEA and FBI follow the drugs and money. All I care about is solving four murders. And Agent Hunter said you can help me.”
“Here’s the question, Mr. McBride. Why would Mr. Grant want to help you?” Andrea Armstrong said.
“Because if you don’t, the TexaSS might hear you’ve been working with the Pedrozas. You’re heading back inside for breaking parole.”
Kyle lost some of his bravado. “No one’ll believe you.”
“You were supposed to set up a meeting between the Pedrozas and Michelle, right? How exactly would you do that? Through Paco Morales? He hid Vazquez at the country club, didn’t he? When did you put two and two together?”
“Who’s Vazquez?” Andrea asked.
Jack addressed the lawyer. “Diego Vazquez is the Pedroza’s front man for Yourke County. He beat me up and stole my gun my first day as chief. That was a bad day.” He turned his attention back to Kyle. “Did you contact Morales to set up the meet with Vazquez? Who went with you? Or were you alone?”
Kyle smirked at Jack. Jack knew Kyle had been in enough interrogation rooms to know they had nothing on him. Apparently, his lawyer realized it, too. “I think we’ll take our chances,” she said.
Jack shrugged and rose. “With what charge? Attempted murder against a federal agent?”
“I didn’t try to kill him.”
“Kidnapping Fred Muldoon.”
“I wasn’t kidnapping him.”
“Right. I meant conspiracy to murder. Then there are your parole violations, Eddie’s testimony about your involvement in the Doyle drug organization. You’re absolutely right. Taking your chances is the way to go.”
Andrea Armstrong leaned over to whisper into Kyle’s ear. They conferred for a moment, before Kyle nodded. “I didn’t kill Diego Vazquez, but I know who did.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there.”
Andrea Armstrong put her hand on Kyle’s arm. “Nothing else until we talk deal.”
Tanya took over. “He pleads guilty to assaulting a federal officer and he gets five years, minimum security, somewhere on the East Coast. Away from the TexaSS and the Pedrozas.”
Kyle shook his head no.
“Six months,” Andrea Armstrong said.
“The minimum sentence for all of his charges is thirty years. Five years is a steal,” Tanya said.
“You’re assuming I’d lose.”
Tanya grinned like the cat that ate the canary. Obviously Andrea Armstrong didn’t know her opponent; Tanya hadn’t lost a case since 1989. She turned to Kyle. “Do you want to gamble thirty years of your life on a new lawyer?”
Andrea Armstrong bristled, but Kyle shook his head.
“Two years,” Andrea Armstrong said, “minimum security.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. Jack could tell she was disappointed at the lost opportunity to put Kyle Grant away for a long time. But she also knew how important it was to get Grant to talk. “Deal.” Tanya opened her briefcase.
“Write it up,” Andrea said, trying to take command. “Then he’ll talk.”
Tanya paused and glared at Andrea Armstrong. She pulled out a legal pad and clicked the end of her pen, still glaring at the young lawyer. She shook her head, wrote down the outline of the deal, and signed it. “Sign this. We’ll work up the official form while you talk to McBride.”
Andrea Armstrong read the form, nodded to Kyle, who signed it.
Tanya took the legal pad, tossed it in her briefcase, and left.
“Who killed Diego Vazquez?” Jack said.
“Michelle killed Paco and Diego.”
“Michelle Doyle.”
“With your gun.”
“The gun Diego had. How did you get it from him?”
“I overpowered him.”
“It was only you and Michelle there, meeting with Diego and Paco. No one else?”
“Nope.”
“Why did you meet in the One-Armed Soldier’s House?”
“Huh?”
“Why there? Why not out in the country somewhere? There’s plenty of run-down barns and old houses in Yourke County. Why pick one on the edge of town?”
“Michelle wanted you to investigate it. Another example of you being incompetent.”
“Why burn the place down? We would have ID’d Diego much sooner if he hadn’t been burned.”
“That was an accident. I tossed a cigarette and the place went up like a tinderbox.”
“What happened to the gun?”
“Diego’s? When I told her it might be yours, she kept it. As a souvenir.”
Miner, case meeting w/everyone tonight at 8 p.m. Order in from Mabel’s. It’s going to be a long night.
Jack closed out the text app as Tom Hunter walked down the hall toward him.
“You may keep your job after all,” Hunter said. When Jack glared at him, Hunter said, “Eddie mentioned you were under some pressure out there.”
“You could say that.”
“You like it? Small-town living?”
Jack thought of Ellie, of Ethan settling in and making friends, and of all the nice people he’d met in the last two months. They far outweighed the Doyles of the world. “Yeah. I do.”
“Good. Glad you’re happy.”
Jack wouldn’t have exactly used that word but let it slide. “You haven’t let Grant make a call, have you?”
“I’m not a fucking amateur, McBride.”
“Uh-huh. You ready to search DI?”
Hunter nodded. “Yep. Your ex-partner is working on a warrant for their financials.”
“Alex is working this case?”
“Yep. Asked to be put on it. Probably hoping to run into you. You two had a thing going, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“Uh-huh. I’ve got a warrant being delivered to a federal judge right now to search DI’s businesses. First thing in the morning. When’s the funeral?”
“Tomorrow at 3 p.m.”
Hunter nodded appreciatively. “They won’t know what hit ’em.”