by the Kroner evidence - "
"Just like every other detective in the house."
"And Officer Reilly indicated that you were hoping to find a tie to the Barten case."
Veck showed no reaction to her name. "And I did. But how does that correlate with planting something?"
The other detective - his name was Browne, if she remembered correctly - leaned in over his legal pad. "Your hand was in and out of your pocket."
"You ever hear of change? Quarters, dimes, nickels?"
"You had been up in Sissy Barten's bedroom."
"As had others. I'm not the only rep from this department who's been through that house."
"Look, Veck, just tell me what happened."
Veck leaned in as well, his face flat-out furious. "I went to Sissy's house to speak to her mother. I went upstairs, yeah, sure, but I didn't take anything out of there, and I did not plant any evidence. You've already proved that I didn't hurt Kroner. Why would I want to frame the guy - for a murder, incidentally, that I did not commit?"
"I'm not sure what we've proved with Kroner."
Veck sat back again. "You're fucking kidding me."
"Maybe you staged the attack precisely so you could put the Barten murder around his neck."
"So you think I travel with trained mountain lions or some shit? Besides, Kroner knew where the body in the quarry was, not me."
"On the contrary, Kroner mentioned the quarry. You found the body."
"No, I didn't. That was ..."
"Who?"
At that, he reached into the pocket of the fleece he had on and pulled out a pack of Marlboros.
Ah, so he'd lied about quitting as well.
The other detective shook his head. "No smoking in here."
Veck muttered under his breath as he disappeared the pack. "Look, you want my statement? It's simple. I didn't do it - the murder, the earring, any of it. Someone is trying to frame me."
"Can you prove that, Veck."
God, she could practically feel a cold rush of air as Veck bit out, "The question is more, can you prove it."
"He killed her," Reilly said roughly. "Oh, my God, he killed her, didn't he."
He knew how the system worked, knew the ways to get away with murder - he was a detective, after all. He'd been trained on the limits of the law and evidence and proof.
De la Cruz glanced over. "I'm not going to lie. This doesn't look good, any of it."
She thought back to the quarry, to Jim Heron, to Veck finding the body ... it was the perfect staging piece.
And Kroner? Veck could have gone out to those woods with the plan of killing the guy, only to have a wild animal cut him off.
Luck, after all, didn't just play in favor of the righteous.
If Kroner had died by that motel as he was supposed to, and the earring had been planted successfully, and Bails hadn't seen those juvie records, Veck would have gotten away with murder - just like his father.
And he would have killed again.
That was what psychopaths like him did.
Reilly's hand crept up to her throat. To think she could have fallen in love with a killer ... just like Veck's mother had.
"The most important thing," she heard herself say, "is that the charges stick. We can't let someone like him get loose - or it's his father all over again."
"We're going to need stronger evidence. Right now, he's technically just a person of interest."
"We have to get into his house."
"We're lining up the warrant as we speak."
She refocused on the screen. "I want to be there."
Sitting on the "other side" of the interrogation table, Veck was on the edge of violence.
Someone, or something, was lining him up to take a fall, and, man, they'd done their homework. Between the condition of Sissy's body, the bullshit about this earring, and the connection with his father, he was looking at a crossroads, all right.
No choice for him, though.
It was like the autopilot on his life had recalibrated a course right into the side of a mountain, and he couldn't get the controls back. And the ass-slapper? His colleague across the way here, Detective Stan Browne, was using all the standard interrogation techniques. Hell, Veck could write the dialogue, and he knew the tricks; how the interviewer could shade things or suggest the truth even if there were gray areas. So there was no way to be sure exactly how much hard evidence they had against him.
At this point, he had one and only one thing going for him: he actually was innocent and the