The message was for him, for those above him. ‘I’m thinking it’s whites who offed Pitt, wanted him silenced.’
‘Gosh, fuck, I have an alibi.’
She released her grip on the chair, paced in slow-step at the far side of the room. His chin was lifted for the face-off, mouth amused, eyes remote. It was how his ilk took on life, death, adapted to the reality, the routine of steel doors, lock-downs and diminished existence. Home ground. He was someone in here, an irrelevance outside.
‘Forgotten my smokes?’ he called out. ‘C’mon. You’re s’posed to bribe me, fence, dance a little. Bad cop, good cop. How can we talk if I don’t have nicotine?’
‘You don’t seem to want to talk.’
‘Unbutton, frig yourself on the table, we could chat all day.’
‘Role-play? That your thing?’
‘Try me.’
Her delivery was slow, targeted. ‘Are you a member of the Forresters?’
‘Say what?’ He had not blinked, but unease flooded in on a micro-shudder. She waited. ‘Don’t understand what you’re saying.’
She would not come back immediately, wanted to exploit the discomfort. ‘You understand self-incrimination, though. That what bothers you?’
‘Nothing bothers me. ’Cept some dumbass female gash who doesn’t know when to quit.’
‘And what frightens you? Swinging on piano-wire like Duncan Pitt?’ She had plucked the manila envelope from a side-table, held it close beneath her arm. ‘Might happen if they think you’re a risk.’
‘Reckon you’re higher on the termination schedule.’
‘Maybe.’ She stepped towards the table.
‘What you carrying? Want to make it my baby?’ The line came cheap and shallow from the throat, fell irresolute, went unanswered.
The large, full-colour photographic – wholly graphic – stills were laid out before him. She dealt them carefully, playing her Joker, did not want him to miss the close-ups, the implications. ‘Seems your buddies, your neo-Nazi cell from Airborne days, have gotten careless.’ Her sightline intercepted his. ‘Still think you’re indispensable?’
‘Never seen him before.’
‘Certainly not in that configuration.’
It was a wet, ragged and bright-red scene, the aftermath to the aftermath of the shootings at the Million Clenched Fists rally in Washington DC. The sniper was stamped and spread cartoonishly, his remains rolled shapeless and absurd beyond their natural contours. An army had come that way and left him in its wake, the crushed detritus of an advance.
She studied the prisoner’s face. It was pale beneath the fish-anaemic skin, had thrown up a fever secretion to glisten on the forehead and upper lip. Making him sweat. She had struck home, hit low.
‘I’ve brought the autopsy pics if you’re interested,’ she commented evenly. ‘But these seem pretty self-explanatory.’
‘Not to me, it don’t, I’m uneducated, Special Agent. You want to make it plain?’
‘I was hoping you’d do that. See, Rod here – the recently deceased – was a close friend of yours. Same political beliefs, same tattoos, same ambitions. You were even dismissed from the unit together, 82nd Airborne, for your violent right-wing leanings.’
He bristled. ‘I’m a good soldier.’
‘And a fine Forrester.’
‘There you go again, making accusations, putting ideas into heads, words into mouths.’ Survival slyness crept from behind puckered sockets. ‘Mighty hazardous.’
‘I get paid. What’s in it for you? Esprit de corps, brotherhood of arms, hanging out with maladjusted cons who think they’re a master race?’
‘Look for the signs, lady.’
‘I’m doing better than that – I’m finding patterns. First, an ex-paratrooper, your friend, employed to shoot down black leaders, who is stampeded before the law gets to him. Next, a professor who came too close, discovered too much and is found rotting in a tree. A lot of loose ends being tied.’
‘A lot of brain cells strained. You’re way off.’
‘You’ve a limited shelf-life. They’ll find out I’m onto you, link you to Rod, the Forresters, flag up the curious fact of your immunity during the prison killings of other white supremacists. Think they’ll still want you breathing?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Two deaths. What’s another? You’re just a rapist on a long stretch.’
‘You’re just a whore gonna get herself jumped.’
‘The shower-block, the canteen, workshop, library, your cell. Anywhere. They’ll find you. They’ve got the reach.’
‘Yeah, they do.’ His eyes were wide, hostility-reddened. ‘Watch your back, Special Agent.’
‘I’m watching yours. You’re a condemned man.’
‘Bullshit.’ He was losing equilibrium, dropping syntax.
‘Stop-watch is running. Tick-tock.’ She spread her fingers, pushed the images closer. ‘Look at the photographs. That how you want to exit, like Rod – duped by your own side, scraped up? Or you prefer something more dramatic, heroic, say colliding with a press helicopter over Highway 80?’
