“Shoot him!”
Carlton Lassiter tensed his muscles and waited for the lead to slam into his flesh. If he was going to die, let it be at the hands of his fellow officers.
Because he was going to die. There was no way around it. This was the kind of situation no one walked away from. Professor Langston Kitteredge had him pinned against his body with one of his massive arms; the other was pressing the bloody switchblade against his neck. Facing them was a line of guns, each in the hands of a member of the Santa Barbara Police Department. Either Lassiter was going to be brought down in a storm of police bullets or the knife at his throat was going to slit him open.
“Hold your fire!”
Lassiter tried to turn his head to see who was speaking, but the blade dug into his flesh, stopping him. It didn’t matter-he’d know that voice anywhere. It belonged to his partner.
“Don’t listen to her!” Lassiter shouted at the assembled police. “Take him down!”
“Hold your fire!” O’Hara commanded again. “We are going to end this with no bloodshed.”
Not a chance, Lassiter thought. There was going to be blood, and lots of it. His and his captor’s.
Lassiter didn’t mind dying. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. In fact, he had lots of things to live for. First up, he had tickets to see the newly re-re-reformed Journey in a week, and he was hugely curious to see if new lead singer, Angel Pineda, could fill the shoes of Jeff Scott Soto, who had failed to fill the shoes of Steve Augeri, who had in turn failed to fill the enormous vocal shoes of Steve Perry.
But though he yearned for life, Lassiter knew that death was preferable to the alternative-that a murderer go free because of him.
This was entirely his fault. There was no other way to look at it. He’d had Langston Kitteredge in his custody. He should have cuffed him to the table and forced the truth out of him. But he’d been lazy. Weak. Foolish. He’d ignored the first law of the homicide detective-to treat everyone as a suspect until proven innocent. Instead, he’d assumed that Kitteredge was a friendly witness, and failed to notice the warning signs until it was too late.
How could he have been so blind? The way Kitteredge had droned on and on, avoiding the slightest trace of useful information while drowning him in a sea of historical trivia-in retrospect, it was so obvious that this was the professor’s way of lulling him into complacency, or even into a coma. But Lassiter had treated it as if it were nothing more than an irritating tic. Now he was paying the price.
He’d had his chance to act. There was that one second when Kitteredge pulled the bloody knife out of his pocket and flicked open the blade. Lassiter hadn’t been wearing his gun in the interview room, of course-that would have been an unforgivable breach of protocol. But he was trained in hand-to-hand combat, and he had no doubt that if he’d acted swiftly enough he could have disarmed the professor. Especially since Kitteredge had spent the first couple of seconds staring down at the blade in feigned surprise, as if he’d originally hoped to convince the police that he had no idea how it had ended up in his pocket.
But before Lassiter could leap into action, the professor did. He grabbed the detective and jammed the knife’s blade against his throat.
“You did this to me!” Kitteredge whispered savagely into his ear.
“Drop the knife!” Lassiter commanded, but the professor didn’t seem to hear him.
“I know who’s behind this,” Kitteredge said. “You’re just a pawn. It’s Polidori. It’s the Cabal!”
Before Lassiter could come up with an answer, the door to the interrogation room flew open. For one brief second Lassiter’s heart leaped at the thought that SWAT was coming to take Kitteredge out. Then those idiots, Spencer and Guster, burst in.
“Professor Kitteredge, what are you doing?” Gus said.
“He’s part of it!” Kitteredge shouted.
“If you mean part of the reason American policemen have such a bad reputation, I can’t argue with you,” Shawn said. “Beyond that, I don’t think he’s part of anything.”
“He’s part of the conspiracy,” Kitteredge said. “They killed Clay Filkins and now they’re framing me for it. And he knows who’s behind it.”
“Lassie?” Shawn said. “He doesn’t know who’s behind anything. The music. The green door. The Valley of the Dolls.”
“I think that last one is beyond,” Gus said.
“He doesn’t know any beyonds, either,” Shawn said. “In fact, he really doesn’t know much of anything. Which he’ll be happy to demonstrate if you’ll let him go.”
“I can’t!” Kitteredge said. “I’ve gotten too close to them, and they’ll do anything to stop me. But I won’t let them.” Kitteredge’s blade dug deeper into Lassiter’s throat. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I will if I have to.”
“Get out of here, Spencer,” Lassiter said, feeling the air pressing back against the knife as it struggled up through his constricted throat. “I can handle this.”
“Yes, I can see you’re right on top of things,” Shawn said. “Sorry we interrupted.”
Shawn turned back toward the door. Gus grabbed his arm. “We can’t just leave them here.”
“You heard what Lassie said,” Shawn said. “He’s got it under control.”
“But this is all a terrible mistake,” Gus said. “Professor K thinks Lassie framed him, Lassie thinks the professor is a murderer, and unless we can convince them they’re both wrong, somebody is going to get hurt. Or killed.”
“That’s why I said we should have gone to the C. Thomas Howell Film Festival instead of the museum,” Shawn said. While he was talking he started to move around the edges of the room. “Very few people have ever died watching CyberMaster, and those who have all worked on the film and realized only while they were watching the credits that they forgot to request to be listed by their pseudonyms. Whereas everyone knows that nine-tenths of the murders in the free world happen in art museums.”
It took Gus a moment to figure out what Shawn was doing, but then he realized. He was trying to get behind Kitteredge.
“What are you talking about?” Gus said. If there was any chance for Shawn’s plan to work, Gus had to keep the professor’s eyes on him. “This isn’t about museum crime. This is about a global conspiracy-one that’s already claimed one victory tonight and is about to take two more. We can’t let that happen.”
Kitteredge turned to Gus with gratitude in his eyes. For a moment, the hand holding the knife seemed to relax.
“Now!” Gus shouted. Which might have been exactly the right thing to say if Shawn had been the only one in the room planning to make a move. Because at Gus’ command, Shawn leaped across the room to tackle Kitteredge.
Unfortunately, Shawn wasn’t the only one in the room planning to make a move. Lassiter was, too. And as he felt the knife slacken away from his throat, he drove an elbow straight back into Kitteredge’s stomach. The professor doubled at the point of impact-and Shawn flew right over him, crashing onto the table, then sliding off and landing hard on the floor.
Lassiter struggled to free himself, but even as he gasped for breath the professor wouldn’t let go. He jammed the knife back against the detective’s throat as he pulled himself upright again.
Kitteredge dragged Lassiter to the interrogation room door. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. Then he turned a baleful eye on Gus. “You don’t understand the forces you’re dealing with.”
Kitteredge shoved Lassiter to the door, pulled it open, and dragged him through, making sure it closed behind them. From inside, Lassiter could hear Gus, and then Shawn and Gus, pounding to be let out.
The squad room was still only about half full as the night shift filtered out and the day watch began to check in. But there were at least twenty police officers and detectives between Kitteredge and the front door. And there was no way Lassiter was going to allow him to get away. Not even if it cost him his life. “He’s got a knife!” Lassiter shouted.
From across the squad room, guns flew out of holsters, of drawers, of lockers. They were all pointed directly at Kitteredge-and at him.
“Put down your weapons,” Kitteredge said. “No one needs to get hurt.”
“Don’t listen to him!” Lassiter commanded, bracing himself for the sweet sting of lead. “Shoot!”
“Hold your fire,” O’Hara said.
She stepped into Lassiter’s line of sight. She wouldn’t look at his face, though. No doubt she was as ashamed of what he’d allowed to happen as he was. She stared directly over Lassiter’s shoulder into Kitteredge’s eyes.
“Professor Kitteredge,” she said as calmly as if she were going to offer him a stick of gum, “I need you to drop the weapon.”
“I can’t do that,” Kitteredge said. “They’re coming for me.”
“And we can protect you,” O’Hara said.
“Like you protected Filkins?” Kitteredge said. “He was killed right under your noses.”
“We didn’t know about the conspiracy before,” O’Hara said. “Now we do, thanks to you. And with your help, we can shut it down for good.”
“Stop talking to him,” Lassiter barked. “Move away and shoot him.”
“You’re not helping, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “Besides, Professor Kitteredge needs you alive, because you have special knowledge about the conspiracy. If you die, it dies with you.”
“There is no conspiracy,” Lassiter nearly shrieked with frustration. “There’s just a lunatic with a knife at my throat-and you can’t let him get away!”
O’Hara shot him a brief, chiding look, then turned her attention back to Kitteredge. “We can help you, Professor,” she said. “We can work together to figure out who killed Filkins, and who put that bloody knife in your pocket.”
For a moment, Lassiter felt the blade’s pressure ease on his throat. Then it was jammed back into place.
“I can’t trust anybody,” Kitteredge said. “You might have planted the knife.”
“But I didn’t,” O’Hara said. “What can I do to convince you of that?”
“Don’t convince him,” Lassiter said. “Shoot him.”
“Quiet, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “Professor Kitteredge, I swear to you that I am no part of any conspiracy, and neither is my partner. I will do whatever it takes to make you see that as long as you don’t hurt him. So tell me now, before things get ugly-what is it you want?”
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Kitteredge said. “You’ve got to let me go.”
“Don’t do it!” Lassiter shouted.
“You won’t get far,” O’Hara said. “Every police officer in this city will be looking for you.”
“At least this way I have a chance to find out the truth before they get me,” Kitteredge said.
Lassiter stared at O’Hara, mentally sending the order for her to shoot. Astonishingly, she managed to ignore it. Instead, she did the one thing Lassiter dreaded more than anything else in the world. She nodded.
Then she held up a hand to the officers. “Weapons down,” she commanded. Some of the officers complied immediately. Others just stared at her, keeping their guns leveled at Kitteredge. “I said weapons down!” she said. “Now!”
This time there was no questioning her intent. The other officers stood down.
“Let him go and run,” O’Hara said.
“Other way around,” Kitteredge said. “I take him with me, and I leave him in a safe place once I know I’m not being followed.”
“Don’t do this, Detective,” Lassiter said.
She thought it over for a moment, then nodded again. “If anything happens to him-”
“Then you’d better find the moles in your own department,” Kitteredge said. “Because I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
He took a step toward the front door, then stopped, waiting to see if anyone was going to come for him. But the police officers were frozen in place. He took another step, dragging Lassiter with him, then moved swiftly toward the front door. He kicked it open and disappeared through it.