“Finding urine isn’t difficult, especially for money, and I inject in places that aren’t readily obvious.”
“So here’s how this is going to go,” Owens said. “We went to the security office after Detective Crosswhite here learned that the tape you provided had been edited. I’ll testify that the actual tape showed Leah Battles entering and leaving the DSO that night. Since the original will be destroyed, there won’t be anything to refute what I say. The ethics decision is fortuitous. After the ethics committee issued their decision to go forward with her court-martial, Lieutenant Battles knew you possessed a copy of the security tape and asked to meet with you outside the office for a drink,” he said to Stanley. “When you agreed, she forced you at gunpoint to come to your apartment to get that tape, which she believed to be in your briefcase.”
He addressed Battles. “Detective Crosswhite and I, upon reviewing the original tape, learned that the two of you left together in Captain Stanley’s car. Using deductive reasoning I won’t bore you with, we found you here. You had Captain Stanley’s gun, which won’t be difficult for anyone to believe once they review the Krav Maga video I sent to Detective Crosswhite earlier this week. Detective Crosswhite entered the apartment first and you managed to shoot her, but I managed to shoot you.”
Tracy looked at Stanley and her mind went white, completely and totally blank. It was as if someone had wiped it clean, removed all the clutter, then started it again, allowing her to see things as she might not have, in a manner she hadn’t even considered until that very moment. She’d read somewhere of a phenomenon referred to as “the eureka effect”—when a person suddenly understands a previously incomprehensible problem or concept.
“He’s going to kill you,” Tracy said to Stanley.
Battles and Stanley shifted their gaze, uncertain to whom Tracy was speaking. Tracy looked directly at Stanley. “He’s going to kill you.”
Stanley looked perplexed but tried to laugh off the comment.
“He has to. You had the copy of the tape and provided it to me—that copy has been edited. But the original still exists. And you’re on it.”
“The original will be destroyed,” Owens said, his voice calm.
“Think about it,” Tracy said. “How is he going to explain that tape in my office that came from you? How’s he going to explain who edited it?”
“I’ll say it was Battles,” Owens said.
“But I never asked for the tape,” Battles said, seeing Tracy’s logic.
“You’d be questioned, at the very least,” Tracy said to Stanley. “He can’t take that chance any more than he could take the chance that Trejo might have talked. Or that his dealer in Seattle might have talked. So now he’s going to get you to shoot me. Then he’s going to kill you.”
“Shut up,” Owens said. Tracy turned to him. She knew he couldn’t shoot her, not with his own gun, which was a different caliber than Stanley’s weapon, a .38. He needed Stanley to use her gun for everything to work.
“Think about it,” Tracy said to Stanley. “That gun, your gun, has your fingerprints all over it. He’s going to say you shot me and he shot the two of you.”
Stanley glanced at Owens, perhaps beginning to comprehend her situation.
“She’s trying to confuse you,” he said.
“You pull that trigger and he’s going to shoot you. It’s common logic. It’s the only way he walks out of this.”
“We’re going to walk out of this together,” Owens said.
“He’s lying,” Tracy said. “Did he let Trejo walk out of it?”
“We’ll get out of it and after things die down we’ll both walk away, just like we discussed.”
“He’s lying,” Tracy repeated. “He never meant anything he said. He sees you as nothing but a junkie and he’s been playing you, just like he played me. He’s a con man and he’s conning you.”
“Shut up,” Owens said with greater force. Then to Stanley he said, “Shoot her.”
Stanley pointed the gun at Tracy.
“You pull that trigger and you’re dead,” Tracy said again. “Just think it through.”
“Shoot her, Goddamn it!”
She spoke over him. “He can’t tie all the pieces together with you still alive.”
“Shoot her!”
“He has to blame someone for the edited security tape. How’s he going to do that with you still alive?”
“She’s lying. I’ll say it was Battles. Shoot her.”
“But the tape came from you,” Tracy said. “You requested it. And they’re not going to destroy the original. I told them to hold it as police evidence. You’re on that tape. He knows it.”
Owens redirected his aim at Stanley. “Shoot her, dammit. Or I’ll shoot you.”
“That’s the evidence he needs, irrefutable. You’re on that tape, a junkie. You were working with Battles and Trejo to get the heroin because you’re a junkie. That’s the story he’s going to tell. It’s the only story that makes sense.”
Stanley’s hand quivered. Her eyes became two black spheres of doubt. She was figuring out that Tracy was telling the truth.
Tracy flinched on purpose, as if going for her gun. Owens redirected his aim at her but didn’t pull the trigger. “You see, he can’t shoot me. It’s the wrong caliber gun. He needs you to do it.”
“Shoot her,” Owens urged.
Tracy spoke louder, her voice rising over Owens’s voice and the increasing noise from the storm outside. “Don’t do it. It’s the only way you might walk out of here alive.”
“Idiot,” Owens said and he shifted the gun to Stanley. She too readjusted her aim. The guns exploded in the small apartment, three reverberating blasts, two from Owens’s gun and one from Stanley’s. The shots propelled Stanley backward as if she were a puppet tied to a jerked string. She crashed hard into the wall, slumping to the floor.
Owens had turned his upper body sideways, reducing the size of the target. Stanley’s bullet exploded in the Sheetrock behind him, leaving a large pucker wound.
Tracy didn’t deduce this as it all happened. She hadn’t deduced any of it in real time. She’d dropped at the first movement, as she’d been trained, knowing escape was impossible, knowing that her gun remained on the floor and was her only hope. She hit the ground, grabbed her gun, and rolled onto her side, taking aim at Owens.
About to pull the trigger, Tracy froze. Leah Battles struck in a series of lightning-fast movements. Battles had Owens’s gun and arms raised over his head and delivered a debilitating knee to his groin, dropping him as she wrenched free his weapon and stepped back, out of Owens’s reach. She spoke over her shoulder to Tracy, though her focus, and her aim, remained on Owens. “Do you play chess, Detective?”
“Like I said, not very often and not very well.”
“Too bad. I got a hunch that, with some practice, you’d be a badass chess player too.”
CHAPTER 46