Chương 5
“Grant is a suspect.”
“So you said.”
“I have his voice ordering them to take the ledger and leave no witness.”
Ruiz’s expression did not change, but the coffee cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Where is this recording?”
“On a phone.”
“Whose?”
“One of the intruders.”
“Where is he?”
“In a truck outside.”
Violet stared at him. Dr. Patel muttered something under her breath.
Ruiz put the lid back on her coffee.
“I need you to answer the next question very carefully. Did he come here voluntarily?”
Ethan thought of Marcus against the warehouse wall, the safe striking the floor, his own hand beside the young man’s head.
“He got into the truck voluntarily.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“He can leave.”
“Can he?”
“Yes.”
Ruiz watched him for another second. “Take me to him.”
Violet said, “No.”
Everyone looked at her.
She pulled the blanket higher around her shoulders. “Grant is downstairs.”
Ruiz said, “Detective Grant left five minutes ago.”
“He said he was leaving,” Violet replied. “Then I heard him outside the scan room.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“He has a cough.”
Ethan remembered it. A dry double cough Grant covered with his fist when he spoke about Laura’s autopsy.
Ruiz set the coffee on a windowsill.
“Dr. Patel, can you move Violet to a secured unit?”
“I can move her to a private room.”
“Do that. Don’t put the room number in the public visitor system.”
Dr. Patel nodded.
Ruiz turned to Ethan. “You’re going to give me the phone.”
“Not until I know Grant can’t take it.”
“I’m not Grant.”
“You work with him.”
“I work in the same department.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
“No, but it’s true.”
Violet said, “Dad.”
Ethan looked at her.
“Give her the phone.”
“You don’t know her.”
“Neither do you.”
There was Laura in the shape of that sentence. Not the sound of her voice, which Violet had only faintly, but the refusal to let Ethan confuse suspicion with judgment.
Ruiz said, “I can call Internal Affairs. We photograph the device in your presence, place it in an evidence bag, and document every hand that touches it. You can call an attorney before surrendering it. That protects the evidence and you.”
“And Marcus?”
“If he participated in the home invasion, he’ll be arrested.”
“He can identify Grant.”
“Then he needs protection and counsel, not the passenger seat of a stolen truck.”
“It’s his truck.”
Ruiz rubbed her forehead. “That is somehow worse.”
A hospital security officer hurried around the corner.
“Detective, we have a disturbance at the ambulance entrance.”
Ethan was already moving.
Ruiz caught his sleeve. “Walking speed, Mr. Cole.”
They reached the entrance to find Marcus on his knees in the rain with two patrol officers pointing their weapons at him. The pickup’s driver-side window was shattered. Blood ran from a shallow cut above Marcus’s eyebrow, mixing with rain along his cheek.
Ethan stopped beneath the awning.
Marcus looked at him.
“He came through the garage,” Marcus shouted. “Grant came through the garage.”
One of the officers ordered him to be quiet.
Ruiz showed her badge and took control of the scene. She had the officers lower their weapons, then asked Marcus to place his hands behind his head.
Marcus obeyed.
“Did Detective Grant strike you?” she asked.
“No. He smashed the window.”
“With what?”
“His gun.”
“Did you see it clearly?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Marcus looked toward Ethan.
Ruiz stepped into his line of sight. “Look at me.”
Marcus did.
“He said I should have drowned with my brother.”
The rain seemed to sharpen.
Ruiz asked, “Who is your brother?”
“Caleb Hale. He died in police custody three years ago.”
Ethan looked at Marcus. “You told me Grant threatened your brother.”
“I said he owned me.”
“You let me assume he was alive.”
“I didn’t correct you.”
Ruiz crouched in front of Marcus.
“Caleb Hale died during a transport van accident,” she said.
“That’s what Grant wrote.”
“You have evidence otherwise?”
Marcus laughed, then winced because of the cut. “That’s why I did jobs for him.”
“That doesn’t answer me.”
“He had a video. Caleb in a holding room. Grant and another cop were asking where he hid money from a port robbery. Caleb couldn’t tell them because there wasn’t any money.”
“You saw the video?”
“Grant showed me twelve seconds.”
“Why?”
“To explain what happened to people who made him look stupid.”
Ruiz stood slowly.
Ethan said, “Where is Grant now?”
Marcus nodded toward the hospital garage. “He took the phone.”
Ethan reached inside his jacket.
The phone was gone.
For one second he thought Marcus meant his own device beneath the truck seat. Then his fingers touched the empty inner pocket where he had put Marcus’s cracked smartphone.
He searched the outer pockets. Ray’s license remained. Violet’s birthday envelope remained. The phone did not.
Ruiz saw his face.
“When did you last have it?”
“In the warehouse.”
“Did you check before entering the hospital?”
“No.”
“Could Marcus have taken it?”
Marcus looked insulted. “While he was driving?”
Ruiz ordered an officer to search the pickup. The phone was not under the passenger seat. The floor mat was wet and streaked where someone had reached beneath it.
Grant had known exactly where to look.
“He took the evidence,” Ethan said.
Ruiz looked toward the security camera above the entrance.
“Maybe,” she said, “he left us different evidence.”
The garage footage should have made everything simple. It did not.
The camera covering the loading zone had been turned toward the ambulance ramp fifteen minutes before Grant entered the garage. Another recorded a figure in a dark coat approaching Marcus’s pickup, but the lens was fogged and the angle showed only the man’s back. The patrol officers had not seen Grant. A nurse smoking near the service door had heard glass break but could not identify anyone.
May you like
Grant’s access badge showed him leaving the hospital through the public entrance two minutes before the attack.
Ruiz watched the footage twice in a small security office. Ethan stood behind her. Marcus sat handcuffed to a chair in the corridor, a gauze pad taped above his eyebrow.
