Fighting Chance(85)

“I think shouting is exactly the way we want to proceed with this,” Krekor said, marching up from his end of the table until he was standing over Tibor like a large tree entirely filled with the wrath of God. “‘I have the right to remain silent.’ For the love of God. ‘I have the right to remain silent.’ What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“But he does have the right to remain silent,” George Edelson said. “The right to refuse to incriminate himself is one of the most fundamental—”

“He’s not refusing to incriminate himself,” Krekor said. “I’ll bet you anything that if you look back at all the statements he’s made since this thing started, you won’t find a single case where he says he refuses to incriminate himself. He didn’t even say that in court. He’s not refusing to incriminate himself, because he can’t incriminate himself, except maybe as an accessory after the fact, and—” Krekor turned to hover directly over Tibor’s face. “—you will not try to tell me that it’s just your way of trying to put it when your first language isn’t English. Not only is your English better than mine, but you’ve got an apartment full of detective novels and courtroom dramas and police procedurals and I don’t know what else, and you know the proper formula better than the lawyers do. You know it better than the judges do. And do you know how I know that’s true? Because you said it over and over and over again and nobody caught it, not even the judge at the arraignment, and all I did was think about how odd it sounded and not know why.”

“It made sense, Krekor,” Tibor said. “You do not understand the circumstances. It made sense.”

“Wait,” George Edelson said. “He’s okay with being an accessory after the fact to murder, but he won’t lie?”

“There isn’t a single thing in this mess you’ve caused that makes sense,” Krekor said. “And don’t think I’m not telling the truth here. This is a mess that you caused, all on your own, even though you didn’t murder Martha Handling.”

“Krekor, please,” Tibor said. “It’s wrong of you to do this. I am an old man. Yes, I know, I am not so old as you, but I am old and he is young. He is very young. And it doesn’t matter what happens to me. It doesn’t—”

“I could say you wouldn’t last a month in state prison,” Krekor said, “because you wouldn’t, but it’s not the point. The point is that it’s wrong. It’s wrong on every level. And you ought to know it’s wrong.”

“Krekor, please,” Tibor said. “This is, this was an act of madness, a temporary insanity. This woman was evil. Not just misguided, but evil. And she did not listen to reason. She would never listen to reason. And the boy Stefan, very young and now he would be put away in a prison, just as awful as any prison, and she would not listen to reason and so he just snapped. Do you want to ruin a life because he just snapped? Because for one moment he did not know what he was doing? Think about the rest of his life. Think about the lives of the people who love him.”

“Were you in the judge’s chambers when he just snapped?” Krekor asked.

“I came in just after,” Tibor said. “But I could see the way he was. He was exploding and the gavel was going up and down and up and down and then when he saw me, he stopped and I could see he was coming back from far away and then I knew I had to do something. I knew what would happen if the police were involved and I did not want it to happen to him. I do not want it to happen to him.”

“I think that you know better than this,” Krekor said. “You’ve always known better than this.”

“If you continue with this, Krekor, I will lie. I will confess to the murder.”

“If you do, you’ll have to explain the video,” Krekor said. “Mrs. Vespasian called me.”

“I will explain the video,” Tibor said.

“I’ll explain it better,” Gregor said. “But it doesn’t matter, because you won’t go through with it.”

“I do lie, Krekor. Sometimes.”

“You won’t want to lie.”

“I have told you—”

“Mikel Dekanian is dead,” Krekor said.

It took a long moment. For most of that time, Tibor couldn’t make the words make sense.

“What?”

“Finally,” Krekor said. “I got your attention. Mikel Dekanian is dead, found in the back of a house at the end of an alley with his skull smashed in and Petrak Maldovanian standing right over him.”