“So? I saw the mug shot of you in the gingham jailhouse uniform. Now that was terminally cute.”
No reaction; she was deaf and blind to him.
Well, it took better bait than that to get a rise out of Mallory. “The FBI found your footprints in a classified system, kid. That’s a federal rap, real jail time.” Now he had her.
She smashed the pharmacy bag into her coat pocket. “I did not leave tracks in that computer. Those bastards have been trying to nail me for years.” She slammed the file drawer. “But they can’t prove illegal access – no way. If they can’t prove it, I didn’t do it.”
“Oh, yeah?” He pointed to her left shoulder where the wound was. “That was pretty careless, wasn’t it? But we’ll let the bullet hole slide, okay? The sheriff used your pocket watch to backtrack Markowitz. That was another screwup, kid, not ditching the watch with the rest of your ID. And then I saw the broken window – not your usual neat style. Was it your idea to park Charles’s car close enough to flag it for me? Oh, yeah, I can believe you got sloppy. I think the FBI does have something on you, maybe enough to prosecute.”
That put a small dent in her facade. The smallest doubt was all he needed to work with. “The feds send their compliments, and they want whatever you got on the New Church. You don’t give them what they want – they flood this burg with agents, and your own little scheme goes up in smoke.”
“They’re running a bluff. They don’t have enough probable cause to flood a Dayborn phone booth with agents.”
He leaned one arm on the file cabinet, testing the waters. She didn’t move away from him. “Mallory, they did me a favor. They held back your prints and they’re not looking to prosecute the computer break-in. Now I owe them one. You know this game.”
“You can tell them the New Church isn’t planning to overthrow the government. There are no assault weapons, no explosives, nothing bigger than a squirrel rifle. So they really have no excuse to blow up the town.”
“I need a little more than that.”
“The feds have a twenty-year-old file on the New Church. It may have dawned on them that it’s all bullshit.” She spoke to the open drawer as she pulled back file holders, stopping now and then to take one out for a closer look. “They had a profile on Babe Laurie as a brilliant and dangerous cult leader. Maybe they just found out he was the town idiot. If they did, they read it in his obituary. You wouldn’t believe how much the FBI paid for bogus information. I’m sure they tried to get better data from Internal Revenue, but IRS would never let them near an ongoing investigation.”
He knew Mallory couldn’t string that many words together without telling at least one lie. So there was no IRS investigation.
And now she was putting some distance between them, drifting away from the file cabinet.
“Okay, kid, tell me what IRS has.” Yeah, tell me a story.
“I can’t do that without admitting I was in another classified computer. Like you said, Riker – that’s a federal rap. Real jail time.”
“So? I’m gonna rat on you?” The distance between them was growing in tiny increments. He took one step toward her, and she brushed aside the long black duster to settle one hand on her right hip, exposing the gun. He recognized this as Mallory’s idea of being subtle.
You wouldn’t shoot me, would you, kid? Aloud, he said, “Give me something I can take back to the feds.”
“It’s a tax fraud scam. Babe Laurie’s brother is liquidating New Church assets into a financial holding pen. It’s all set up to feed into a foreign account.”
“So we’re talking big-time embezzlement?”
“It gets better. Malcolm is planning to skip out on the family. He just did a deal on all the lower bayou property. Sold it out from underneath his own relatives. They’ll be homeless and on the dole at the end of the month.”
“So that’s why you had to come back now. You didn’t want the locals to scatter till you nailed everyone in that mob.”
And now – time out for a little heartache.
She was coldly regarding him as a stranger, armed and dangerous. Was she seeing the same thing in his own eyes? Of course she was.
“So you figure Babe Laurie was in on the scam?”
“No,” she said. “Babe was a fool. Malcolm would’ve been crazy to tell him anything.”
“Suppose Babe found out about it? Good reason for Malcolm to do away with his little brother.” Tell me someone else could have done this murder. I’ll believe in you – even if I don’t believe you.
“Malcolm didn’t do it,” she said. “He wouldn’t do anything to call attention to himself right now. Neither will IRS. But when he tries to leave the country, they’ll arrest him for tax fraud, embezzlement and flight to avoid prosecution. If the feds spook Malcolm and mess up that operation, IRS will turn them into roadkill.”
He moved toward her, and that was a mistake. She backed up and planted her feet wide to make a stand. He didn’t believe she would draw the gun on him just yet; he’d done nothing to provoke that.
“Mallory, it’s not like I think you’d leave me hanging out in the breeze with the feds, but is any of this IRS crap true?”
Was she smiling? He could barely make out her face, though her lower body remained in the dim circle of light from the small desk lamp.
“IRS does have an open file on the New Church,” she said. “And they are running audits.”
Her head turned to the door. He stepped to one side and neatly blocked that exit. And now he realized she had just confirmed the impending betrayal.
It was a strain to keep his voice casual. “So IRS is suspicious. So what? They suspect everybody. But they’re not really planning an arrest, are they?”
“After you report back, the FBI will ask IRS about the investigation ” Her voice was machinelike, no trace of stress. “IRS will say they’re not running one – force of habit. But IRS keeps tabs on every organization so the feds will figure that’s a lie, and then they’ll believe an arrest is in the works. Ten minutes after the feds clear the room, IRS will start a criminal investigation. They’ll bank an arrest warrant on Malcolm against the audit findings.” She was retreating into deeper shadows. “So the truth is just a little bit out of order, okay?”
He moved on her before he could lose the light on her gun belt.
“That’s close enough, Riker.”
At no time in his life was he more aware of the heavy weight in his shoulder holster. The lamp was behind him now, and he was only a dark shape to her. His hand moved slowly inside his coat, reaching for the gun. If he could only show her the gun, Mallory might not draw on him. She might bow to the laws of ballistics which dictate that a drawn gun is faster.
If she drew first, he was a dead man. Sentiment would not get between Mallory and what she wanted most – payback for a murdered mother.
“Mallory, the sheriff’s got his motive. He knows Babe Laurie was in that mob. He can build a case against you.”
Her hand was rising, stopping short of the revolver on her belt, hesitating in the air – waiting.
He was touching his gun now. He eased it out of the holster, working slow, no sudden movements to make her draw. She was so much younger, years faster; he would have to cheat to beat her, and he was counting on the dark to give him an edge. The only light shone on her. “I know what you’re planning. All those people. You can’t do it, Mallory.”