Page 152 of Fury In Death

She sighed, happily. “And oh, the civil suits will be, borrowing from Mavis, magalicious.”

“Sounds good, but what deal are you authorized to make?”

“Today’s grand prize? Multiple concurrent life sentences on-planet. And that’s ahead of the multitude of painful fines, the related charges that would add, oh, another fifty years.”

“Can I sum up?” Peabody asked. “He’s cooked.”

“All right.” Eve nodded at her board. “Here’s how we fry him up.”

When she walked into the bullpen, sans jacket, Jenkinson rose.

“I’m speaking for all of us.”

“Make it quick. We’ve got a mass murderer to fry up.”

“You didn’t stay down until you couldn’t get up. We don’t stand down when somebody goes for one of us. We don’t stand down when somebody goes for the boss. But.”

He paused, pointed at the squad’s motto.

NO MATTER YOUR RACE, CREED, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR POLITICAL AFFILIATION, WE PROTECT AND SERVE,* BECAUSE YOU COULD GET DEAD.

*EVEN IF YOU WERE AN ASSHOLE.

“That’s the truth for all of us. So we protect and serve Steven Redman by getting him justice, bringing him in, working it so he goes away and gets help. They killed his family. They fucked him over beyond the fucking of it. We protect and serve that motherfucking Calvin Banner by locking him in a cage. So you go in there, LT, and you take him the fuck down.”

“That’s just what we’re going to do.”

“Not all cops are created equal,” Reo said as they walked toward Interview A. “You know that, both of you. You’ve got the cream, Dallas. It’s an honor to work with them.”

“It damn sure is.” She paused outside the interview room. “Now, let’s go give this asshole a miserable start to the rest of his miserable life.

“Record on,” she said as they walked in. “Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, Peabody, Detective Delia, Reo, APA Cher, entering Interview with Banner, Calvin, and his attorneys of record.”

She read off the file numbers, the charges as she laid three fat files on the table. “Mr. Banner, have you been read your rights and obligations, and do you understand those rights and obligations?”

“My client has been so informed, and understands his rights and obligations. You will address any questions for my client to me, Oscar Lomax, or my associate Sylva Ripski.

Eve took a moment to size up the trio as Lomax started the expected objections to the arrest, with elegant outrage over the charges.

Banner wore the orange jumpsuit and shackles—included in Lomax’s list of outrages and objections. Shadows dogged his blazing brown eyes, a sign of a rough night. The lawyers flanking him both wore sharp, and again elegant, suits, navy pin-striped for the female, gray chalk-striped for the male.

The woman, mid-forties, creamy brown skin, had her ink-black hair sleeked back in a thick roll at her nape. Lomax, hair the color of the syrup that had soaked her breakfast casserole, had a wintering-in-the-tropics tan and came in about two decades his associate’s senior.

Eve finally held up a hand to interrupt.

“Mr. Lomax, you are aware your client is charged with conspiring to have incendiary devices planted, rigged, and discharged, thirteen years ago, in an occupied residential building where two hundred and eight people were killed. That he is accused of paying Carlos Cruz, former military, demolitions expert, eight million dollars to blow up this occupied residential building occupied by two hundred and nineteen people on the night in question.”

“I’m aware that explosion, that tragedy, was thoroughly investigated and found to be accidental. What motivation would my client, a humanitarian whose reputation for saving lives, improving lives is known throughout the world, have for bombing a building in New York?”

“Does your client dispute that he knew Carlos Cruz, had occasion to contract Cruz?”

“He does not, as Banner-Wyst in its humanitarian efforts around the world would have occasion to safely take down a building.”

“As Mr. Cruz has been brutally murdered, he is unable to speak in his own defense.” Ripski finally spoke. Clipped, dismissive. “You have no evidence this building was purposefully destroyed, or that Mr. Cruz was responsible. Certainly none that warrants the charges our client had anything to do with that tragedy.”

“See, there you’re wrong. We have all of that, and in your client’s own words. Peabody, play the recording.”

The screen came on with Banner sitting at his desk.