I wasn't about to let up. “So. You think she did it? I mean Elaine is an extraordinarily bad driver. She does have a serious record of traffic tickets, even though she pays them, and this criminal life is a slippery slope. It doesn't take much to move on from parking under a No Parking sign in front of City Hall to fast-freezing the bodies of your enemies and plunking them in parks as part of a ceremonial display.”
Sure, I talked smart, but he had me worried. If the evil wedding spirits could get to Mombourquette, no one was safe. But I had other fish to fry. “My calculations tell me you didn't have that surveillance tape in your hot little hands before you rousted us at Lindsay's.”
I liked the way he couldn't quite meet my eye.
“Right, so what made you and McCracken focus on Elaine?”
He stared down at the table.
“Hmm?”
He fiddled with a package of sugar.
“Intuition, maybe?”
He shook his head.
“Let me guess, you consulted a psychic?”
The sugar packet ripped. “We got a call.”
“How convenient. It didn't occur to anyone the caller might want to put Elaine in the frame?” I did not suggest Elaine was wacky enough to place the call herself. Why buy trouble?
“Of course it occurred to us,” he said.
“The rest of your colleagues seem happy to think Elaine did it. And tickled pink to charge her.”
He shook his head. “Pressure from up the line.”
“Maybe it's the same place up the line that made sure the evidence against Benning didn't hold up in all those earlier charges?”
He shrugged. I took it as a maybe.
“What's the grudge against Elaine, anyway?”
“I think she made our lives miserable about a lot of cases. Particularly in spousal abuse cases where charges were dropped against batterers because of evidence problems. And she was always agitating for public inquiries and demanding official apologies.”
I nodded. “That's our girl.”
Mombourquette said, “Anyway, she made plenty of enemies. Inside the force and out.”
I had to agree. “Any names?”
“Be serious.”
“What about the officers outside the house? You think one of them was involved with Benning in some way?” I was careful not to get Alexa into the soup.
“They weren't in on it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Trust me.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Look, this will come out eventually, but those three officers were drugged. They were still knocked out when we arrived.”
“All of them?”
“What? Yes, all of them.”
“How do you know one of them wasn't left awake?”
“If one had been awake, don't you think they would have reported the others passed out?”
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