“I need you both to listen to me,” Oren began. “We have a murdered cop—”
“Oren?” It was Hester.
“What?”
“Shh. Tell us why Wilde was being followed in the park.”
“Wait,” Wilde said, “he hasn’t told you?”
“Not yet. He just said it was bad.”
Wilde turned to Oren. “How bad?” he asked.
“Bad bad. But first I need you to tell me—”
“You don’t need anything first,” Hester snapped. “You broke my attorney-client privilege—”
“I told you, Hester. I didn’t break—”
“You did, damn it.” Wilde heard something different in Hester’s tone. The usual defiance was there, of course, but there was also a deep sadness. “Do you really not know what you did?”
Oren winced at the tone too, but he pushed through it. “I need you to listen to me. Both of you. Because this is huge. We have a murdered cop—”
“You keep saying that,” Hester interjected.
“What?”
“You keep saying ‘murdered cop.’ Murdered Cop. Why does it matter that he’s a cop?”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. Why is a cop’s death more important than any citizen’s?”
“Really, Hester? That’s where you want to go with this?”
“Law enforcement should do their best for everyone, regardless of position or status. A murdered cop shouldn’t be any more a priority than any other citizen.”
Oren turned both palms to the ceiling. “Fine, cool, forget he’s a cop. It’s a murdered man. Happy? You”—he spun toward Wilde—“found the body.”
“I told you what I knew last night,” Wilde said.
“Correct,” Hester added. “And when was that exactly? Oh right, now I remember—right after your cop buddies kidnapped and tortured my client”—she raised a hand to silence him—“and don’t you dare tell me Wilde’s a friend, not a client, or you’ll regret it. By the way, I wouldn’t get so comfortable, mister. You’re an accomplice to what those men did to Wilde.”
That stung and it showed on Oren’s face.
“You are, Oren,” Hester continued, not letting up, and she looked heartbroken. “You can make a bunch of excuses, just like any criminal, but you gave them the information that led to the kidnapping and the assault. By the way, how did they know we’d be at Tony’s?”
“What?” Oren straightened up in his chair. “You don’t think—”
“Did you tell them?”
“Of course not.”
“So why were cops after Wilde in Central Park?”
“They weren’t cops,” Oren said.
“So who were they?” Wilde asked.
“FBI agents.”
Silence.
Hester sat back and crossed her arms. “You better explain.”
Oren let loose a long breath and nodded. “The ballistics came back on Henry McAndrews. He was shot with a nine-millimeter handgun. The Hartford tech guy put the report in the national database, and they got a hit. Another murder with the same gun. Check that, another recent murder.”
“How recent?” Wilde asked.
“Very. In the last two days.”
Wilde stayed on it. “So this would have been after Henry McAndrews?”
“Yes. The same gun that killed Henry McAndrews was used in another murder. But that’s not the headline.”
Hester gestured for him to continue. “We’re listening.”
“The victim,” Oren said, “was an FBI agent named Katherine Frole.” He looked at Hester. “So it’s not just a ‘murdered cop’ anymore. It’s also a murdered federal agent. In Fantasy Land, it might not make a difference that two law enforcement officers were gunned down, probably by the same killer. They should be treated the same as if two Average Joe Citizens were killed. But in the real world—”
“What connects them?” Wilde asked.
“As far as we know? Not a damn thing, except that both were shot in the head three times with the same gun.”
“Their work didn’t overlap?”
“Not as far as anyone can tell. McAndrews was a retired cop from Connecticut. Frole worked in the Trenton FBI forensic office. So far, the only anomaly is, well, you.”
Hester asked the next question in her most lawyerly tone. “Do they have anything linking my client with either Henry McAndrews or Katherine Frole?”