JM03 - Red Cat (12 page)

In Mike’s conference room, ignoring the view of office towers shrouded in cloud, and wearing a hole in the expensive carpet, David found his anger again. “She was making fucking movies?” he said, and made it sound like my fault.

I’d gone over my report with him three times and was getting tired of repeating myself, and anyway it seemed beside the point now. “Videos,” I said. “She made videos. But we’ve got other things to think about.”

“Whatever.” David shrugged and crossed the room again. I took a deep breath. There’d been questions buzzing in my head since I’d first seen the photo of the tattoo, questions I wasn’t eager to ask my brother, but had to nonetheless.

“When’s the last time you spoke with Wren?”

He stopped pacing and squinted at me. His mouth got tight. “We went through all that last week. Nothing’s changed since then.”

“Everything’s changed. Did you hear from her after you hired me…or see her?”

He gripped the edge of the conference table, and his knuckles turned white. “What the fuck are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything, I—”

“The hell you’re not!” He slapped his palm on the tabletop. “Next you’ll want to know whether I’ve got an alibi. Jesus, I thought you were working for me.”

“I am, but I need to know where we stand. Mike will need to know too.”

“Then don’t dance around it— you think I had something to do with this.”

“That’s not what I was asking,” I said, but I wasn’t sure it was true. David was sure it wasn’t.

“Bullshit,” he said. His shoulders slumped and the air went out of him, and he turned to the window. “I haven’t heard anything from her since before I hired you. I had nothing to do with this.”

“Where were you this weekend?”

David made a sour laugh. “I knew we’d get to that.”

“I’m just trying to build a timeline.”

“Right,” he snorted. “I was in London. I left Friday afternoon and came back yesterday, and I was in meetings most of the time. Is that good enough?” It wasn’t, not until we knew when Holly had died, but I didn’t tell David that. I took another deep breath.

“What about Stephanie?” I asked.

He stiffened. “What about her?”

“What does she know about Wren? What did you tell her?”

“Why does that matter?” I looked at David and said nothing. “What— now you think she was involved?”

“It’s a question the police will ask.”

At the mention of the police he took a half step back. He ran a hand over his gray face. “I didn’t tell her anything,” he said. “We didn’t talk about it. I don’t know what she knows.”

“She knew something, that much was clear when she came to see me. How could you not—”

“We didn’t talk about it,” he said tightly, and turned on his heel to the window again. Mike saved me from asking more.

He paused in the doorway, a tall, slender figure in impeccable gray pinstripe and a wine-red tie. Partnership had etched fine lines around his narrow features, but his face, still pink from shaving, was somehow still a student’s face, easier to imagine bent over some dusty tome than hypnotizing juries and scaring other lawyers. He ran fingers through his thinning black hair and glanced from me to David, and back again. A smile appeared.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting so long,” he said, and put out a hand to David. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” David gave him a disbelieving look but there was no irony in Mike’s voice and nothing but sincerity in his smile. He was good at that.

“I saw you on television a few weeks ago,” David said cautiously. “Court TV.”

“A very slow news day,” Mike said, and smiled modestly. “And now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

And we did. David was hesitant at first, staring at the carpet or at the architectural prints on the wall, but he gritted his teeth and got the facts out. I went over what I knew, reciting once more the refrain: Holly, Wren, Cassandra. Mike listened closely and made notes on a yellow pad. He interrupted only a few times with questions, and all of those were about dates and times. David concluded with an exhausted sigh and sat back in his chair, looking at Mike and for a light at the end of the tunnel.

Mike tapped his chin with long fingers. When he finally spoke, his voice was without emotion. “We don’t know the circumstances of this woman’s death yet. The police are calling it suspicious, which in theory could mean suicide, but…” He looked at me.

“They’re being cute with their language,” I said, “and close to the vest about the condition of the body and the cause of death. And besides the tattoo, they haven’t given out any pictures. Reading between the lines, I wouldn’t bet on suicide.”

Mike nodded. “I agree, and in any event we have to plan for the worst, which in this case means a finding of homicide.”

“Jesus,” David muttered.

Mike gave him a sympathetic look and continued. “If the circumstances were different, it might be possible to sit this out. After all, if media attention to the story remains relatively low, it’s entirely plausible that you could’ve missed the articles in the papers, or not recognized the descriptions they give, or the picture of the tattoo. In which case, you might just wait for the police to contact you. It wouldn’t win you a good citizenship award, but it’s not illegal and it would probably be the safest course of action. And I imagine it’s what the other men in her videos are doing right now— holding their breath, keeping their heads down, and praying. Those of them who saw the story in the paper and recognized the tattoo, anyway. But, unfortunately, that’s not our situation.

“Our situation is that this woman was actively harassing you— calling, coming by your home, threatening you. And we must assume the police will learn this fairly quickly, if and when they identify the body.”

“Learn it how?” David interrupted. “How the hell will they connect me with her?”

I answered him. “Dumping Holly’s phone records will probably be enough, but they’ll also search her place, and who knows what they’ll find there. Her videos, I’d guess, and whatever information she collected about you.” I didn’t think David could get much paler, but somehow he managed.

“To the police it will suggest motive,” Mike said. “Which means they’ll be keen to speak with you, and with your wife, as well. And they’ll look at you even harder when they find that you were disturbed enough by the harassment to hire a PI to locate Holly. If you were upset enough for that, they’ll reason, you might’ve been up for something more desperate. They’ll find it hard to believe that you missed the Jane Doe story in the press, and they’ll wonder why— if you have nothing to hide— you didn’t come forward on your own.

“That’s not an appealing picture, David, and that’s why I don’t think you can wait for the police to find you. You need to get out in front of this, and go to them.”

“Go to the police?” David nearly jumped out of his seat. He went to the window and sank his hands in his pockets and rocked from one foot to the other. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“It demonstrates that you’re cooperative,” Mike said, “that you have nothing to hide. You lay out all the facts yourself and you defuse a lot of suspicion.”

But David wasn’t listening. “ ‘If and when,’ you said—‘if and when they identify the body.’ There’s a chance they won’t.”

“Not a good one,” I said. “Holly had family and friends and people she worked with. Even if she wasn’t close to any of them, they knew her. One of them will see the stories and make the connection, or get worried enough to file a missing persons with the cops, and they’ll make the connection themselves. And that’s without worrying about whether her fingerprints are on record someplace, or her DNA, or if there was a dry cleaning tag in her clothing. It’s just a matter of time.”

Still David didn’t seem to hear. “If I go to the cops and the press gets hold of it…that’s the end.”

“Talking to the police is no crime,” Mike said.

“Being dragged into this…a dead girl, sex videos…no, that would be it.” David rubbed his forehead. “What if it turns out she’s a suicide? What if it turns out the girl in the paper isn’t even her?”

Mike’s voice was steady and soft. “I know people in the department. I’ll put out feelers. If it turns out the police think her death was suicide, then obviously there’s no need to do anything. As for whether she’s Wren or not, we can try and get a better description of the body— where exactly the tattoo is, birthmarks— but beyond that, I’m not sure how much we can know beforehand.”

David breathed a long, shaking sigh. His legs wobbled and he collapsed into a chair and looked at me. The bottom had fallen out of his eyes. “So what you’re telling me is I’m fucked. The police will identify her, find her videos, trace her calls, and— bang— I’m the prime suspect. And my only choice is whether I’m fucked now or later.”

Mike pursed his lips. “The police will be interested in you, but— from what John has said— you won’t be alone. For starters, they’ll want to talk to every other man Wren videotaped. On their own, those guys make for plenty of reasonable doubt— and apparently one of them succeeded in finding her. And then there’s the guy John ran into at her apartment, not to mention all the usual suspects: boyfriends, family, business associates.”

“Who’s to say the cops can find those guys?” David said. “I thought all the faces and voices on the video were masked.”

“They were,” I said, “but there are the phone records, and if they get hold of the unedited videos, or if she made notes, those will point them in the right direction.”

“Too many fucking ifs,” David said, and smacked the table again. “How long will it take for all those ifs to happen? And in the meantime, it’s me the cops are talking to, and my house with the fucking camera crews out front.” He shook his head. “No way. I’m not signing up for that.”

“There aren’t many levers for us to pull just now,” Mike said. His voice was calm and reassuring. “We can’t change the fact that the police are likely to notice you, but we can change how they feel about it when they do.”

“By having me walk in there?”

“Trust me,” Mike told him, “there’s a big difference between going in on your own and being invited.”

“Maybe, or maybe I’m just serving myself up on a platter. Who’s to say that once they have me in their sights, the investigation won’t stop right there? Can you guarantee they won’t decide it’s easier to make a case against me than to go chasing after a bunch of nameless men?” He looked at Mike and then at me, and neither of us had an answer.

“And no matter how it goes,” David continued, “the press will be all over me.”

“Going to the police on your own gives us some influence over that. We can get assurances of confidentiality from—”

“Right.” David snorted. “I’m sure those count for a lot. Who do I complain to when somebody makes the first anonymous call to Fox?”

Mike looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “It’s a risk,” he said softly.

“It’s fatal, is what it is. If this becomes public, it’s fucking fatal.” David put his head in his hands, and no one spoke. Only the whoosh of air in the ducts relieved the heavy silence.

“You can’t wait for them,” I said after a while. “If they come for you—”

David straightened. Some color returned to his face. “If I go to them, I’m not going alone.”

Mike nodded. “Of course not. I’ll be there, and so will John, and you’ll have the full resources of this firm behind you as well.”

David waved his hand impatiently. “That’s not what I mean. If I go talk to them, I’m not going in empty-handed. I’m going in with other names.”

Mike looked at me, confused. He wasn’t the only one. “What names are you talking about?” I asked.

“If I go in there and the police have no other suspect but me, there’s a chance they’re not going to look any further. And even if they do, for as long as mine is the only name on the table, I’m going to be the only news story. But if I go in with other names— the guys in the other videos, the guy who hired the lawyer, the guy who punched you out, boyfriends, whoever the hell else you can find— then I’m not alone. There are other people the cops can build a case against, and other guys the press can chew on.” He looked at Mike. “Like you said, plenty of reasonable doubt.”

My mouth opened, but it took a moment for the words to come. When they did, they sounded far away. “Whoever I can find? You’re asking me to investigate Holly’s death?”

David waved again. “Her death, her life— whatever. I need names I can bring with me to the cops— anyone they’ll be more interested in than me.”

I looked at Mike, who tapped his chin. There was a glint in his eye, and it was familiar and unwelcome. I shook my head. “Have you forgotten that this is an active police investigation?” I said. “The NYPD is not overly fond of strangers pissing in their garden, and even less when the stranger’s a PI and the brother of a likely suspect.”

Mike nodded slowly. “Of course, but David does have a point. This woman led a high-risk life— her videos are testimony to that— and it’s important that the police be made aware of this as they’re setting the course of their investigation, and before they settle on a suspect. It should also give the DA’s office something to consider, when they’re thinking about cases that are winnable and cases that aren’t.” I shook my head more vigorously, but Mike ignored it. “And it’s not as if you haven’t done this sort of thing before: checking stories, finding new witnesses, identifying inconsistencies— developing alternative theories.”

“But usually it’s postindictment, when we’ve got charges and a defendant and a trial coming up, and when the police have finished their investigation—‘finished’ being the operative word there. In this case, they haven’t started yet.”

“But you have done it before. Your relationship to the client is something of an issue, but not insurmountable. You’ll need to be meticulous with your reports, and chain of custody on any evidence you may find— but you’re careful about those things anyway. The police won’t be thrilled, but it should be manageable.”

David squinted at me. “I need you to do this, dammit,” he said. “And since when do you care who you piss off?”

* * *

It was almost eleven o’clock when David left for the Klein & Sons offices, still brittle looking but with necktie straightened and at least some of his abrasive composure back in place. Mike had assured him several times that he’d call if he learned anything about the dead woman from his contacts in the NYPD, but cautioned him against optimism. Even so, David was all too hopeful when he walked out the conference room door. Mike sighed and helped himself to what remained of the soda water.