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The doorman intercom buzzed
She pressed the button “Yes, Frank?”
“Your captain is here”
“Send him up”
Kat left her door ajar so Stagger could walk right in without knocking—the last thing she wanted were o She exited YouAreJustMyTypecom and, just to be on the safe side, cleared her browser history
Stagger’s whole being emanated exhaustion His eyes were red and sunken His nor closer to o after its prey
“You okay?” she asked him
“Long day”
“Can I get you so to drink?”
He shook his head “What’s up?”
Kat decided to dive right into the deep end “How sure are you that Monte Leburne killed Henry?”
Whatever he had been expecting her to say—whatever guess he had made as to why she so desperately wanted to speak with him—it wasn’t that “Are you serious?”
“Yes”
“So I guess you got to see him today?”
“Yes”
“And what, he suddenly denied that he shot your father?”
“Not exactly”
“Then what?”
Kat had to be careful here Stagger wasn’t just by the book—he was the book, binding, pages, printing press, the whole deal If he heard about Nurse Steiner and the twilight sleep, he would throw a fit and then some
“Okay, I want you to listen to o in with an open mind, okay?”
“Kat, do I look in the ames?”
“No Definitely not”
“So tellon”
“I get that, but just bear with o back to the start”
“Kat”
She pushed through it “Here is Monte Leburne, right? The feds nail hiet him to flip on Cozone He doesn’t He isn’t that type Too dumb maybe Or he thinks they’ll hurt his family Whatever, Leburne shuts up”
She waited for hiet to the point He didn’t
“Meanwhile, you guys are searching for whoever killed my father You don’t have a lot, just rumors and a few loose threads, and suddenly, voilà, Leburne confesses”
“It wasn’t like that,” Stagger said
“Yeah, it was”
“We had leads”
“But nothing solid So you tell me—why did he suddenly confess?”
Stagger made a face “You knohy He killed a cop The heat was ridiculous on Cozone’s operation He had to throw us so”
“Exactly So Monte Leburne takes the fall And Cozone gets aith it How convenient A guy who is already spending his life in prison gets another life sentence”
“We tried for years to nail Cozone for it You know that”