Rhymes With Prey by Jeffery Deaver Page B

never touched the gun at Verlaine’s place.”
    â€œBut why would she do that? Why kill Verlaine? After I went in there, we knew we had him.”
    â€œBut we had no hard evidence, and that’s all Internal Affairs knows. That’s what Lily reported last night. We can’t tell them that we did have hard evidence, because then we’d have to tell them that you illegally entered. So their theory is she knew who the killer was, but couldn’t get at him, so she killed him. Got him off the street.”
    â€œAw, man, that’s not right,” Lucas said.
    â€œThere’s another aspect to it,” Amelia said. “Lily is an operator. She gets things done, but she steps on a lot of toes. That’s fine, when she’s got all that protection at the top. But now, with this, well, somebody leaked the lab results almost instantly. Probably some old bureaucratic enemy. It’s on every TV station in New York. They’re screaming for her head.”
    â€œDon’t forget to tell him about what else is coming down the line,” Lincoln said.
    â€œOh, yeah.” Amelia pulled out her cell phone and looked at the time. “IA wonders if any of us had anything to do with it. We’ve got a couple of homicide cops on the way here. They want to talk to us. I know them. They’re hard-nosed guys.”
    Lucas shrugged. “We leave out the burglary, leave out the evidence collection from last night, and tell them everything else. Andwe tell them that they’re being taken as chumps—that Lily couldn’t have done this, and that somebody is running a con on them.”
    â€œThat’ll piss them off,” Amelia said.
    â€œWhich is what we want to do,” Lucas said. “We want them on the defensive. We want them off our backs so we can figure out what actually happened. And we tell them that.”
    Â·Â Â Â·Â Â Â·
    â€œThe question,” Lucas Davenport spat out, “is who’s setting her up?”
    Lincoln agreed. That was the only question. There was no doubt in the minds of Lucas, Amelia, and Lincoln that Lily was innocent.
    However much of a shit Jim Bob Verlaine had been, however guilty he was of sadistic murder—and however much of a tough number Lily Rothenburg was—there was no way she’d take him out like that.
    The team was back in Lincoln’s town house—all of them except Lily, of course, who was still being detained.
    And whose absence was glaringly obvious.
    â€œSo,” Lucas repeated. “Who’s behind it?”
    â€œSomebody with a grudge?” Amelia offered.
    â€œCould be,” Lucas said. “She’s made some enemies in her day. Or maybe some asshole wants to derail a case she’s running.”
    â€œAnd what about Verlaine?” Amelia asked. “Did he kill those women? Or was he being set up, too? And what’s the reason behind that?”
    Lincoln’s view, admittedly myopic at times, as to the questions why and who was generally best answered by how and what: that is, by the evidence. “Why waste fucking time speculating? Look at the facts .”
    â€œYou ever in a good mood, Lincoln?” Lucas asked.
    A grunt suggested that the answer might be no.
    But Lucas took his point. “What do we have to prove the suicide was faked?”
    Looking over Amelia’s photos of the body, Mel Cooper said, “Powder burns and muzzle stamp’re consistent with a close-contact gunshot.”
    Lucas regarded the pictures, too. “And the tissue, blood, and bone on the receiver of the piece confirm that. But it was a temple shot. That’s rare in self-inflicted wounds. Usually the poor bastard bites the muzzle.”
    â€œWhich means somebody could’ve pulled out the piece when Verlaine was turned away, come up behind or beside him, and shot. So, maybe he knew the shooter.”
    Cooper said, “But there was gunshot residue on Verlaine’s