“No. If you want me to go on the record, I have to be out of the city.”
Halladay grunted and started closer toward her, but this time Jon put his hand on his partner’s shoulder.
“I don’t think she’s gonna change her mind, Frank,” he said. “Let’s concentrate on getting her out of the city quickly, so we can get what we need sooner. Besides, I think we may have some bigger fish to fry.”
Then he turned back to Carter, and talked to her about how and when they would be able to leave the city. She didn’t know exactly when Gunther would be back, but she had to wait for him because they shared a car, which was parked in the same garage as the cops’. Jon told her that he and Halladay would follow them to the bridge or tunnel exit of their choice, to keep them safe on the way. And he would have Amira send a police pass to her phone, so that if the coming of Dayfall was causing a traffic jam at that exit, the two teachers could bypass most of it.
The two cops left the condo and took the elevator back down to the lobby desk. Jon told the attendant that he should notify Nelson Gant, and only Nelson Gant, that they were there and wanted to talk to him about the twelfth floor. Then they hung out in the lobby, not seeing Gunther come in, but not having to wait long for Gant to arrive, with two large Gotham Security bodyguards flanking him.
“Is there a problem, officers?”
“Could I talk with you alone for a minute?” Jon said, gesturing behind him to a spot well away from the bodyguards and the attendant. “Over here?”
“I suppose,” Gant answered, after furrowing his brow and thinking for a few moments. He stepped past Halladay and followed Jon to the indicated spot. The big cop and the two bigger bodyguards stood exactly where they were, with Halladay staring at them defiantly in what seemed like a Scottish version of a pissing contest.
“We know everything,” Jon said, quietly enough that he couldn’t be heard by the others over the background music playing in the lobby. “We know your boss bribed the two professors upstairs to fabricate lies about Dayfall.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know—”
“Their testimony says you were with Render when he made the offer, so don’t deny it. But they also said you seemed uncomfortable with what was going on. So I want to help you out.”
“Are you intending,” he said after a moment, in which his already sunken cheeks seemed to recede even farther, “to arrest anyone?”
“No,” John said, “they have immunity as long as they send me a statement right after they exit the city. And I’m hoping you’ll cooperate with us as well, so we can save your friend Render from the added responsibility and stress of running the government here.”
“Political machinations are hardly a reason for disqualification from office,” Gant said with a surprisingly toothy smile. “If they were, very few people would be able to serve.”
“Inciting riots is more than just politics,” Jon said, ready now to push all his chips forward. “And we have evidence that Mr. Render has been involved in inciting more than that…. We believe that he hired mercenaries to commit murders to increase the danger in the city, including the Dayfall Killer herself.”
Jon watched to see if there was any reaction from Gant to the feminine pronoun, but there wasn’t, so he continued.
“If you were uncomfortable with some fabricated science being spread around, you certainly wouldn’t have gone along with that kind of… machination. So you would want to save your longtime friend from whatever corruption his power is causing, and we might be able to do that in a way that won’t land him in jail, or get him mobbed in a riot directed toward him. The Mayor just wants him to get out of the race and out of her hair…. And with a statement from you we could do that.”
Gant looked around a little and seemed to be considering what Jon said. But then he pursed his thin lips and said, “The only statement I want to make is what I told you the first time we talked, officer: Gareth Render doesn’t need any help getting elected by the people of this city. Further, I might add that Mayor King doesn’t need any help getting voted out. And Mr. Render would never be involved in the kind of illegal, violent practices you are describing.”
“But he would pay two experts to lie about Dayfall?” Jon asked, though he already knew his play was going nowhere.
“That seems dubious to me, also,” Gant answered, proving it. “Are Carter and Gunther still here?”
Jon didn’t know how to respond to that question, so he just remained silent, trying to figure out where to go from there. Then Gant saved him the trouble, when the thin man reached toward his belt.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said, “my phone is buzzing.” He looked at its screen, then added, “I have to take this call.”
Gant walked even further away from the others in the lobby, saying, “Hello?” into his phone and then conducting a brief conversation that Jon could not decipher. When it ended, he walked back toward Jon and then past him to his bodyguards, saying that he apologized but had to attend to an important matter at the Gotham base on the next block over. The bodyguards followed him out of the lobby entrance, and he was gone.
“Well?” Halladay said, as Jon just stared toward the door that Gant had exited through. When Jon didn’t answer, he said it again, a little louder.
“I saw a TV show once where a guy had set up dates with two different girls at the same time, and the same place, too,” Jon said, still staring at the door. “So when he was with the first one, he pretended to be getting a call on his cell, when he was really making a call to cancel with the second one.”
“So? What the hell does that have to do with what’s going on here?”
“I think Gant might have just done that to me.”
Jon stepped over to the attendant’s desk, and then behind it, to look at the security cameras there and to check out the ones showing the parking garage. He called up to Carter and used her help to locate the car that she and Gunther were going to use when they left the city, so he could see it on one of the screens.
“What are you doing?” Halladay asked.
“Remember how Amira said that one of the killers is an arson and explosives guy, and how some cars were blown up during the chaos crimes?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, that would be a way to get rid of the teachers if they wanted to. It would be too hard to find them driving in the city, or to get to them after they were outside of it. So I’m gonna watch their car until they leave to make sure nobody does anything to it. You watch the elevators to make sure no one goes up to take them out.”
They didn’t have to watch very long, because Gunther soon walked into the lobby with a bag in his hand and headed for the elevator. Before he saw the two cops, Halladay started to move toward him, but Jon held him back, saying, “We don’t want to spook him.”
When Gunther realized they were there and recognized them, Jon said, “Talk to Miss Carter upstairs and see what she has to say.”
After hesitating for a moment, Gunther took the advice and went into the elevator.
Less than ten minutes later, both professors came out of the elevator with suitcases under their arms, and merely nodded slightly at the two cops as they headed toward the exit to the parking garage. Jon and Halladay followed them into the garage, and both parties got into their cars and drove out onto the street, the unmarked police car following close behind.
The rain was still coming down hard, but there wasn’t as much thunder and lightning anymore, an indication that the storm would be ending soon, as predicted. Some dark gray clouds were actually visible now, the sun having broken the horizon and started climbing in the sky behind the clouds, and the predictions about the black layer dissipating as a result of the storm seemed likely to come true as well. Jon couldn’t tell the exact location of the sun yet, but he could definitely tell which direction was east from the side of the sky that was lighter.