The Nephilim (6 page)

Garrick kept his voice low, not wanting to attract any attention, but he knew there was little time. Unfortunately his table mate wasn't so discrete as she turned to look out the window, saw the agents, gasped and then instantly tried to run, knocking the plate across the table as she did so.

Garrick reached over, grabbed her shoulder and stopped her. He knew that if she ran she'd get caught and then there would be absolutely nothing he could do. It was an old truism; criminals mostly arrested themselves. And running was the most common way they did it.

“Running won't help. Now talk.”

But she wasn't going to talk. He could see that in her eyes. She had the look of a cornered animal, frightened and wanting nothing more than to run – in any direction. Garrick had no doubt that she was willing to hurt him if she had to, to get away.

She was still like that when he heard the bell ring as the diner's door swung open and the agents walked in. It took them two seconds at most to spot their quarry and another two to reach them. It wasn't a big diner. The most Garrick could do before they reached them was to hiss at her to be quiet and press the record button on his cell. Whatever this was about he had the feeling he would need some evidence of what was said for later. Something if not for him then for Patricia when he reached the academy.

“Katarinka Nelos?” The lead agent addressed her in his most official voice, the same one Garrick himself used when he was addressing a suspect.

“No -.”

Her first instinct was to lie, something that Garrick had seen too many times. And he knew it would do her no good. Only one thing would and it wasn't the inappropriate instincts of a frightened fifteen year old girl.

“– Yes agent this is her.”

Katarinka – he was pleased to finally have a name to call her – shot him a stare of pure hatred the instant she heard him say that. No doubt she'd been hoping he would lie for her – as if he would ever do such a thing or, for that matter, think that he had any reason to want to. She'd been nothing but trouble so far. But in the end she was one of his people and he had to protect her no matter how much of a pain she was.

“I am Special Agent Garrick Hamilton of the FBI and this minor is in my care. So please state your business with her.”

That provoked a response. The agents stared at him in surprise. Finding their quarry in the care of another agent was probably the last thing they'd expected.

“Do you have some ID?”

They were right to ask for it of course, and Garrick was happy to provide it. He'd expected to be asked. He reached into his jacket, pulled out his ID and laid it on the table in front of them. They seemed a bit wary however, when they spotted his weapon in its holster. But then he wasn't crazy about the fact that they were armed either. It was expected that they would all be armed of course. But it would also have been expected that they would all be on the same side when it came to interviewing suspects. Agents didn't often end up on the opposite sides of an action.

“Now yours please.”

As they'd asked for his it seemed only fair he thought. It was also the law. He knew that some agents thought they could get away without presenting formal identification when interviewing, but they were wrong. Even when the one being interviewed was a minor who didn't know the law or her rights. Especially then. These ones knew better and he quickly had a trio of ID's in front of him. But the ID's just made things worse. More confusing anyway. Agent – Barnes was with Treasury. So were the other two. The Criminal Investigation unit.

“And what does Treasury want with my charge?”

“Charge?”

They heard that word and immediately asked, a fraction of a second before Katarinka was about to. But finally she was learning and managed to keep her mouth shut.

“For a few more hours anyway. I am on the trail of the serial killer Newman and need to get back to it. But Miss Nelos was brought to me in the middle of my investigation by her aunt Cassie and placed in my care to be delivered to her boarding school and I had to take a few hours off.”

The first part was true of course, the second part also mostly true though it missed out a whole lot of important details, but they wouldn't know that, and they couldn't check – which was why he'd used it. Of course it did mean that he was going to have to write up some interesting field notes in due course.

“Again Agent Barnes, what is your interest in Ms. Nelos?”

“Her boyfriend, Armando Benedict, the bank robber.”

Suddenly it was Garrick's turn to be surprised. Very surprised and very worried. He knew Benedict, or rather he knew of him, and he wouldn't have thought that his path and Katarinka's would have crossed a lot. Let alone that they would have been together. Benedict as well as being one of the smartest counterfeiters and bank robbers on the face of the planet, was also sixty something years old. Something she confirmed a moment later.

“He's not my boyfriend! He's old!” She sounded outraged by the very idea.

“Miss Nelos, you are a minor. You are not required to answer these agent's questions or be interviewed without a lawyer or a guardian being present. At the moment you have neither and I cannot act in their place.”

Garrick was simply informing her of her rights, but what he was really trying to do was to get her to shut up. To stop with the childish outbursts. They weren't helping. She'd already stupidly admitted that she knew the man. That was one less thing they had to prove. So the Treasury agents would be happy to hear her outbursts and far less happy to hear him advising their suspect or witness of her rights. They stared at him with annoyance and accusations of treachery in their eyes. He was after all, supposed to be on their side.

Garrick turned back to the agents the moment his charge had stopped speaking. “Agents, is Ms. Nelos suspected of any direct involvement in Armando Benedict's crimes?”

“No but -.”

Garrick cut the agent off before things got unpleasant, and he suspected there was a fair chance of that happening. The agents seemed unhappy. “Do you have an arrest warrant or probable cause to arrest her?”

“No.”

Garrick turned back to his charge. “And Miss Nelos is there anything you would like to tell these agents about the crimes or current location of Armando Benedict of your own free will?”

“No.” She shook her head angrily but for once managed to restrain her childish instincts as she heard the last few words. She was learning.

“Then agents I think this interview is over. I cannot act as Miss Nelos' guardian. So I cannot give permission for her to be interviewed. Her aunt Cassie wouldn't allow me to. I am only charged with bringing her to the Westlord Academy in Olmstead where she is to be placed. There I believe you will find the headmistress Patricia Holdsworth will be acting in loco parentis. If you wish to continue your interview it will have to be done there under her supervision.”

He also knew that Patricia would be saying “No” in a very clear voice. She looked after her charges with every bit as much ferocity as a tigress caring for her cubs. And her gift made her a force to be reckoned with. But the agents would probably find that out for themselves in due course. In fact, given that one of them was carefully taking down her details he was almost certain that they would.

The rest of the interview went fairly much as he'd expected – it ended. The Treasury agents found themselves a table just opposite them and started whispering to one another as they tried to work out what to do. Then they started reaching for their phones. They needed instructions, and they probably also wanted to know about him – the FBI man who'd been so unhelpful. That was going to come back to bite him he knew.

Garrick and Katarinka finished their meals in silence, largely because he kept telling her to be quiet every time she tried to open her mouth. The agents were close enough to overhear and nothing that was said and overheard in public was confidential. But he did manage to make her understand that if she ran, they would chase her. Then she would be on the run from both the Choir and them. And if the agents caught her – something that was almost certain given that she was limping – they would ask her all the questions they wanted to and she would probably implicate herself in something. Criminals, especially young ones, always forgot that they had rights. And they never seemed to understand that their running was the very thing that gave the authorities probable cause.

Ten minutes later he paid the bill and exited the diner with Katarinka. The agents were still on their phones as they walked out, but he knew that soon they'd be following. If they had a communications warrant out on her phone they could track her anywhere while she was stupid enough to carry it. In time he guessed there was going to be trouble coming for him as well. Their bosses would call his bosses, and his boss would call him and he would get a 'please explain'. But that he could deal with. Inter-agency mix ups happened from time to time, it was simply a fact of life. He was more interested in getting his passenger to stop making an ass of herself and start thinking clearly. Something she just didn't seem to want to do. But at least he managed to get her to turn her phone off, even though she didn't seem to want to. She gave in though when he finally managed to get through to her that they'd low jacked her phone. There was no way the agents could have tracked her to the diner if they hadn't. And if they had a warrant to track it, a warrant to intercept her calls couldn't be far away. He would personally have preferred to throw the damn thing out the window, but he guessed she would object and he didn't need any more arguments.

Still, there were questions to ask, and he got the first of them out as they took off. Before the accusations started flying his way.

“So do you want to tell me about Benedict or not?” He guessed not from the way she glared at him. But at least she wasn't abusing him.

“You should have let me go!” The girl wasn't happy about that obviously no matter how many times he tried to explain the painfully obvious. But then he wasn't happy with her attitude. Especially when he was now somehow involved in an ongoing investigation even if it was in the most peripheral way.

“Don't be stupid, kid. I told you. You run, they chase you. Then they catch you, interrogate you and throw you in jail. And they can do all that legally because you were stupid enough to run. It's called probable cause. Look it up some time. It's only thanks to me that you're not sitting in an interrogation room right now, busy convicting yourself through your own stupidity.”

“Remember that. Criminals run because they're stupid. The innocent and the clever stand their ground and answer what questions they need to answer, and no others. They know their rights.”

“And you really need to keep your mouth shut. You've already managed to admit that you know Benedict.”

“I did not!”

“You told them he wasn't your boyfriend. That he was old. But how would you know how old he was if you didn't know him? Trust me, they didn't miss that and it's on your file. And if you'd carried on talking you would have then gone on to deny that you knew him. That's lying to a federal agent in the course of his duties, Giving a false statement and potentially hindering an investigation. They would have had you in an interrogation room faster than you could blink.”

“So what's your connection with Benedict? And before you give me any crap about honour among thieves, don't even bother. There is none. They sell each other out all the time, and your bank robbing, forger friend is top of the heap in betrayal. He will betray you in time if he hasn't already.”

“That's – !” The girl caught herself before her outburst could go any further. But the fact that she was so angry – that she was about to defend him – told him that she did have some sort of relationship with Benedict.

He groaned quietly. That was not good. The man was high on the most wanted list, and because of that she would be watched.

But for the moment her phone was off, and she had gone quiet – choosing to spend the long minutes as the truck ate up the road staring moodily out of the window and not at him, unless it was to cast a withering look in his direction every so often.

They were back to the silent treatment he realised as he drove on. Still, that was better than the arguing, the accusations and the insults, and he knew there was no point in continuing his questions. He would get nothing back from her except hostility.