“You saw these characters this morning, yes?” said Finch, nodding at Tresting and me. “You can start after that.”
She glanced around at the rest of us again, as if wondering when the world had gone mad. “Well, I came home, and then I suppose I took a nap. Then someone was knocking—those police officers—and I spoke to them for a while, and then just as they left, you arrived.”
“Thought you said you did a lot of thinking on all this today,” said Tresting.
Her expression twitched, confusion rumpling her features. “Yes. No. That is, yes, but not—it’s been between everything else.”
“Do you remember lying down to take your nap?” asked Finch.
“Well, yes,” said Kingsley. “I suppose I do…?”
She blinked and looked away from us, her words trailing into silence.
“You keep using the word ‘suppose,’” said Finch after a beat. “Are you not certain, Dr. Kingsley?”
A red flush began creeping up her neck. “I don’t have to answer these questions.”
“Please, Doc,” said Tresting. “Bear with us. Something hinky—”
She straightened her spine, recovering some of her prior imperious fire. “I told you I’m done. I’m sorry, Mr. Tresting, but this mad crusade is over. Leave my house, please. All of you.”
I didn’t know about Tresting, but I wasn’t leaving until I had some answers. And I thought I knew who could give them to me.
I stepped closer to Finch, tilting my Smith & Wesson so the front sight lined up with his forehead, right between the eyes. “You know what’s happening here, don’t you.”
Finch took a breath. “Please take that weapon out of my face.”
I hesitated, then lowered the gun. It wasn’t like I needed it anyway. “Now, what the hell is going on?”
He wet his lips. “Someone got to Dr. Kingsley. That’s all I’m at liberty to say.”
Hell if I was going to let him stop at that. “Someone who?”
“Pithica,” said Tresting.
Chapter 15
My hand tightened on the grip of the Smith & Wesson—I itched to have a target again, but who was my enemy? Or what? “I say again,” I addressed the room at large. “What the hell is going on?”
“I interviewed Senator Hammond’s assistant,” said Tresting. “From Kingsley’s, Reginald Kingsley’s, notes. Same thing, almost word for word. Assistant remembered the Senator saying he ‘supposed’ he had a liedown. Except then he about-faced on a nuclear arms treaty.”
“So someone from Pithica is telling her to say this,” I said.
Tresting was watching Dr. Kingsley very closely. “Or something.”
Kingsley drew away from him. “What are you implying?”
Tresting didn’t answer. “What do you say, Agent Finch?”
“Unfortunately, this is need-to-know,” said Finch. “What connection do the two of you have to Dr. Kingsley?”
“Unfortunately, that’s need-to-know,” I parroted back at him, and raised my gun again. “You know something about Polk, and about Pithica, don’t you? You’re going to tell us.”
“This has gone far enough,” said Kingsley. Her voice was firm again, with the strong charisma of authority, and it was hard to believe she didn’t mean it. “Leave, all of you, or I’m calling the police.”
Tresting reached out and grasped her shoulders. “Please, Doc. Talk to me. What happened today that made you change your mind?”
She twisted back from him, fury clouding her features. “Let go of me! This is my decision. Mine, not yours, and not anybody else’s! How dare you imply someone talked me into it?”
“’Cause nothing else makes sense!” cried Tresting. “Doc, you’ve been in my office almost every day for the past six months bullying me about this case! You moved across the country; you got Ned a bodyguard, for God’s sake—and now you say you’re giving up?”
“That’s exactly why I have to! This—this obsession, it’s destroyed my life. I have to let go of it!”
“But we have a lead now,” I argued, gesturing at Finch. “This guy knows something. I saw him at Courtney Polk’s house. Don’t you want to know—”
“No!”
The absolute denial rang through the room, unqualified and final.
Something echoed in my memory.
Kingsley took a breath, resettling her composure. “I’m done. Please, just leave.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“What is it?” asked Tresting.
I ignored him and turned to Finch. “Okay, how’s this? If you don’t tell us what’s going on, I will bring you somewhere and tie you up and call someone who can make your worst nightmares come true.” I met his eyes squarely, never mind that something inside me was starting to feel creeped out and terrified, and my headache had returned with a pounding thunder. “And then I think you’ll spill everything.”
“Wait,” said Tresting, his voice quick and panicked. “Don’t—”
The man really had to do something about his fixation with Rio. “Stop getting your knickers in a twist; I don’t mean him.” I was about to step off a cliff, and the vertigo was dizzying. This was little more than a shot in the dark, but I was right. I knew I was right. “I have a phone number,” I said to Finch, “for Dawna Polk.”
Finch blanched.
I’d thought he had gone white before, but now all the blood drained from his face as if sucked away, leaving him gray as a corpse behind his scraggly beard. It threw me off balance; I tried to cover with more bravado. “I’ll do it,” I pressed. “I’ll leave you somewhere, and I’ll call her.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Finch croaked. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”
“Oh, really? Why don’t you tell me then, Mr. SSA Finch?”
Sweat had broken out all across his face, exacerbating the grayness. He rolled his gaze desperately toward Tresting, but the PI’s expression was unreadable. “I…I can get you a meeting with my supervisor,” he offered finally. “Please.”
I began to be more than a little unnerved by his reaction. The man was folding like a wet piece of cardboard. Who the hell was Dawna Polk? Christ, my head hurt. “Fine,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“You’ll come with us,” added Tresting. “We’ll set up a meet in a neutral place.”
“Yes, all right, okay.” Finch sounded so desperate that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started offering up friends and family as human sacrifices to us. “We can do that.”
The doorbell rang.
We all jumped.
Tresting went to the window and peeked around the closed blinds. He swore softly. “Cops.”
I looked at Leena. “Can you go out and tell them nothing’s wrong?”
Tresting shook his head. “Too many. Shit. They already think something’s going down here. Someone must’ve seen us pull a weapon.”
Finch raised a hand weakly. “I can take care of them.”
I snorted. “I wouldn’t trust you to give me a band-aid for a paper cut.”
He let out a strangled laugh that had no humor in it. “Believe me when I say that I’m currently viewing you as a child playing with a nuclear missile. This is above my pay grade, and I don’t care who’s holding the gun, but I’m not letting you out of my sight if I can help it. Even to be arrested.” He held out a hand to Tresting. “My badge, please?”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded.