Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 101

‘You’re laughing,’ Koenig said. ‘Why?’

‘Because you guys are dumbasses,’ Nash replied. ‘That old lady was the key to everything, and you watched her kill herself. I’m laughing at your fuckwittery.’

‘You might want to rethink your predicament,’ Koenig said. ‘The music’s stopped and you’re the only one without a chair now.’

Nash rolled her eyes. ‘I think I’m going to be fine,’ she said.

Koenig knelt. Stared into her eyes. Nash looked right back. She wasn’t trying to alpha him. Wasn’t playing mind games. It was as if she didn’t recognise him as someone worth bothering with. Like he was the ant at her picnic. She might stomp on him; she might not. She certainly wasn’t going to spend time thinking about it. Koenig wondered if she was a psychopath. If, now that her father was dead, she was looking forward to spreading her wings. Like a harpy, not an angel.

‘How old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?’

‘If Stillwell was to be believed, I’m twenty.’

‘Don’t you know?’

‘I’ve never seen my birth certificate.’

‘You were adopted?’

‘Fostered. Stillwell showed up when I was seven. Up until then, I’d lived in a kids’ home in Albuquerque.’

Koenig nodded. He thought it explained things. Hobbs had wanted an apprentice, and he’d wanted a child to give him cover. He would no longer be the loner people remembered after the cops had arrived; he would be the doting father on a road trip with his daughter. And over time she became someone he could mould into his own image. Similar to how the hitman had moulded the orphan in one of Koenig’s favourite movies, Léon: The Professional .

Koenig had no idea how Hobbs had managed to jump through the fostering hoops. Child protective services were supposed to have safeguard after safeguard to stop vulnerable kids being placed with predatory adults. Then again, he imagined their antenna was more attuned to paedophiles and the perma-angry. He doubted they had an ‘Are you, or have you ever been, a contract killer?’ tick box. But Hobbs was, and the system had failed Nash. Big time.

And now there was a monster to deal with.

‘Do you know who your birth parents were?’ he asked.

‘What part of “I’ve never seen my birth certificate” didn’t you understand?’ she said. She paused a beat, then muttered, ‘Fucking dummy.’

She giggled.

Koenig didn’t respond. He’d been called a lot worse in his SOG days. Draper had called him a lot worse that morning. But he did have to rethink how he approached this. Nash was a killer, almost certainly a psychopath, but she was still, at heart, a damaged kid. Hobbs wouldn’t have been interested in Nash’s childhood development. He probably actively discouraged it. He was only interested in her for what she brought to his business. She was a prop. And yes, over time he’d developed strong paternal instincts, but they’d never been reciprocated. Nash was, and always would be, motivated by one thing: self-interest.

‘I may be an effing dummy,’ Koenig said. ‘But I think you suffer from psychopathy.’

Nash smiled. Like she was looking forward to what he would say next.

Patronising.

‘Thing is, being a psychopath isn’t illegal,’ Koenig said. ‘It isn’t even uncommon. At least one per cent of the population has what is classed as severe psychopathy. One per cent of three hundred and thirty million people. That’s over three million psychopaths in the US alone. Most have jobs and families. They’ve learned to fit in. To laugh at jokes that aren’t funny. To cry when someone dies. They’re law abiding. Lots are successful. Superficial charm and a lack of emotion are assets, not drawbacks, in some jobs. Now, let’s imagine there’s a subset of a subset in the broad umbrella of psychopathy – the one per cent of the one per cent of the one per cent. The kind of psychopath who sees people as cattle, there to be used and discarded. That’s still not illegal. The DA’s office could no more convict you of being a psychopath than it could convict you of being a human being.’

He waited for Nash to respond. Eventually she said, ‘Moo.’

‘Murder, of course, is illegal. And I’m sure when it all comes out in the wash, when the tallies are totalled, the FBI will find that you and Hobbs have killed more people than Jack Reacher. You don’t get to own a loft on the Lower East Side without being extremely good at extremely lucrative work. But even though the pair of you were at the top of the murder-for-hire business, you couldn’t be sure you hadn’t left evidence behind somewhere. Not one hundred per cent. Trace DNA. A partial print. Getting caught on a camera you didn’t know about. Something that would culminate with a no-knock warrant. Indictments. Trials. Life-with-no-parole jail sentences.’

He nodded at Draper. She went to the back of the Gulfstream and grabbed the medical kit. It was a moulded plastic box, green with a white cross on the lid. Draper flipped the catches and opened it. She pulled out a pack of disposable gloves and ripped it open with her teeth. She snapped on a pair like a thirty-year robbery-homicide veteran.

Nash watched without concern.

‘But getting caught doesn’t concern you, does it?’ Koenig continued. ‘Because if you are in that one per cent of the one per cent, yada yada yada, you’ve already thought of this. You’ve planned for this. Because in your mind, at least, a one-percenter like you should never have to face any consequences. Consequences are for the cattle. You’ll have someone in place to take the fall. A patsy. A witless fool in a THE BUCK STOPS HERE T-shirt. Stillwell Hobbs, in other words. All these years, and he still thought of himself as the master manipulator. He had it back-to-front, though. He wasn’t manipulating you; you were manipulating him . He was your insurance policy. Your circuit breaker. So, even if the FBI did find evidence, it would have been Hobbs who spent the rest of his life in a supermax. You’d have walked free. Another of his victims.’

‘Doesn’t matter what you know, dummy, it only matters what you can prove,’ Nash said.

‘Unfortunately, things have moved on.’

Draper reached into her pocket and removed an envelope. She opened it and tilted it so Nash could see the single-point self-defence ring inside, the ring with the blade that looked like a raptor’s beak. The one Nash had used to tear out the throats of her would-be rapists in New York. Draper had taken it from her index finger while Nash had been unconscious in the alley outside her apartment. Draper slipped the ring into a new envelope and sealed it. Wrote the date and time on the seal. Scrawled her signature across it.

‘There we are, all nice and legal,’ she said. ‘All the evidence the DA will need to convict you. Your DNA, their DNA, and an eyewitness who saw everything.’

Nash’s eyes narrowed. ‘What eyewitness?’

‘Me,’ Koenig said.

Nash looked mildly annoyed. Like she’d accidentally deleted her Netflix profile.

‘I’m a twenty-year-old girl, dummy. There’s no way a New York jury will find me guilty. The cameras will prove they dragged me into that alleyway. Even the stupidest public defender will be able to prove self-defence.’ She paused a beat. Added, ‘And I won’t have the stupidest public defender.’

‘What cameras?’ Koenig said. ‘We were there the best part of a week, and we didn’t see any. And the reason we couldn’t see any was because you and Hobbs had deliberately chosen to live somewhere without cameras.’

‘You have a choice to make,’ Draper said. ‘Tell us what you overheard Konstantin say in that Holiday Inn. You thought it was meaningless drivel, but Margaret killed Hobbs before he could tell us what it was. Tell us what you heard, and Koenig does you a favour.’

‘And what would that be?’

‘He tells the NYPD he saw those men drag you into the alley. That he ran to help and saw you act in self-defence.’

‘Which is mostly true,’ Koenig said.

‘And if I don’t tell you what I overheard?’

‘Then Koenig saw you lure those poor men into the alley. He witnessed you murder them in cold blood. No DA’s office in the land will shy away from this. They have a ring that is essentially a weapon. That shows premeditation. They have a federal eyewitness – because, believe it or not, Koenig is still a US Marshal – and they’ll have the attorney general herself leaning on them.’

‘She’s our friend,’ Koenig said.

Nash pouted. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Call it paying it forwards. You might not be guilty of these murders, but as sure as fish on Friday, you’re guilty of a hundred others. I’ll lie to the NYPD, then I’ll sleep fine.’

‘It’s a binary choice,’ Draper said. ‘You help us, or you go to prison for thirty years.’

‘Our interests are aligned, Miss Nash,’ Koenig said. ‘I’m no astrologist, but it’s as if the stars themselves want you to help us.’