Page 52 of The Writer

Daniels’s face hardens again. “Cordova stays on it. You’re taking the day off. I catch you anywhere near this case, and you’re going to find yourself with a lot of free time.”

“LT, I—”

Daniels starts angrily ticking off points on his fingers. “We got your blood at the crime scene. Morrow mentioned you by name on the 911 call—claims this is all you. The murder weapon came from your apartment, has your prints on it. You got some bullshit alibi—out walking in the park. You going to tell me where you really were?”

Declan goes quiet. He can’t tell him. No way.

“Didn’t think so.” Daniels jerks his thumb toward Cordova. “This guy is the only reason you’re not on leave right now. He’s been vouching for you from the jump, but you know what? That only goes so far. When I look at all this, when I look at you, I see a mediocre cop with motive. I got Harrison in my ear telling me you’re just covering your tracks. Something you’re apparently damn good at. I got theTimestrying to get me on the record about the dirty cop on my watch. If you think I’m gonna fall on my sword protecting you, you’re more delusional than I thought. Harrison says he expects to finish his investigation by Monday. If he concludes you planted evidence on Lucero, I’m throwing your ass to the wolves. You’re done.”

“I didn’t plant evidence, I didn’t kill David Morrow,” Declan says firmly. “This is all her.”

Daniels’s phone rings and he snatches it up. “What?”

As he listens, he drags his hand over his bald head, closes his eyes, and leans back in his chair. He hangs up the phone without so much as a goodbye. When he leans forward again, his eyes snap open and burn into Declan. “Hoffman sent a copy of the lawsuit to the mayor’s office, the chief of detectives upstairs, and Harrison in IAU.” He swallows, shakes his head in disbelief. “One hundred million dollars. That’s what she’s suing for.”

Declan’s heart cracks against his ribs with the violence of a gunshot. “That’s crazy!”

For nearly a minute, Daniels stares at him. When he finally speaks, he manages only five words: “Get out of my office.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

“THAT WENT WELL,” Cordova mutters when they’re back at their desks.

Declan is pacing in slow circles. He feels like the world is closing in on him. All of this bullshit is coming to a head. “She’s engineering all this. You know she’s behind it.” He jabs a finger at Cordova’s chest. “Youknowshe is.You know me.”

“Dec, I—”

“I didn’t plant that book. I didn’t kill David Morrow. You might not be sure about that, and Daniels and the rest of the world might not believe me either, butIknow I didn’t do those things. That means it’s her. Her and Hoffman. Nothing else makes sense. They’re creating this elaborate smoke screen,and the rest of you are buying into it! Hanging me out to dry rather than seeing the truth!”

“You need to calm down.”

Declan knows how crazy he sounds but doesn’t care. “She knew we’d visit that bookstore. She knew we’d eventually end up in that basement office. She left that copy of the book there for no other reason than to spook us. How long ago do you think she did that? How long has she been planning all this?”

“Her prints weren’t on the book, Dec,” Cordova tells him. “I had CSU check when they dusted the condom wrapper. It could be some—”

“Come on, that’s no coincidence.” Declan groans. “It was her handwriting on that page.”

“You some handwriting expert now? How do you know?”

“I know.”

Cordova’s lips form a thin line, then he says, “Look, Daniels is right. The video is circumstantial. We don’t know what was in the bag Hoffman handed her, we don’t know what she was wearing under her coat.”

“Bullshit.”

“We can’t prove it,” Cordova says. “We can’t prove it any more than you can prove she left that book. There’s zero proof. Just speculation. Circumstantial, that’s all any of it is. The only hard evidence is—”

“Is on me, yeah.” Declan waves that off. “Blood she somehow stole. A knife shedefinitelystole.”

“No proof of that either.”

Declan turns on him. “You seriously think I snuck into Morrow’s apartment to kill her and killed the husband instead when he got in the way? All to keep some fabricated garbageabout the Maggie Marshall case from coming out? Come on, man. Denise Morrow’s event schedule is no secret. It’s on her website. She’s easy enough to find. If I’d really wanted to kill her, I’d have gone to the bookstore, not her apartment. Maybe got her at some other appearance. It would be stupid to try and take her out at home. You seriously think I’d kill the husband, panic, and leave my target alive? Leave a witness? I’m a homicide detective, I see this shit every day. You don’t think I’d plan a little better than that? Hell, if I wanted her dead, I wouldn’t use a knife. I’d go see Pooch over in Hunts Point and buy a gun, use that. Or I’d hire some random banger to take her out. Plenty of them around there. Why would I get my hands dirty?”

Hunts Point is arguably the worst neighborhood in the city. You walk in there, you’ve got a one-in-twenty-two chance of becoming the victim of anything from a mugging to sexual assault. Prostitutes and dealers litter the corners. Pooch runs the Southside Posse. He pays the smaller kids to squirm down into the storm drains and retrieve discarded guns, then he resells them. One of his many enterprises.

“This is three-card monte, remember? I’m just another card in the deck,” Declan says. “We get in her head, we solve this.”

Cordova presses his hands together and rests his chin on top of his fingers, thinking. Considering everything Declan just said. “Okay, let’s… let’s backtrack. We know Denise Morrow was researching the Maggie Marshall case from the start of it, right? Didn’t you say there was something in the book about that?”

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