Chapter 19 #3
Kincaid's expression sharpened with satisfaction. “Oh,” he said. “You should know better than to listen to rumors, Javier. It can be very destabilizing to introduce that sort of divisive speculation to an otherwise cohesive team.”
The trick was not to listen to what Kincaid said; it was to remember what he wanted.
“You started the rumor?”
Kincaid scoffed as he pointed a finger at his chest. “Me?” he said.
“Please, that’s amateur hour. No, it was an invasive rumor that had already established itself.
I just replanted it locally. A few years back, Gardner was part of a task force that fucked up badly.
The rest of the team went all in on a cover-up, but he sold them out to IA in return for a slap on the wrist and a clean record.
The idea he’d actually been working for IA all the time was just gossip inflation, but it made him useful when I was looking to bring some new blood in here. Why?”
He was an asshole.
That wasn’t news. It still stuck in Javi’s craw.
“All of that just to fuck with me?” he asked.
Kincaid gave a splutter of amusement. “No,” he said. “That was to protect my stake in the Horvats investigation, Javier. You’re just collateral damage.”
“And Deputy Witte?”
“He’s not on me,” Kincaid said. He pointed the nub of the pen at Javi. “You’re the one who fell for a man with the sort of damage that made him a problem. I just had to navigate it. And, yeah, Gardner was useful, but he’s kudzu, not my dog. Why?”
The answer stuck in Javi’s throat. He wanted to tell Kincaid to stuff it and go find Cloister. It felt cleaner working with him. But if he did, he’d be cut out of Kincaid’s investigation. If they found Eric, alive or dead, he’d never know.
He couldn’t do that.
Now that he knew what it was like to not have that on his conscience, he couldn’t go back.
“Spit it out first, come to terms with it later,” Kincaid suggested. He tapped his wrist. “Your minute’s almost up.”
“If Gardner’s not in your pocket,” he said, “why did he cut Fowler loose?”
Kincaid shrugged. “Local cops are incompetent,” he said. “No one ever suspected. Not exactly going to blow up on X, is it?”
“He said that the sister called to plead his case,” Javi said. “There is one, but she didn’t.”
Something in Kincaid’s gaze sharpened as he took that in. He glanced back at the one-way glass to watch Fowler lose his patience with the malfunctioning call button and toss it aside. The cheap bit of plastic rattled against the side of the stretcher as it fell.
“Maybe Fowler spun him a story about a needy sibling?” he said.
“He said that Fowler’s house had been foreclosed on,” Javi said. “That wasn’t true, but Fowler was briefly on our radar.”
“Fuck me,” Kincaid sighed resignedly as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s all I need.”
“He was on there because of protesting the bank foreclosing on local properties,” Javi went on, ignoring Kincaid’s brief vision of oversight panels to come. “But he didn’t get arrested, so how would Gardner have known?”
He waited.
Kincaid’s eyes squinted as he thought about it. He tapped the chewed pencil against the side of his mouth as he reluctantly made the reach.
“If you could find that info,” he said. “Joel could. It would explain why she was there.”
Javi pulled his phone out of his pocket and swiped the lock screen off. The call log that Sue had pulled for him was already open. He handed the phone to Kincaid and tapped the relevant line.
“That’s Eric’s number. Miles? He called Joel,” he said. “And that was after Fowler had been taken away.”
Kincaid slid off the table. The soles of his shoes thumped against the floor as he landed.
“How did you get this?” he demanded.
“I did my job,” Javi said. He’d already texted Sue to make sure the phone records were logged with other evidence.
With luck, Kincaid wouldn’t find out the shuffle to keep them from under his notice had been deliberate.
“It’s a UC number of Joel’s. The same one she was using in Phoenix.
It’s the one she’d have given him to call if he needed to go under the radar.
It’s the one he’d reach out to now that Saul’s dead. ”
“He could have called you?” Kincaid parried, without much passion. “Why not?”
“Eric wasn’t stupid,” Javi said. “As much as what we had…what he thought we had…mattered to him, he knew I was your creature. I guess he doesn’t much trust you.”
People said a lot of things about Kincaid. Most of them were true, all of them were deserved. No one said he wasn’t adaptable. As the wheels began to almost visibly move behind his eyes, Kincaid tossed the phone to Javi.
“So you think Gardner is in the Horvats’ pocket, that they fed him the orders to cut Fowler loose?” he said and then nodded slowly in agreement. “Could be. What does that change?”
Javi stepped up to stand next to Kincaid. He nodded at Fowler. “Because if Gardner is, then maybe he isn’t?” he asked. “Not willingly, at least. He’s smart, but other than that, his background reads more like a patsy than an operator. Maybe all you have there is the dog, not the handler.”