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“Lay it out for me.” Eve gestured. “How the two of you planned it, picked the nest, stalked Michaelson.”
“Seriously? What’s the point?”
“The record. You’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Anything’s better.”
But with a huge sigh, Willow laid it out.
She spoke of her father drinking, starting on illegals after Susann died. His anger, depression.
“Just sitting around the apartment most of the time, half-drunk, half-stoned, especially after that fuckhead lawyer told him no chance for a suit, for his day in court. I pulled him out.” Fiercely, Willow jabbed her fingers at her own chest. “I got him out of that hole.”
“How did you do that?”
“Crying’s for losers. He needed to get pissed. Take action. They fucked with us? We fuck with them, and we fuck harder.”
Eve leaned back. “You’re trying to tell us it was your idea? This mission? Killing Michaelson, Officer Russo, Jonah Rothstein, and the others on the hit list—including innocent bystanders of your choice—was your idea?”
“Is something wrong with your hearing? Do you need me to speak louder?”
“Watch your tone.”
Willow merely flicked a sneer at Peabody’s order. “Oh, fuck you and your tone. You want me to lay it out because you’re all too stupid to see it. I’m laying it out.”
“Why not start with Fine?” Eve demanded. “He’s the one who killed Susann. He was driving the vehicle that struck her.”
“What, are you brain dead? We hit Fine, even an asshole cop could make a connection to Dad. We end with Fine.”
“He wanted to save Fine until last.”
Once again Willow leaned forward, sneering. “Did you get the part where I said he was drunk and stoned most of the time? Crying into his brew the other half? I figured the who and where and when. You think he could come up with a mission? He couldn’t get out of his own way until I pulled him out of it.”
“You pulled him out by suggesting you kill the people you felt were culpable in Susann’s death.”
“You could say I laid it out for him—and put conditions on it.” Picking up her fizzy again, she gestured with it. “He had to cut back on the booze and the funk, pull himself to-fucking-gether. He mostly stopped drinking altogether. Funk’s harder, but he throttled back a little. And when my old man’s himself, he knows how to plan ops.
“He came up with adding to the range, so we took a few more trips out west, and I worked on my skills. He’s a damn good instructor when he’s on.”
“You stalked your targets, got their routines, and/or researched where they’d be at certain times. Like Jonah Rothstein. You knew he’d be at Madison Square for the concert.”
“The guy was a raging fan-o-holic. Counting down the days, then the hours till he saw that old, totally over rocker. My dad, he did most of the research, but I helped when I could get away from Zoe—that’s the bio-tube where I incubated. And I picked the nests. He wanted closer initially, but then he saw I could do it.”
“How long did you work on the plan, on the details?”
“A good, solid year. He needed to clean up, at least some. We needed to stockpile weapons, the IDs, walk through the strategies and tactics.”
“You moved out of his apartment.”
“We needed a secure HQ, so yeah, bit by bit we moved what we needed to the new place. We knew we’d have to move fast when we started, hit targets daily, keep the chaos going. You got lucky, nailing down our ID.”
“Is that what you call it when somebody’s better than you, smarter than you? Luck?”
“Give me half a break. If you were so good, so smart, I wouldn’t have to sit here spoon-feeding you every detail. You’d already know.”
“Got me there,” Eve said, because she did. She saw it all, in hideous detail. “Don’t stop now. Educate me.”
20
