The day I have been waiting for has finally arrived. Now, after much waiting, everything is going to move very quickly. But then, what was the purpose of all the time preparing each small detail and weighing the consequences, if not at last to act?
Alex, as he stood outside of the police department this morning, felt much as I did. He stared at the door and clung to the briefcase holding all of his evidence and wished that someone would stop him.
“I will not do that,” I told him, “because this is the right thing to do. But I will go with you, and I will stay with you the whole time. Whatever happens, you will not be alone.”
Alex took a breath, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and texted Miranda: Here we go. Then, without waiting for a reply, he went up the steps and politely asked to speak to Detective Ehmke.
Alex chose Detective Lynn Ehmke because he has had a run-in with her before. It was a few years ago now, and he was only a secondary player—his partner at the time did all the talking. But Alex was impressed by the detective’s calm competence, and touched by the way she pulled him aside and offered him her help. Now he means to take her up on that offer.
She recognized him, too, only an instant after he was shown to her desk. “Able, right?” she asked, kicking out the stool that she keeps under her desk for visitors. “You’re that kid who got dragged into Hill’s operation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alex said, settling down. “And I’m here to help you drag him down.”
She raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but that’s dumb, kid, unless you’ve got him dead to rights. I’ve been after that asshole for five years and he always wriggles off the hook.”
“Well, detective,” Alex said, setting the briefcase on the desk, “you’re the expert, but I’ve got a good feeling.”
Detective Ehmke’s casual expression disappeared about five minutes into the briefcase. She called over two of her colleagues to help her sift through the information Alex had brought and brought in an accountant to consult. Alex, in between interrogations, sat quietly and waited, but he could feel almost as well as I could the anticipation and eager triumph of these people.
Finally the detective came back with a cup of strong coffee for Alex and sat down across from him. “I’ll be damned if you didn’t deliver, kid,” she said. “We’ve got enough to tie Hill to four open cases, not to mention that the laundering alone would put him away for a couple years.”
“My aim is to please,” Alex said with a calm smile.
Her mouth twitched up in both amusement and scorn. “Right. So here’s the part where I ask what you want out of this. Immunity?”
Alex leaned forward, wrapping his hands around the bar on the table to which he had been grateful not to be handcuffed. “Let me ask a question first. When Hill goes away, all debts to him are cancelled, right?”
“In theory. We have to round up his people first, but you’ve pretty much passed us to them on a silver platter.”
“So where does the money go?”
“Preferably back where it belongs,” Detective Ehmke said. “And probably not to you.”
Alex tapped the table and considered the detective. “I’m not the one I’m worried about.” But here was the part he hadn’t decided on yet: whether to trust the authorities with his real motives.
I looked with him at Detective Ehmke’s wry face. She’s been on the force for a long time, but it hasn’t hardened her. And I thought I could see that she doesn’t love the law more than the people it protects, an important distinction.
“I think you can trust her,” I told Alex. “As long as it goes no farther.”
He glanced up first at the mirror behind the detective, and then at the camera in the corner of the room. “Off the record?”
She scowled. “Think I need someone looking over my shoulder?”
Behind that not-a-mirror, her partner stepped out into the hallway. Detective Ehmke thought to herself that while the camera was recording, she could always get rid of the tape later. If it was worthwhile, she added to herself.
Thinking that if it came to it, I might be able to scramble one small section of tape myself, I urged Alex to go on.
He reached out—slowly—and tapped the file that the detective had set on the table. “There’s an account in there under the name of Spiller,” he said. “I’d be much obliged if you didn’t look too closely at that one.”
Her eyes narrowing, the detective opened the file and sifted through it until she found what she was looking for.
“Or at least, that you cut them a break,” Alex added. He shrugged. “I guess looking into things is your job, isn’t it, Detective?”
“Mmm,” she said. Her look softened as she read the salient information. “A widow, single mom to a foster kid, no record, no former association with Hill…yeah, I think I don’t need to know much more about that one.”
Alex took a moment to reply. “Thank you.”
She studied him. “This your family?” she asked. “Off the record.”
His throat tightened. “You could say that,” he managed, unable to hold her gaze.
Detective Ehmke put the page back in the file and closed it. “I’ll assign a detail to them,” she said. “At least until most of Hill’s people have been collected.”
Alex inclined his head.
“Okay,” she said, getting up. “So I’d like to say you’re free to go, but I think that’s pretty much handing you over to the wolves now, so regrettably, Mr. Able, you’re under arrest—”
“Can I make a suggestion before you go any further, Detective?” Alex said, holding up one hand.
She paused and raised an eyebrow.
“Throw me to the wolves,” he said with a smile that he didn’t really feel. “They were already starting to get a little suspicious of me, so if I disappear, so will some of them, and Hill himself will probably be the first one. But if it looks like I just made a break for it, they’ll follow me—and then you can be there to catch them.”
Detective Ehmke frowned at him. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“You wanted Hill dead to rights, didn’t you?”
“Not at the price of having you just ‘dead’.”
Alex also pushed to his feet. “Look, Detective, the last thing I want is to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I need this to be done, for me and for my family. And honestly, Detective, I’ve been feeling pretty lucky lately. I can do this.”
Behind him, I spread my wings and bared my teeth. “We can do this,” I declared.
And Detective Ehmke, a Guardian of sorts herself, saw the courage and competence in both of us, and so she sat down again to lay out a plan.
It is a good plan—dangerous, of course, but with every precaution taken. And Alex is right. This needs to be over, now, or he will never have any peace. He is not like an angel, who have the assurance of victory to comfort us in the Long Fight. To him, the long fight has been going on all his life, and he deserves some comfort and rest. And I mean to see that he gets it.