Fighting Chance(96)

Gregor could hear the stillness of the room around him as if somebody had died. He looked around to find Bennis and Hannah and Sheila and the Very Old Ladies. Hannah looked confused. Bennis looked too shocked to move.

Then a shiver went through her as if she’d had an electric shock. “But, Gregor,” she said. “That’s not possible. It isn’t—”

“He’s the only one Tibor would have done it for,” Gregor said. “He’s the only one who might possibly have known where Judge Handling’s chambers were. And he’s the only one who had any reason to kill Mikel Dekanian. Because Tibor is wrong, Bennis. This wasn’t a sudden loss of temper—a righteous fury because of the way Martha Handling operated—that got out of hand before he knew it. This was part of a pattern. He was taking bribes from Administrative Solutions. And if we look into the Dekanian mortgage mess, if we go to the Hall of Records and look, just as Mikel Dekanian did, we’ll find out that it was Russ who took out that mortgage with J.P. CitiWells. Because that’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

“But, Gregor,” Bennis said.

It was then that Gregor saw the gun. It was a surprisingly big gun, and he was a little upset with himself because it hadn’t occurred to him that Russ would have one.

“You came in the back,” Gregor said. “That’s another nail in the coffin, Russ. You knew how to get into that back door, which means you must have a code, and you could only have gotten it if somebody authorized to use it gave it to you. And then there’s the fact that Petrak recognized the voice on the phone. He did recognize it. He was just so sure it had to be Mark Granby calling him, he took the fact that it was familiar to mean it was Granby’s. That was your good luck. But good luck doesn’t last forever, and you don’t have much in the way of skill. You’re not very good at this. And I’ve got two police officers here with guns of their own. Do you really think you’re going to get out of here? What would be the point of even trying?”

“I’m not expecting to get out of here,” Russ said. “I don’t even want to.”

Gregor was just thinking that that would have to be just as true as everything else, when the gun went off in his face.