No, you really don’t. ‘Goodnight, Decker. Please lock the front door on your way out.’
Cincinnati, Ohio
Wednesday 5 August, 6.00 P.M.
Marcus had been nervous the last time he’d emerged from the elevator into the MCES squad room, but this time he was doubly so. He knew Scarlett wanted him to identify the woman in Interview Room Four as the one who’d participated in the attempt to kill him nine months ago, and he understood how important it was – both to the case and to Scarlett herself.
Trouble was, he didn’t know if he could. He had no compunction fudging a story when the target of their investigation had been guilty of so many, even worse offenses. This woman was definitely a killer – or would have been but for the tip the Feds got from their unnamed source. It should be a no-brainer just to tell Scarlett what she wanted to hear.
But where his conscience had allowed him to fudge facts in the past, this was different. This was for Scarlett, who looked at him like he could do no wrong.
Isenberg was waiting for them at the elevator. ‘Mr O’Bannion, Detective Bishop.’
Marcus didn’t miss Scarlett’s minute wince, and once again he found himself biting back the urge to tell Isenberg to fuck herself. Scarlett had enjoyed an informal, friendly relationship with her boss. Until I came along, he thought.
He clenched his teeth and followed the lieutenant to the darkened observation room on the other side of the glass from Interview Room Four. He stepped up to the glass, Scarlett standing at his side, her hands shoved in her pockets. She leaned into him just once, surreptitiously touching his upper arm with her shoulder. Support, he thought.
‘If you’re not sure, it’s okay,’ she murmured, so quietly he almost didn’t hear. But he did hear, and it was like a weight sliding off his shoulders.
There were a few people sitting along the wall behind them, cops and Feds, including Deacon and Agents Coppola and Troy. The three of them came forward, Deacon taking the spot next to Scarlett. Coppola positioned herself next to Marcus, and Troy hovered in the background.
Marcus was relieved to see that Isenberg had disappeared into the shadows in the back of the room. Scarlett had said that her boss was looking out for her career, but he thought the woman could find a better way to do it.
But he wasn’t here for Lieutenant Isenberg. He was here to identify someone who might have tried to kill him if she’d had enough time – the woman on the other side of the glass. I was her next target. The realization left him shaken. And pissed.
‘That is Alice Newman,’ Kate Coppola said. ‘She’s not happy to be here.’
Alice sat turned away from the glass, her face hidden. She was handcuffed to the chair, her back ramrod straight. Her blond hair was cut in a bob that seemed vaguely familiar.
But he hadn’t seen her, had he? He’d only heard her.
Deacon pointed to the man sitting next to her. ‘That’s Karl Hohl, the lawyer she called. She asked for the Yellow Pages, since we’d taken her phone, closed her eyes and pointed.’
‘I’ll have her turned around,’ Kate said.
‘Not yet,’ Marcus said. ‘I’d like to hear her voice before I see her face.’
‘All right,’ Kate said. ‘Then I’ll try to get her to talk.’
‘She hasn’t been cooperative,’ Deacon said. ‘You may have to make your judgment based on the recording.’
‘Understand. Try to get her to say “Hurry up”.’ Or something like that.’
As if sensing she had an audience, Alice Newman turned to look over her shoulder, and Marcus’s mouth fell open, dumbstruck. ‘Whoa. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.’
‘You know her,’ Scarlett murmured, sounding unsurprised. ‘Who is she?’
Marcus sure as hell was surprised. ‘Allison Bassett, the older sister of one of Mikhail’s friends from school. Or so she said. I didn’t know her brother and I thought I knew all of Mikhail’s friends. But after he was gone, people came out of the woodwork to give their condolences. I met a lot of Mickey’s friends that I didn’t know, so I didn’t think anything of it.’
‘How did she make contact?’ Deacon asked.
‘She came to see me in the hospital when I was out of ICU, told me how torn up her brother was. Said that they’d just moved to the area at the beginning of the school year, that her brother was nervous about being the new kid in school, but that Mickey had befriended him. She came to see me several times. We just talked. She never tried to smother me or anything,’ he added lightly, but his voice shook a little. The woman had sat three feet away from him. Close enough to kill him in his weakened state had she really wanted to.
‘What would you talk about?’ Deacon asked.
Scarlett was uncharacteristically silent, watching the woman grimly.
‘Mostly me and my family, how my recovery was going, when I was going back to work. She’d read a few of our exposés in the Ledger and asked a lot of questions. She even asked about the McCord article, saying how disgusting he was.’ He shook his head, still reeling. ‘She must have been digging, trying to find out if I planned to pick up the McCord investigation where I left off. Holy God. I had no idea. All those times she was a few feet away from me. God.’
‘And after you got out of the hospital?’ Kate asked. ‘Did she see you again?’
‘She stopped by Mom’s house a time or two. After I was healthier, I’d see her when I went to the gym and we’d talk while we ran the inside track.’
In the reflection in the glass he saw Kate frown. ‘You didn’t think it odd?’ she asked. ‘That maybe she was stalking you?’
Marcus blew out a breath, wondering how Scarlett was going to take what he was about to say. ‘No, I didn’t think it was odd because, yes, I thought she was stalking me, but not for any reason other than the normal one. I had several women visit me in the hospital. I also got emails, Facebook posts, you name it. When the news story came out about how I got shot . . .’
‘Women thought you were a super-stud hero,’ Deacon said dryly. ‘A savior of damsels in distress.’
Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. ‘Something like that. I got a number of interesting propositions, but I knew I was just the flavor of the week. It tapered off quickly enough, except for this one. That she was interested in me was pretty blatant. I flat-out asked her how she’d chosen my gym and she said it was so that she could run into me, that she’d bribed the guy at the counter to tell her when I came in so that she could work out at the same time.’
In the reflection of the window he watched Scarlett do one of her long blinks. He wasn’t sure what emotion she was hiding this time – fury that the woman had stalked him, fear that she’d come so close. Hopefully it was not hurt that Marcus had allowed it, because he hadn’t.
‘I told her I was flattered but not interested,’ he said firmly.
‘But she kept showing up,’ Scarlett said, her tone crisp and professional. Then he felt the fleetest of brushes against his hip – her fingers, still in her pocket, flexing to touch him. All she felt safe doing in the situation.
He let out the breath he was holding. ‘She did. I changed my workout time and she’d change hers. I finally told her that there was someone else.’ He dropped his voice to a murmur meant only for Scarlett’s ears. ‘And I meant it.’
Another one of those tiny brushes of her fingers. ‘Did she back off?’
‘She did, actually. She started working out with another guy and they were all over each over in no time. I was just happy that she wasn’t chasing after me anymore. Now I’m wondering who that other guy was, because he’d chat me up too. He just wasn’t as obvious about it. The gym – Silver Gym, a block away from the Ledger – would have a photo in their system of the guy. She called him DJ. Big guy, African-American, maybe twenty-one. Six-two, had to be two-sixty. Kid could bench three hundred. I can point him out if the gym can pull photos that match.’