More Julius Katz and Archie (Julius Katz Detective) by Dave Zeltserman

Author:Dave Zeltserman [Zeltserman, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Second Avenue Books
Published: 2021-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Much later that night Julius was preparing himself a sandwich using sundried tomatoes, ten-year-aged Vermont cheddar cheese, a homemade chipotle sauce, and a sirloin steak that he had grilled the night before. While he did this, one of the Malbec gems that he had read about earlier that day decanted.

For several hours I’d been trying to figure out on my own what Fiske would’ve done if Julius hadn’t wrestled her gun away, and as he was slicing the sirloin steak I gave up and asked him about it.

“What did she think she was going to do? Shoot all of you?”

Julius shuddered. “God knows,” he said.

“Let’s say she was successful. What then? How did she think she was going to get out of a precinct full of cops?”

“She wasn’t thinking. At that point she was little more than a cornered animal who was going to do whatever she had to to survive, even if it made little sense. Archie, if you had seen the look in her eyes and the savagery that had taken over her face while I fought to get control of her gun…”

Julius let the sentence die. I hadn’t been able to see any of that because her body had blocked me while she and Julius had thrashed about on the floor. I considered what he said, and decided that no amount of tweaks to my neuron network would ever allow me to anticipate how someone as desperate and homicidal as Fiske would act when trapped.

“You’re lucky she didn’t call you on your bluff,” I said.

Julius had finished putting his sandwich together, and he used a chef’s knife to cut it diagonally. “It was a gamble,” he conceded. “But still, a good one. She knew we’d recovered Hoskow’s phone. She must’ve also remembered walking past the pawnshop. It was reasonable for her to think we were telling the truth about the existence of a store security recording.”

“Before she went for her gun, did you know it was her?”

“No. Not an inkling. The woman is as pure a sociopath as I’ve encountered.”

“What if she had called your bluff?”

Julius poured a small amount of his gem of a Malbec into a glass, sniffed, then tasted it. Satisfied he poured himself a more substantial amount of it, and brought that and the sandwich to his kitchen table.

He shrugged. “Possibly the recovered smartphone has something incriminating that would’ve pointed to her. If not, then Griff would’ve had his hands full trying to figure out which of them it was. Maybe he would’ve found a witness to her murdering McCrawley, or someone who spotted her dumping the car on Kneeland Avenue. But possibly not. Quinn might’ve had one of his associates murder McCrawley for her. It might’ve come down to Griff needing to find the cash payments Quinn made to her, which could’ve proven difficult. Now, though, he’ll be able to get the court orders he needs to unearth whatever money Quinn paid her, although the odds are the district attorney won’t need to build a case against her.

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