Back in Black (McGinnis Investigations #1) - Rhys Ford Page 0,69
crew who took care of my office. Montoya was as calm and collected as could be, his brown eyes flat and steady, fixed on my face without a hint of emotion in his authoritative expression.
O’Byrne sat down, putting the folder she’d had tucked under her arm on the table between us. She flipped it open, but I didn’t look down at the papers as she rifled through them. I figured I was brought in because I’d beaten a man with the intent to cripple him—not something the LAPD was fond of—but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. If they stopped using me as a consultant, I was fine with that.
My first priority was always going to be Jae, and as much as I liked O’Byrne, my husband came first.
“I don’t know which way Captain Book is going to fall on this,” O’Byrne said with a tired sigh, shifting back on her uncomfortable chair. “I pleaded self-defense at him, considering the guy got a shot or two off, but you used excessive force, Mac. The DA might have another opinion.”
“The DA can go fuck himself,” I replied as clearly as I could, stating my position in a way that no one could misunderstand. I guessed we’d had some company join us behind the mirror, especially when Montoya shifted away from the glass partition, but I wasn’t there to make friends. “That guy came after me twice now. You guys had him in custody and someone with black robes and maybe an agenda let him walk, so you have to excuse me if I don’t have a lot of faith in what the LAPD or the DA’s office thinks.”
“Doctors don’t even know if they’ll be able to reconstruct his hands,” Montoya said, a hint of Texas-Mexican flowing through his voice. It was a different tone than the Spanish I normally heard in Los Angeles, more of a roundness to it than the staccato, rapid-fire Mexican overheard on the street. “Did you have to go so far? He may not even be able to use them again.”
“If he told you he was going to go have fun with Stevens once he was done killing you, would you have just sat there and taken it?” I shot back, digging my shoulders into the metal bar set high on the back of the chair. “Because nobody comes into my place and threatens the people I love, least of all Jae. You guys are damned lucky I didn’t take that phone to his face. At least he can still talk. This way I know he won’t be able to come back and shoot me. Or at least he’ll think twice about it. Now, have you asked him about why he came after me? And what does this have to do with Adele Brinkerhoff’s murder?”
Montoya looked away, and I knew I’d scored at least one point, gouging deep into his disgust at my actions. Pacing off at the end of the table, he shook his head, then glanced at O’Byrne. “Are you going to tell him or am I?”
“The feds have swooped in. It seems like, in the DA’s haste to free this guy, they didn’t cross all of their t’s and dot their i’s. They didn’t check to see if he was wanted at the federal level,” she said, glancing down at the papers in her hand. “His name is Ivan Brinkerhoff, Arthur’s nephew from the Ukraine. Apparently Ivan makes his living by eliminating other people’s problems, and I guess, as you started digging into what was going on with Adele, you became someone’s problem. I haven’t been able to get close to Arthur to ask him any questions. His doctors keep blocking our access, and the granddaughter—the real one—says she doesn’t know anything.”
“She’s an assistant DA in San Francisco,” I reminded the detectives. “Could she have any pull down here? Could she maybe have yanked on a few strings and gotten Cousin Ivan released?”
“So you suspect she has something to do with this?” O’Byrne leaned forward, resting her weight on her elbows. “Because I’ve got two dead women, a handful of lab-grown diamonds, an old man in a fugue state, and an international killer the feds yanked from us before we could even get a peep out of him.”
“I think the first thing we need to ask is, why was Adele killed?” My attention drifted momentarily over to Montoya, who’d taken up residence at the end of the table. He stood as stiff as