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“Because I wanted to believe he was telling the truth. I wanted to believe he didn’t kill a cop.”
“There’s no physical evidence tying him to the murder,” Hans said, looking up from the report he was reading. “It’s the only murder he didn’t confess to.”
“That’s not going to sway a jury, not when a cop is a victim.”
“Without hard evidence, the U.S. Attorney isn’t going to go for the death penalty,” Hans said. “Considering all his other victims are criminals, a jury may be more lenient than if he were killing truly innocent people.”
There was evidence somewhere. A security camera that caught Mallory near the scene of the murder. Trace evidence. A witness who didn’t know what he or she was seeing. He might have to work for it, but there would be something to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mallory killed Cody Lorenzo.
Lorenzo had been a cop doing his job. There had to be justice for him. Noah couldn’t tolerate a cop killer getting off lightly.
“There’s something else,” Abigail said. “Do you remember the flowers Lucy received on Monday? She thought that Lorenzo was stalking her because when Rogan went to the florist, they had a record of a cash transaction and the sender was Cody Lorenzo. But they don’t require identification to send flowers.”
“And it wasn’t Lorenzo?”
“ERT said the card attached to the flowers and the fake suicide note were written by the same person.”
It took Noah a moment for the information to sink in. “So Mallory wrote both of them? He sent Lucy the flowers and used Lorenzo’s name.”
“Appears so,” Abigail said.
“But why?” Hans asked. “To set Cody up? To make the suicide seem more plausible?”
“He planned it,” Noah said, even more angry with Mallory now than before. “That bastard. I’m going back to the jail to talk to him. He’s been manipulating people for far too long, and he’s going to have to pay the price.” He picked up the phone.
Hans said, “Noah, I understand your feelings about Mick Mallory, but he’s a smart guy. If he wanted Cody’s death to look like a suicide, I think we’d have more doubts about whether it was murder or suicide.”
“This all came down in a few days,” Noah said. “Lorenzo was breathing down the neck of someone—Mallory? Fran Buckley? I don’t know, but he was on to something. He and Lucy were the only ones looking into the deaths of the parolees, but Lucy wasn’t out in public asking questions or pulling police reports. Cody Lorenzo must have talked to the wrong person. I don’t see how else this could be playing out.”
Hans frowned. “That all makes sense. But—it just doesn’t fit Mallory’s M.O.”
“Maybe he sent someone else to do it. That’s why it was so sloppy.” He said to Abigail, “We need someone to look into Fran Buckley’s murder of Parker Weatherby in Boston. Four years ago—”
“It was four years ago last October,” she said.
“You already looked into it?”
“Just the facts of the case, after Mallory mentioned it. No suspects; the police think robbery was the motive. A couple of paintings showed up over the last two years, but nothing that led to who fenced them.”
“We need to put Buckley in Boston that night,” Noah said. “Anything—credit card information, a plane ticket, a stray hair they couldn’t match DNA evidence to. We need something solid to get her to flip.”
“I’m on it. Can I call in Rick Stockton’s help if I need it?”
“Whatever it takes,” Noah said. After Abigail left, he said to Hans, “We can’t let Buckley walk. We can only hold her for three days, and Mallory’s statement isn’t going to be enough to keep her locked up. Her lawyer is right about that.”
“I doubt she’d flee.”
“We can’t count on that. Hans, I know how this case can be played in the media. We’ll lose a lot of ground if Jager decides to play to the cameras.”
“But we have the facts on our side.”
“Jager is right about public sentiment. No one cares if a few sick predators are dead. But what I truly fear is that if Buckley gets away with it, more private citizens will take the law into their own hands. As Lucy said, it would be anarchy.”
“I don’t disagree with you, Noah.”
Noah swore under his breath. “We’ll have to offer a plea, won’t we?”
“Fran Buckley killed a man in Boston—a man who had never been convicted of a crime. He was probably guilty, but he still didn’t have his day in court, and while our system is imperfect, it’s damn good. If our former FBI agents and cops start acting like judge, jury, and executioner, society will suffer. So yeah, the U.S. Attorney will plead. But none of our conspirators are ever getting out of prison.”
