False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) (34 page)
Read False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) Online
Authors: P. S Syron-Jones
The arrested man sat with a smug look on his face, which made John think that he had accepted his fate, or that he was hoping for a phone call that would get him out.
“Answer me this,” Steel persevered with his questioning. “Why the girl? What was special about the girl?”
The Chief leaned forwards and beckoned Steel to come closer. He did so, cautiously.
“The powers that be didn’t want to kill her. They wanted to recruit her. Her mother had promised her to us long ago, but sadly her husband had talked her out of it. Oh, she had a change of heart alright, Detective, it just was not what you thought. That girl is destined for great things, it’s in her makeup.”
Steel looked over at the other man, and his look of shock turned to anger. “You did something to her in the womb?”
The Chief shook his head and smiled. “No, she was engineered before that, she had everything a true warrior needed. Later she was reintroduced into her mother to complete the cycle. Two strong family members, an agent and a lawyer. Brains and brawn.”
Steel felt ill at the thought that they could do such a thing. “How did you know it would work?”
The other man shrugged, but the cruel smile remained. “Because they said they had done it before.”
The Englishman stood up, pushing his chair away with the back of his knees, hands resting on the table to steady himself.
The Chief just looked up at him with that same smile. Steel banged on the door to signal that he wanted out. It opened and he walked out, passing the female officer at the door. He stopped for a second and faced the female cop. She was stunning, with brown hair that was tied up at the back and chestnut-brown eyes.
Steel took one glance at her but his mind was elsewhere. He took notice because, somehow, she seemed familiar.
“Make sure he doesn’t leave,” he ordered then headed towards the exit.
The cop said nothing. Even if she had he wouldn’t have heard it. He needed air. Steel made his way up the stairs and pushed through the crowds of cops as if he was drunk or drugged.
As he walked outside the cool air of the morning felt good on his skin.
Now he had questions—too many of them in fact. He needed to find the girl and warn Armstrong, and as the breeze swept over his face his mind began to clear.
He shook his head. The girl would be safe because he knew exactly where she was, the company had her. That’s why Agent Lloyd was there, to take her to them.
He laughed to himself, shaking his head at the whole mess of it all.
But then the smile faded as the image of the female officer he’d just met sprang into his head. He had seen her somewhere before.
But where?
And then, as the cool air began to clear his head, he started to remember a woman he once knew, a young temptress he had met on a boat trip from hell. Back then she called herself Missy Studebaker.
Steel spun around to face the precinct doors. A look of sudden shock covered his face as he realised that that same woman was now guarding the Chief downstairs. She had changed the colour of her hair but it was her sure enough.
He ran inside the precinct and made for the stairs, hoping he would make it in time. As he entered the long corridor he noticed there was no guard outside the interrogation room. He slowed and walked towards it. The door was wide open and the lights fully on, as if for effect.
Inside Chief Doyle sat there with his head lying back, and pieces of brain and bone fragments made a pattern on the back wall. Steel noticed on the table a tube of black lipstick that stood on its base, with the bullet-shaped lozenge of glossy black lipstick showing.
They had gotten to him and he had let them. Behind him the sound of footsteps echoed in the concrete passage.
“Oh, man, who did this?”
Steel could feel everyone looking at him, but he simply stood there. “There was a female officer watching the door,” he announced. “I went to get some fresh air.”
He turned to see the suspicious looks from Tooms, McCall and Brant.
“So you’re saying a cop did this?” Brant asked.
Steel shook his head. “No she wasn’t a cop, she was... something else. Some
one
else. She works for that organisation I told youabout. The Chief knew way too much for them to let him live.”
Steel noticed the headline on Tooms’s newspaper that was rolled up under his arm. He only saw a few words but he could guess the rest.
“So I guess Chief Doyle made the front page after all,” Steel said coldly.
“Did he tell you what happened, why he did it?” Brant asked, hoping to have some sort of explanation for the new Chief of Police. Steel thought for a moment and then shook his head.
“He didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. He did confirm it was the other organisation responsible though,” Steel lied.
He couldn’t tell them about the girl or anything else the Chief had surprised him with. It wouldn’t be long before CSU and the ME would be down to do their jobs. Soon after that he would be in front of Internal Affairs having to explain how this had happened.
“Why did you leave the room?” McCall asked. “Was it because of something he told you?” She was confused: normally Steel would be in there until the perp had told his life story and more. That was one thing he was good at—getting people to talk. But he had left to get some fresh air? Things didn’t add up for her.
“I couldn’t look at him anymore,” Steel went on. “He had done so much to so many people just to get power which he later abused.”
The others could feel his anger. The powerful man who had sworn to uphold the law had abused it in the worst possible way and had nearly got away with it. If the bus crash had worked according to plan, none of these things would have come out.
The group stood to the sides as the medical examiner and the CSU team came down from the elevator and began their investigation. Steel moved to a quiet part of the corridor and spoke to an investigator from internal affairs who needed to hear Steel’s side before he got CSU’s version of events.
“Detective Steel, this is Detective King.” Brant introduced the two detectives. Brant had requested a male investigator so that the investigation could be shown to be impartial and fair. Steel shook the man’s hand, he had no dislike or bad feeling towards him or his job.
“Hi, I’m John Steel.” Steel gave the man a once over as they shook. The man was in his late thirties with a military presence about him: straight backed, and with his head held high. Steel assessed him as an ex-Marine, or likely to have belonged to another of the world’s Special Force units.
“Detective Arthur King,” the man said in a deep gravelly voice.
Steel raised an eyebrow and bit his lip. He so wanted to say something but thought it best not to. He would save it for later.
*
Tony Marinelli walked into the little observation room next to the interrogation room just to get some space. He couldn’t believe what was going on, how things had fallen apart as they had. Tony walked around the room with his hands holding the back of his head with knotted fingers. He breathed out a lungful of air and looked through the two-way mirror at the CSU team as they took samples and photographs. Suddenly a flashing red LED light caught the corner of his eye. Tony turned towards the monitors that were normally on to show that the interrogation was being filmed. The monitors were turned off, but the cameras were not. Tony smiled as he realised that the whole interview between Steel and Chief Doyle had been taped, and this could prove Steel’s story or contradict it. He traced the hard drive to a server upstairs and took down the number of the camera.
Upstairs Tony had found the feed to the cameras in the interrogation room. As he watched, he saw Steel leave the room, but moments later a woman came in. The Chief struggled to get away as she started to fix a silencer on to her weapon.
The hairs on the back of his neck began to tingle as she moved up to the camera and blew a kiss before she put a bullet between Chief Doyle’s eyes.
Tony looked blankly at the screen as if it didn’t compute what he had just seen. Steel would be cleared with this evidence. However, Tony had listened to the audio. He looked over towards the captain and the others who were making their way into Brant’s office. Tony made two copies of the tape and locked them inside his top drawer.
He sat for a moment watching the group through the window, his gaze fixed on Steel.
“Who are you, Mr Steel?” he wondered. “Who are you really?”
Other Books in the series.
When a female lawyer is found murdered Detective Samantha McCall picks up the case.
Unknown to her a mysterious stranger is also on the hunt.
*
Detective John Steel is on his most dangerous case yet.
As he travels back to New York on a cruise liner he soon discovers
there may be more to the ship and it’s passengers.
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