Falling On the Sword Read Online Free Page A

this?”
    “ I think the bag said it was Hazel Nut.”
    “ When did they stop making coffee-flavored coffee?”
    Locke laughed, not because the joke was funny, but because she thought that this could be the opening she was looking for. She didn’t get the chance to attack though, because there was a knock at the door. Locke looked over her shoulder and saw Carter rapping on the window with the ring on his right hand. Carter nodded his head at her, and she exited.
    Once the entrance was shut, Locke said, “Holy crap. She did it. She’s the shooter. I would have placed money on it that it was the dad, but I’m convinced that she’s the shooter.”
    “ No, she isn’t. The father just confessed.”
    “ What? No way in hell. I’m telling you, the girl’s our shooter.”
    “ No, she ain’t. GSR will prove he’s our guy.” Carter walked to his desk and took something out of the top drawer, but Locke couldn’t see what he grabbed. He then crossed the room.
    “ No,” Locke said, chasing after him. “I’m telling you. She’s the shooter. He has to be covering for her. I know it. I know it in my gut that she did the deed.”
    Carter continued on his path without looking at her. “Just fucking give him the test, okay?”
    “ I’m the goddamn primary on this case,” Locke said, not knowing where Carter was headed. She tried to follow him, but she stopped when he pointed to a small, blue sign that said MEN’S next to the door he was going through.
    Carter disappeared into the room.
    Locke scanned the office; it was empty. “Screw this.”
    She pushed into lavatory.
    Carter stood at the middle urinal with his back arched, his left hand between his legs, and his right holding a single-serving bottle of scotch over his open mouth. When he finished the alcohol, he tossed up a hook shot toward the trash receptacle; it hit the front lip of the can, bounced a few inches into the air, and landed on a bed of used paper towels.
    “ Nice shot,” Locke said.
    “ The hell? You get lost or something?”
    Locke crossed her arms against her chest. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were screwing with my investigation.”
    “ What’s your problem? I got you a confession. I cleared your red ball. And you get to take all the credit.” Carter finished his business, shook, and zipped up.
    “ You got me a bullshit confession. Where’s the justice in that?”
    “ Justice? This case ain’t about justice. It’s about turning a red name to black. That’s what we’re doing here.” Carter washed his hands. “If we found some nobody with five fucking holes in him in an obvious domestic-gone-bad, you think we’d be having this conversation? Huh? You think we would give a shit about any of this? Secretly we’d say to ourselves that justice was already served. We’d call it justifiable homicide, and we’d both be home by now. Well, at least, I’d be home and you’d be doing the goddamn paperwork.”
    “ But it wasn’t some abusive douchebag that got dead. “
    “ Exactly, that’s the whole point of this fucking mess. It was Rick McCullough, Jr. So the Councilman wants his fucking pound of flesh. We’re gonna give it to him. He’s gonna like it. And this is all gonna go away. And then we’re gonna sit by the phone and wait for the next body. Maybe this time we’ll get a real victim.” Carter wiped his wet mitts on the legs of his jeans and buried his empty airplane bottle deeper into the trash.
    “ So what? You’re making up your own rules now?”
    “ Fuck, what would you have done in that girl’s situation? Let the fucker choke you to death?”
    “ I wasn’t in her situation so I don’t know. It’s not the point. She killed a guy. Maybe it was justifiable, maybe it’s not. That doesn’t matter. We are going to call it against the law. And I am going to go back into the Box, give her the GSR, and read her Miranda, and then I’m gonna give my report to the DA, because that’s the fucking