‘Freeze,’ Darby said, and switched on the tactical light.
Chadzynski’s face lit up with surprise. Then it disappeared, swept back underneath her cool composure.
‘Hands on your head,’ Darby said. ‘Nice and slow.’
Chadzynski took off the headphones and placed them on the desk. She didn’t stand.
Darby stood in front of her. Chadzynski leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs. Dust floated in the light coming from the computer screen.
‘Who else is here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Chadzynski said. No nervous hitch in her voice. She was in complete control of her emotions. ‘I arrived only a few minutes ago. You’d have to ask Mr King. Since I don’t see him, I’m left to assume he’s dead.’
‘You assume correctly. Place your hands on your head.’
‘I have a way out of this for you.’
‘Shut up.’
‘My car is right out front. We can leave together. If you play your cards right, you’ll come out of this looking like a hero. I can help you towards that end. I recommend –’
Darby swung the butt stock and raked it across the side of the woman’s head.
The force knocked the commissioner off her chair.
Darby fitted the shotgun’s strap over her shoulder and switched to Pine’s Glock. Then she took out her phone and pressed a few of its keys.
‘There’s no one here but the two of us now,’ Chadzynski said from the floor. ‘It will be my word against yours. And I can assure you I’ll win. I suggest you take me up on my original offer. If you don’t, you’ll never hold up under the scrutiny. The evidence is already stacked against you.’
Darby placed the phone on the desk. ‘What evidence?’
‘Recognize the computer? It’s yours.’
Darby glanced quickly at the laptop, a white Apple iMac. She owned one. On the screen, she saw the audio files from Kendra Sheppard’s flash drive. ‘You broke the password.’
‘And we copied the files on to your home computer,’ Chadzynski said. ‘Paperwork has been filed to show you checked Kendra Sheppard’s flash drive out of evidence – Anti-Corruption has it in their hands right now. Since the flash drive is now gone, Internal Affairs will have no choice but to assume you destroyed it. I can, however, make it all disappear with one phone call.’
‘You’ve got all the angles figured out, don’t you? Know how to make evidence disappear, have people plant bombs inside a house and on my crime scene –’
‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life in jail? We have enough evidence to show you deliberately tampered with these cases. How you deliberately destroyed evidence to protect your father. The boxes of evidence and murder book pertaining to your father? The ones that are supposed to be in storage? They’re currently in a safe location with paperwork that leads back to you. The way the story will go down is that you came across evidence that showed your father was working for Frank Sullivan. He’ll be known as a corrupt cop – as will you. I don’t think you want that.’
‘I know about your trip to Reynolds Engineering Systems. You went there last year with Lieutenant Warner. That round we found inside the Belham house, the rounds we found in Kevin Reynolds’s basement? They came from a batch of test ammo that mysteriously disappeared on the day you and Warner were there. The company was kind enough to send me the list.’
Chadzynski scrambled up into a sitting position, eyes blinking. Her small hand with its perfectly manicured fingers and big, sparking diamonds trembled as she touched the side of her face. The butt stock had split the skin above her cheek.
The woman wobbled, stunned and confused. She placed a hand on the floor for balance.
‘Did you steal the ammo and the Glock eighteen?’ Darby asked. ‘Or did you have your pet do it?’
Chadzynski gripped the edge of the desk and slowly got to her feet.
‘I’m guessing you let Warner do it,’ Darby said. ‘You knew that kind of ammo would be next to impossible to trace because it doesn’t exist on the market. He was inside the Belham house, wasn’t he? He was there when they killed Kendra Sheppard.’
‘I can assure you he wasn’t.’
‘Then why did he kill Special Agent Alan?’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Then who did?’
‘You already know.’
‘Tell me anyway.’
‘Russo,’ Chadzynski said.
‘He’s dead.’
‘Not the wife. The wife is still alive and, coincidentally, living in the same house. She confessed to killing Ben Masters and the Federal agent, Alan.’
Darby thought back to that moment inside the lab with Randy Scott and Mark Alves. The footprints recovered from the deck steps matched the footprints found in the woods near the binoculars – a woman’s size nine sneaker. A woman had been watching from the woods.
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s still living in Wellesley,’ Chadzynski said.
‘Where is she right now?’
Chadzynski wouldn’t answer.
‘Call and find out,’ Darby said.
‘No.’
‘Hands on your head, Commissioner. You’re under arrest.’
Chadzynski gripped the bottom lapels of her suit jacket and gave them a sharp tug, straightening out the fabric.
‘This list you have from RES, it won’t hold up in court. You know I’m right.’
‘We’ll have to wait and see.’
‘There are forces at work, people you’ll never be able to find,’ Chadzynski said. ‘Arrest me and you’ll be signing your own warrant.’
‘You’re probably right about that. That’s why I recorded our conversation.’ Darby picked up her phone. ‘Who killed my father?’
‘Let me use the phone and I’ll tell you.’
‘No.’
‘I know where all the missing pieces are buried. You need me.’
Chadzynski grinned, probably thinking about her Rolodex full of people who could pull the necessary levers, make this moment disappear as if it were nothing more than a bad dream. She already owned the Anti-Corruption Unit.
She had Warner or one of her other henchmen plant evidence and remove my father’s murder book and evidence files from the storage unit – she’s spent years doctoring evidence or making it disappear to suit her needs. She killed my father and she –
Darby squeezed the trigger.
The shot blew out the back of the police commissioner’s head.
Darby ran back to the main bay to Pine. She checked his pulse, and was unsurprised to find him dead. He had bled out.
She wiped down the Glock with her shirt-tail and dropped it on the floor.
Standing back behind the desk with her laptop, Darby used her shirt to pick up the shotgun. She dropped it next to Chadzynski, thinking about Sean Sheppard lying in a coma, brain dead, like her father.
63
Darby got down on her knees, warm blooding spilling out across the floor and touching her skin. She searched Chadzynski’s pockets. No flash drive but she found car keys.
She switched to the shotgun she was carrying and opened the door. The police commissioner’s sleek black Mercedes sat a few feet away.
There were no other vehicles in the car park.
She turned on the gun’s tactical light and ran through the rain to the front of the building. The door and windows were boarded. She looked for a number – there, a sign above the door. She shielded her eyes from the rain and read the faded letters: DELANEY’S AUTOMOTIVE GARAGE.
Sitting behind the wheel, the shotgun resting on the floor of the passenger seat, she started the car. The Mercedes had a GPS navigation system built into the console. Her location was displayed on the screen. Perfect.