I need a way to make the stacks of my own money I have hidden behind a brick wall beneath the warehouse legitimate, and I have a very good idea how to do that. There’s just one thing I need to do first. I make a brief phone call to Rebel, and then I set things in motion.
I find Agent Lowell in a coffee shop across the road from the address Sloane gave me in Everett. By the looks of her, she’s on her fourth cup of coffee for the day. It doesn’t make it to her mouth, though. She spits most of it onto the floorboards when she lays eyes on me.
“What the fuck?” she gasps. “You’re fucking…you’re fucking crazy.”
I glare at her, wishing I felt differently about hitting women. “I’m fucking tired,” I correct her. I’m also sore, battered and significantly bruised from nearly being blown up and being shocked with a Taser. “It’s time we end this shit once and for all.”
“You realize I’m going to arrest you right now, don’t you?”
I just raise an eyebrow at her.
“Well, alright then. Do I need to cuff you, or are you gonna walk across the road with me like a civilized human being?”
“There’s only one woman on the face of this planet who I’d let fucking cuff me. And you are not her.”
Lowell leads the way out of the coffee shop; I can tell by the way her hand’s trembling as we head toward the liquor store on the other side of the road that she’s on the back foot and freaking the fuck out. Hopefully that’s gonna work in my favor. She guides me up a metal fire escape that runs up the building behind the liquor store, and then she’s punching a code into a keypad by a reinforced steel door. We move down a winding corridor, through another access door, and then into a vast, open-plan room, filled with cops. A stunned silence falls over the room. About eighteen pairs of eyes all watch with unveiled surprise as Lowell leads me through their midst and into a cold, sterile interview room. There are three chairs and a table inside and nothing else.
“Sit down,” Lowell commands. So I do. “Get comfortable,” she advises me, and then leaves me alone in the room. The door locks behind her when she goes.
This may be the most foolish thing I’ve ever done, but I’m fucking over all of this now. I’m over all of it. I did a lot of thinking last night, Ernie’s little head resting on my knee until the sun came up, and I realized this isn’t the life I should be living. Not because it wouldn’t have been easy for me to slip right into Charlie’s shoes and claim Seattle. But because my sister died yesterday. I watched her die, and then I had to bury her. Because the woman I can’t live without is inherently good, and deserves someone better than me. Because Sloane deserves everything, and I want to give it to her.
Lowell leaves me locked in the interview room for half an hour before she returns—a common, frankly transparent move on her part, designed to make me work up a sweat. The woman is a fucking moron. I’m not going to sweat; I handed myself in, for fuck’s sake. She’s towing a fucking giant in a suit behind her when she enters the room, her shoulders stiff with her own importance. She undoubtedly made good use of the thirty minutes she left me in here, calling her superiors and telling them the good news—I did it. I fucking caught the bastard. I know, I know. You can promote me later.
The giant, I suspect only invited into the interview for decoration and culpability’s sake, begins setting up a video recorder, the lens pointed directly at me. They both remain silent until the little red dot is angrily blinking at me.
“Can you please state your full name for the purposes of the video,” Lowell says.
“Zeth Mayfair.”
“And that’s your legal name?”
I tilt my head to one side, shooting her a very bored look. “That is my legal name.”
“Okay, then. Zeth Mayfair, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?”
I lean across the table, staring the bitch down. “Perfectly.”
“Good. Then we’ll get started. We want to discuss your involvement with a certain individual known to us only as Rebel. Are you aware of this person?”
I sit back, cracking my knuckles. “I am.”
“Do you know his exact whereabouts?”
“I do not.”
Lowell tilts her head on an angle, pulling a tight smile. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t give a fuck what you believe. It’s the truth.”
“Do you have a contact number for him?”
“Nope.” She must think I’m fucking retarded or something. I walked in here without a cell phone. There was no way I was handing Sloane and Michael’s contact information over to the bitch on a silver platter.
“All right, Zeth.” Lowell takes a deep breath, pressing her fingertips into her forehead. “We’ll come back to Rebel. Right now we’re going to talk about your involvement in a list of offenses that could put you away for a very long time. Are you going to cooperate?”
“What’s given you the impression I’m not going to cooperate, Denise? Didn’t I come here of my own free will?”
She pauses, shooting me a dry look. “Have you ever been to Monterello Farm Markets?
“Yeah. Plenty of times. I buy a lot of fruit there. It’s organic, y’know?” So, they wanna talk about Frankie Monterello, the last job I did for Charlie. The grocery store doesn’t have security cameras inside—more illegal dealings went on inside that place than anywhere else in Seattle—so there’s no way they have footage of me heading in there. I was wearing gloves when I shot Frankie—shot him before he shot me—so there won’t be any prints. But still, better to say I may have been there at some point than deny it altogether and then have Lowell produce evidence to the contrary.