They drove into the garage and led him to an elevator. They got off on the eighth floor. They were in Newark, the county courthouse. Myron had been here before. They brought him into an interrogation room. There was no mirror and thus no one-way glass. That meant a camera was doing the surveillance.
“Am I under arrest?” he asked.
Loren Muse tilted her head. “What makes you say that?”
“Don’t play these games with me, Muse.”
“Please have a seat.”
“Have you done any checking on me yet? Call Jake Courter, the sheriff in Reston. He’ll vouch for me. There are others.”
“We’ll get to that in a moment.”
“What happened to Aimee Biel?”
“You mind if we film this?” Loren Muse asked.
“No.”
“Do you mind signing a waiver?”
It was a Fifth Amendment waiver. Myron knew better than to sign it — he was a lawyer, for Chrissake — but he pushed past that. His heart hammered in his chest. Something had happened to Aimee Biel. They must think he either knew something or was involved. The faster this moved along and they eliminated him, the better for Aimee.
“Okay,” Myron said. “Now what happened to Aimee?”
Loren Muse spread her hands. “Who said anything happened to her?”
“You did, Muse. When you braced me at the airport. You said, ‘It’s about Aimee Biel.’ And because, while I don’t like to brag, I have amazing powers of deductions, I deduced that two police officers didn’t stop me and say it was about Aimee Biel because she sometimes pops her gum in class. No, I deduced that something must have happened to her. Please don’t shun me because I have this gift.”
“You finished?”
He was. He got nervous, he started talking.
Loren Muse took out a pen. There was already a notebook on her desk. Lance Banner stood and remained silent. “When was the last time you saw Aimee Biel?”
He knew better than to ask what happened again. Muse was going to play it her way.
“Saturday night.”
“What time?”
“I guess between two and three a.m.”
“So this would have been Sunday morning rather than Saturday night?”
Myron bit back the sarcastic rejoinder. “Yes.”
“I see. Where did you last see her?”
“In Ridgewood, New Jersey.”
She wrote that down on a legal pad. “Address?”
“I don’t know.”
Her pen stopped. “You don’t know?”
“That’s right. It was late. She gave me directions. I just followed them.”
“I see.” She sat back and dropped the pen. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
The door behind them flew open. All heads spun to the door. Hester Crimstein stomped in as though the very room had whispered an insult and she wanted to call it out. For a moment no one moved or said anything.
Hester waited a beat, spread her arms, put her right foot forward, and shouted, “Ta-da!”
Loren Muse raised an eyebrow. “Hester Crimstein?”
“We know each other, sweetie?”
“I recognize you from TV.”
“I’ll be happy to sign autographs later. Right now I want the camera off and I want you two”—Hester pointed at Lance Banner and Loren Muse—“out of here, so I can chat with my client.”
Loren stood. They were eye-to-eye, both about the same height. Hester had the frizzy hair. Loren tried to stare her down. Myron almost laughed. Some would call famed criminal attorney Hester Crimstein as mean as a snake, but most would consider that slanderous to the snake.
“Wait,” Hester said to Loren. “Wait for it….”
“Excuse me?”
“Any second now, I’m going to pee in my pants. From fear, I mean. Just wait….”
Myron said, “Hester…”
“Shh, you.” Hester shot him a glare and made a tsk-tsk noise. “Signing a waiver and talking without your lawyer. What kind of dope are you?”
“You’re not my lawyer.”
“Shh again, you.”
“I’m representing myself.”
“You know the expression ‘A man who represents himself has a fool for a client’? Change ‘fool’ to ‘total brain-dead numbskull.’ ”
Myron wondered how Hester had gotten there so quickly, but the answer was obvious. Win. As soon as Myron had hit his cell phone, as soon as Win heard the voices of the cops, he would have found Hester and gotten her there.
Hester Crimstein was one of the country’s top defense attorneys. She had her own cable show called Crimstein on Crime. They’d become friends when Hester had helped Esperanza with a murder rap a few years back.
“Hold up.” Hester looked back at Loren and Lance. “Why are you two still here?”
Lance Banner took a big step forward. “He just said you’re not his lawyer.”
“Your name again, handsome?”
“Livingston police detective Lance Banner.”
“Lance,” she said. “Like in what I use to get rid of a boil? Okay, Lance, here’s some advice: The step forward was a nice move, very commanding, but you need to stick out your chest more. Make your voice a little deeper and add a scowl. Like this: ‘Yo, chickie, he just said you’re not his lawyer.’ Try it.”
Myron knew that Hester wouldn’t simply go away. He also knew that he probably didn’t want her to. He wanted to cooperate, of course, get this over with, but he also wanted to know what the hell had happened to Aimee.
“She’s my lawyer,” Myron said. “Please give us a minute.”
Hester gave them a satisfied smirk that you know they both wanted to slap off her face. They turned for the doors. Hester gave them a five-finger toodle-oo wave. When they were both out the door, she closed it and looked up at the camera. “Turn it off now.”
“It probably is,” Myron said.
“Yeah, sure. Cops never play games with that.”
She took out her cell phone.
“Who are you calling?” he asked.
“Do you know why they have you in here?”
“It has something to do with a girl named Aimee Biel,” Myron said.
“That much I know already. But you don’t know what happened to her?”
“No.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I got my local investigator working on it. She’s the best, knows everybody in this office.” Hester put the phone to her ear. “Yeah, Hester here. What’s up? Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” Hester listened without taking notes. A minute later, she said, “Thanks, Cingle. Keep digging and see what they got.”
Hester hung up. Myron shrugged a well? at her.
“This girl — her last name is Biel.”
“Aimee Biel,” Myron said. “What about her?”
“She’s missing.”
Myron felt the thump again.
“It seems she never came home on Saturday night. She was supposed to sleep at a friend’s house. She never arrived. Nobody knows what happened to her. Apparently there are phone records linking you to the girl. Other stuff too. My investigator is trying to find out what exactly.”
Hester sat down. She looked across the table at him. “So okay, bubbe, tell Aunt Hester everything.”
“No,” Myron said.
“What?”
“Look, you have two choices here. You can stay while I talk to them right now or I can fire you.”
“You should talk to me first.”
“We can’t waste the time. You have to let me tell them everything.”
“Because you’re innocent?”
“Of course I’m innocent.”
“And the police never ever ever arrest the wrong man.”
“I’ll risk it. If Aimee is in trouble, I can’t have them wasting time on me.”
“I disagree.”
“Then you’re fired.”
“Don’t get all Trump on me. I’m advising you, that’s all. You’re the client.”