“What the hell has gotten into people?” Hector mused, shaking his head. Another woman flipped us all off as the glass doors closed.
“We need more officers for crowd control, and the state police haven’t arrived yet,” Oscar said. He gave me a sharp glance. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Then you shouldn’t have told me Russo has a missing piece of the puzzle.”
“It wasn’t my call.”
“It was mine,” came the voice of a woman in a flak jacket with the yellow FBI letters emblazoned on the back as she emerged from a nearby office. She wore her dark hair swept back in a tight bun. Hector moved so she could approach. “I’m Amanda Issa, FBI,” she said, holding out her hand. I shook it, and she grasped my palm tightly.
“This is my Marine buddy in the FBI,” Oscar explained.
Issa looked at me with dark, intelligent eyes. “I know you want to nail this guy as much as I do.”
I nodded. “More,” I said.
A slight smile curved her lip. “Then make him talk. The more you get on the record before he lawyers up, the better we’ll all be.”Issa glanced at her smartwatch. “All the best camera-hogging defense attorneys across the nation will be banging down his cell door any minute. We don’t have much time.”
I nodded. “Whatever you need from me.”
“Just get him to let his guard down and talk. He’s in interrogation room one.”
“Handcuffed to the table,” Oscar said. “For your safety. We’ll be behind the glass, ready to intervene if you need anything.”
Russo looked disheveled, his sandy hair uncombed and the orange sheriff’s jumper open three buttons at the neck. Silver handcuffs latched his wrists to a loop in front of him on the silver table, which, I noticed, was also helpfully bolted to the ground.
Russo watched me with razor-sharp blue eyes that lightened a bit when they saw me, his thick mouth curving up into a lazy, smug smile.
“I knew you couldn’t resist seeing me, kid,” he said. “I knew it. There is something special between us.”
“I’m not here because I want to be. I’m here because I’m hoping to watch you burn.” I slumped down into the uncomfortable metal chair on the other side of the table, folding my arms across my chest.
“I’m not the Canceled Killer,” Russo said. “I told you that.”
“Yeah, you also drugged and kidnapped me, so pardon me if I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you better start believing me. Because you and I both know the clues don’t fit with the mayor’s murder.”
“Exactly.” I leaned forward. “So why did you leave a different lemon in the mayor’s office? What was special about that?”
Russo leaned forward. “What’s special about that is that I found that lemon in the kitchen break room at the mayor’s office. I didn’tgo thereplanning to kill him. If anything, he was trying to kill me. He swung at me first and came at me with a letter opener, believe it or not. That’s when I defended myself, and he lost his balance and fell. His temple hit the corner of the desk as he went down. He was dead before he even hit the ground.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand. So the other lemons came from somewhere else?”
Russo grinned at me. “I wouldn’t know where they came from.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m not the Canceled Killer. I told you. They’re trying to pin all these murders on me, but I didn’t do it.” He glanced at me, eyes deadly serious. “I need your help to clear my name.”
“My help?” I said and laughed. “You shot me.”
“You shot yourself,” Russo corrected.
That’s splitting hairs.
“What about Olga Duncan? Did you pay her for sex but then didn’t like it when she took another client? Did jealousy get the better of you?”
Russo hung his head. “I don’t know who the hell Olga Duncan is.” He looked at me, blue eyes earnest. Or he was a helluva good liar. “I’m not the Canceled Killer. The real killer’s still on the loose.” The chants outside got louder. Russo’s fans were shouting, “Free Russo!”
