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“It’s alright.” I moved to the door. “It’s Cartwright.”
He was somebody who could identify and bypass motion detectors.
I was at the door and turning the knob when Peralta said, “Don’t…”
But it was too late.
Ed Cartwright stood before me with a gun in my face.
Behind him it was snowing.
“Get that expression off your face, David,” he said. “You look like a six-year-old whose kitten just died.”
I hardened my eyes and made my dry mouth form words. “What are you doing, Ed? Put the gun down.”
“Step away from the door,” he said.
I didn’t move.
His sling was gone. His appearance was barely controlled fury.
I felt Peralta next to me.
Cartwright spoke through clenched teeth. “Put your gun down, Mike.”
Peralta calmly drawled, “You know that’s not going to happen, Ed. What the hell are you doing?”
Cartwright kept his weapon up, the barrel straight at my chest.
It finally fell together. Here was the “other” from Eric Pham’s white board. I said, “It was you who called Sharon to the hospital when Lindsey was shot. Did you send the woman who did it?”
“Of course not, David. I was doing you a favor, sending Sharon to help you.”
I didn’t feel grateful. “Then you called me when I was in Pennington’s office. It was you, wanting to set up a meet with him. You must have thought Pennington would know how to contact Peralta. I should have realized it later, the way you changed your voice when Peralta called me back, when we were standing in the parking lot. The ‘Apache Mortgage’ shit.”
“You’re a little slow, son.”
“You were in on this with Mann.”
“No. This was my play. All I had to do was watch the Bureau get tangled up with itself. Overthink and overplan. Try to blame this poor Grayson woman who pissed off her supervisors. But from the first time he talked to me, when I was in the hospital after the shooting at the mall, I knew he was the crook.”
My hands felt heavy and useless at my side. “What does that make you? You’re a lawman, Ed. You’ve served your entire life with honor.”
“You were misinformed,” he said. “The FBI made me into a renegade. The piece-of-shit disgraced Indian. They profited from making me into that man. Now it’s my turn.”
“It’s only fifteen million, before you fence it! That makes no sense.” I was arguing personal finance with an armed man, probably not in the best mood.
“It’s enough,” he said.
Peralta spoke in a calm cadence, “Step away, Mapstone. Ed, lower your weapon or I’ll kill you where you stand. You know I’ll do it.”
He said, “And I’ll kill your boy. If that’s the way you decide to play it.”
Peralta spoke with icy calm. “We go way back, Ed. Don’t make me do this.”
“Don’t make me shoot him,” Cartwright said, indicating me. His finger was inside the trigger guard, on the trigger. My insides were turbulent with dread. I forced it down.
Cartwright kept his eyes on me “You did a good job of disappearing, Mike. Pham doesn’t have a clue where you are. But David did a better job of finding you. Now I’ll take those stones.”
