Free The Detective's Dilemma by Kate Rothwell Page A

couldn’t help smiling. She wasn’t going to let him get away with anything.
    “On occasion.”
    Her gaze seemed curious and as hostile as ever. “How did you end up working for people like the Winthrops, Detective Walker?”
    If she’d been sympathetic or sweet, he would have made a joking remark. But something about her scorn let him answer with the truth. “I put a murder weapon in the murderer’s home. Someone else had removed it earlier. That’s tampering with evidence. Both of us were guilty of that crime, one of removing the weapon, and the other of putting it back, but the first guy was working for the bosses.”
    She raised her brows. “What do you mean?”
    “The people protecting the murderer—they knew exactly what I’d done, because they’d helped keep the murderer out of prison. I tampered with evidence with one of their ‘clients.’”
    She still didn’t speak.
    “That’s it.” He rubbed his face with both hands. “They have what it takes to send me to jail. A cop in prison ends up dead, especially one who has had rumors spread about him by paid informants.”
    She gave a small huff of laughter. “You have almost more reason to run than I do. Perhaps you should join us.”
    “I’ve thought about taking off, but I’m waiting,” he said. “They won’t stay in power forever, and I want to be there when they topple. Hell, I want to help push them down.”
    “Have you talked to others who are bound as you are?”
    “The ones I’ve talked to are in it for the money. Being a crooked cop can be a profitable enterprise.”
    She looked him up and down the way he’d examined her a couple of minutes earlier. “You must spend your share on something other than your wardrobe. It’s a good suit but at least six years old.”
    Here they sat talking about the darkest moments of his career, and he wanted to laugh. She amused the hell out of him. “Oh, I don’t get the sugar. They have enough of a hold on me so they figure there’s no need to bribe me as well.” He did laugh then. “I’ve dreamed of throwing the money back in their faces if they tried to pay me—like a small boy’s fantasy, I expect. Standing up to bullies.”
    “You’re not a small boy.”
    “Meaning you expect me to take the high road because I’m all grown up?” He jeered. “Easy to do if you can know what the darned road looks like.”
    “All right, you got caught, but now you know those men are watching. They wouldn’t catch you again doing whatever it was you did.” Her pretty forehead wrinkled. “I wonder why you were careless when you planted the evidence.”
    That stung. “I played dirty, but here’s the thing. I was never actually caught. They figured out what I’d done, and they played dirtier. They found ‘witnesses’ who had nothing to do with the case and were nowhere near the scene of the crime. They decided not to accuse me of the crime I committed, by the way.” He wondered if the lady who owned the apartment kept any liquor.
    “Why don’t you just leave? Start again somewhere else?”
    “When I took the job…” He shook his head. No point in describing the hell he’d created within his family. His always stubborn, stiff-necked father had become as unbending as an iron rod. To walk away would mean living through the whole idiocy for nothing. His father wasn’t the only stubborn idiot in the family. Except that old, stupid argument didn’t lie at the core of his reasons for staying on the job, did it? Stubbornness and something else, perhaps that core of idealism. And the fact that he couldn’t think of anything else in life he was suited for.
    He tried again. “Do you remember the candy factory fire, a few years back? A boiler exploded. The whole brownstone front of the building collapsed and caught on fire, sheets of flame, lots of smoke.”
    “On Barclay Street, I read about it in the paper and you obviously remember far more clearly. Does that mean you were there? My gosh.”