Rules of Prey

just—”
    McCarthy stepped between Lucas and Smithe, his back to Lucas, and leaned toward Smithe. “Listen. If you don’t want me to represent you, that’s fine. But I’m telling you as your lawyer, right now, you don’t want to talk—”
    “I want to listen. That’s all,” Smithe said. “You can sit here and listen with me or you can take a hike and I’ll get another attorney.”
    McCarthy stood back and shook his head. “I warned you.”
    Lucas moved around to where Smithe could see him again.
    “If you’ve got an alibi, especially a good alibi, for any of the times of the killings, you better bring it out now,” Lucas said urgently. “That’s my message. If you’ve got an alibi, you could let us go to trial and maybe humiliate us, but you’d have a hard time working again. There’d always be a question. And there’d always be a record. You get stopped by a highway patrolman in New York and he calls in to the National Crime Information Center, he’ll get back a sheet that says you were once arrested for serial murder. And then there’s the other possibility.”
    “What?”
    “That you’ll be convicted even if you’re innocent. There’s always a chance that even with a good alibi, the jury’d find you guilty. It happens. You know it. The jury figures, what the hell, if he wasn’t guilty, the cops wouldn’t have arrested him. McCarthy here can tell you that.”
    Smithe tipped his head toward McCarthy again. “He toldme that as soon as I started dealing in alibis, you’d have guys out on the street trying to knock them down.”
    Lucas leaned on the interrogation table. “He’s absolutely right. We would. And if we can’t, I guarantee you’d be back on the street and nothing happens. Nothing. You haven’t been booked yet. You never would be. Right now, we’ve got a good enough case to pick you up, maybe take it to trial. I don’t know what these guys have been telling you, but I can tell you that we can put you with two of the victims and a third guy who is critical to the case, and there’s some physical evidence. But a good alibi would knock the stuffing out of it.”
    Smithe went pale. “There can’t be. Physical evidence. I mean . . .”
    “You don’t know what it is,” Lucas said. “But we have it. Now. I suggest you and Mr. McCarthy go whisper in the hallway for a couple of minutes and come back.”
    “Yeah, we’ll do that,” McCarthy said.
    They were back in five minutes.
    “We’re done talking,” McCarthy announced, looking satisfied with himself.
    Lucas looked at Smithe. “You’re making a bad mistake.”
    “He said—” Smithe started, but McCarthy grabbed him by the arm and shook his head no.
    “You’re playing the weak sister,” McCarthy said to Lucas. “From what you’ve said, there’re only two possibilities: You’ve got no case and you’re desperate to make one. In which case you won’t book him. Or you’ve got a case, in which case you’ll book him no matter what we say and use what he says against him.”
    “McCarthy, a fellow out in the hall called you a dickhead,” Lucas said wearily. “He was right. You can’t even see the third possibility, which is why we’re all sweating bullets.”
    “Which is?”
    “Which is we got a good case that feels bad to a few of us. We just want to know. We’ve got pretty close to exact times on two of the attacks, real close on a third. If Mr.Smithe was out of town, if he was talking to clients, if he was in the office all day, he’d be in the clear. How can it hurt to tell us now, before we book—”
    “You’re just afraid to book because of what will happen if you’re wrong.”
    “Goddamn right. The department will look like shit. And Smithe, not incidentally, will take it right in the shorts, no offense.”
    “Now, what the fuck does that mean?”
    “He knows I’m gay,” Smithe said.
    “That’s a prejudicial remark if I ever—”
    “Fuck it,” said one of the interrogators. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
    He stalked out of the room and a minute later Daniel stepped in.
    “No deal?” he asked Lucas.
    Lucas shrugged.
    “No deal,” said McCarthy.
    “Take him upstairs and book him,” Daniel told the remaining interrogator.
    “Wait a minute,” said Smithe.
    “Book him,” Daniel snarled. He stormed out of the room.
    “Good work, McCarthy, you just built your client a cross,” Lucas said.
    McCarthy showed his teeth in what wasn’t quite a smile. “Go piss