The Kill Room

Shales?”
    “Why ask me?” Sachs countered. “Since I’m not really in the equation.”
    “Detective,” Laurel said evenly, “what are you talking about?”
    She didn’t start with the news Sellitto had just informed her of, the suspension. She went chronologically. “You took my name off all the memos, all the emails. You replaced my name with yours.”
    “I’m not—”
    “Anything to help you get elected, right, Assemblywoman Laurel?”
    Sachs withdrew the copy she’d made from Laurel’s secret files and thrust the sheet forward. It was a petition to put Laurel on the ballot to run for the office of assemblywoman in her district. The assembly was the lower house of the legislature in New York.
    The woman’s eyes dipped. “Ah.”
    Busted.
    But an instant later she was gazing coolly back into Sachs’s face.
    Sachs snapped, “You took me off the documents to take credit for yourself. Is that what this case is all about, Nance? ‘Your’ case, by the way. Not ‘ our case’ or ‘ the case.’ Because you wanted big media defendants to make a big splash. Forget Unsub Five Sixteen’s torturing innocent women. You don’t want him. You want the highest government official you can bag.
    “And to make sure that happens you had me running around town digging up all the good things about Moreno I could find. Anything substantive on the case, you co-opted, put your name on it and took credit.”
    The assistant DA, though, didn’t seem the least fazed. “Did you happen to look up my application to go on the ballot?”
    “No, I didn’t need to. I had this, the petition with the signatures.” She lifted the photocopy.
    Laurel said, “Those support the ballot application. You still need to submit one.”
    Sachs was pinged by that feeling she sometimes got, a nagging concern, that she might have missed something at a crime scene. Something fundamental. She was silent.
    “I’m not running for office.”
    “The petition…”
    “The petition was filed, yes. But I changed my mind. I never filed the application to run.”
    More silence.
    Laurel continued, “Yes, I’d wanted to run in the Democratic primary but the party felt I was a little too opinionated for them. I filed a petition to run as an independent. But as time went by I decided not to.”
    Ping…
    Now, curiously, Laurel’s eyes were averted. She, not Sachs, seemed the more uneasy. And her shoulders, usually completely upright, sagged. “Last winter I went through a very hard breakup. He was…Well, I thought we’d get married. I understand that those things don’t always work out. Fine. But it just wouldn’t go away, the pain.” Her jaw was set, her thin lips trembling. “It was exhausting.”
    Sachs recalled her observation from earlier, when Laurel had gotten the phone call in the town house.
    She’s vulnerable, even defenseless…
    “I thought I needed to try something different. I’d run for office, devote myself to politics. I’d always wanted to. I have very strong ideas about this country and government’s role. I was class president in high school and college. That was a happy time for me and I guess I wanted to re-create it. But I decided I was a better DA than I would be a politician. This is where I belong.”
    A nod toward the interview room. “The perp in there? History of sexual assault. He’s in here because he groped three high school students. The original prosecutor didn’t have time for the case and was going to charge him with forcible touching. Misdemeanor. He couldn’t be bothered. I know about people like this suspect, though. Next it’ll be raping an eleven-year-old and the time after that he’ll kill the girl once he’s finished. I took over and I’m going for first-degree sexual act.”
    “Class B felony,” Sachs said.
    “Exactly. And I’m going to get it. Running cases like this’s my talent, not politics. Stopping rapists and people like Shreve Metzger, who’re hiding behind the government and doing whatever the fuck they want, to hell with the Constitution.”
    An obscenity. She was angry. Sachs suspected this was the real Nance Laurel, rarely visible beneath the buttoned-up suits, the spray-painted makeup, the if-you-don’t-mind verbiage.
    “Amelia, yes, I took your name off the memos and emails. But that was purely for your sake and the sake of your career. It never occurred to me that you’d want credit. Who would?” She gave a shrug. “You know how dangerous this prosecution