The Perfect Suspect (31 page)

“Why would I do that?”

“Because . . .” Kim struggled with the words bunching in her throat. “I saw the murderer, and she's looking for me. Please, please,” she said. The walls had started moving in on her, and for an instant, she felt as if she might pass out.

Ericka jerked herself up straight, picked up a ceramic cup filled with pens and threw it across the room. There was the shattering, clanking noise of broken things that could never be repaired. “I've got the picture now,” she said. “HD, bright Technicolor. You've been holding out on me, cheating on me. I fixed you up with a big spender like Mathews, and after that you set up your own assignments.” She threw out an opened hand. “Don't deny it! How many more times did you service Mathews? Let's see.” She bent down and started tapping on the keyboard. “Two, three times a week—we'll go with three—for the last year. My goodness, that comes to a very nice figure, which you will pay me, you conniving bitch. You really think I wouldn't have figured it out eventually? All those dates you were too tired, too busy, too hungover or coked up, you were off to your little rendezvous with Mathews. Is that when you saw whoever killed him? On your way for a private date?”

“I'll pay you,” Kim said.

“You're damn right. No one cheats me. You were nothing, a common streetwalker hopping in cars on Colfax Avenue. I cleaned you up, brought you into the business, gave you an opportunity to pull yourself out of the gutter. Pretty face, good hair and teeth, a great body and a classy look—I thought you had potential. I should have known better. Once in the gutter, always in the gutter.”

“Just delete my name, I'm begging you,” Kim said. “I can't pay you if I'm dead.”

Ericka seemed to consider this, tossing glances across the room, thrusting out her chin and sucking on her lower lip. The silver pearl in her nose pulsed in the light. Kim pushed on. “You've never heard of me. I never worked at the agency. Don't you see? It will protect you, keep you from getting involved. Soon as someone comes around asking about me, you can send them off chasing their tails at other agencies.”

For a moment, she thought Ericka was moving toward agreement. Then Ericka said, “Who did you see? How come the murderer knows about you? How come you're being chased?” Then she crossed her arms over her waist and swung toward the windows. “Forget I asked. I don't want to know. I can't get involved in this. I don't need a bunch of cops hanging around looking into the business.” She swung back. “I should kill you myself.”

“Delete my information,” Kim said, “and you won't be involved.”

“You think it's that easy? There are ways of getting information back, you know. Nothing's deleted forever.”

“I need a little time to get away, that's all.”

“You aren't going anywhere until you pay me.”

“I told you I'd pay. I'll get the cash and send it to you.”

Ericka kept her arms folded, her fingers digging blue holes into her flesh. “Like I can believe a lying cheat like you.”

The doorbell rang, a loud clanging noise that reverberated against the walls. Kim froze in place, unable to take her eyes from the woman across the desk. “Are you expecting someone?” She knew the answer by the way Ericka started flailing about, moving one way, then the other, circling back on herself.

She swung toward Kim: “Who have you brought here?”

“You have to do it now. For both of us.”

“Both of us.” The idea seemed to focus Ericka. She moved to the computer and bent over the keyboard. The doorbell rang again, a long and insistent noise that drowned out the clacking keys.

Kim turned and stared across the outer office to the blue wooden door. The ringing swelled into a screeching noise. “I have to get out of here” She was talking to herself. Ericka was huddled over the screen, punching keys. Beckman could be at the front door, or Catherine McLeod. My God, the reporter wouldn't give up until she got her killed! Why had she ever called her? She should have stayed out of it. So what if his wife took the fall for David's murder? She should feel sorry for Sydney Mathews who'd had everything she'd wanted her entire life? Let her see how the rest of the world survives.

The doorbell rang again, punctuated by the hard sound of banging. “Police!” somebody shouted. It was a woman's voice. Kim lunged past the desk for the bathroom. She grabbed hold of the back doorknob. It froze in her hand. “Let me out of here!” She looked back into the office. “I've got to get out.”

“What?” Ericka straightened herself and looked around. Finally she yanked open the center desk drawer, fingered a key and, crowding into the bathroom, jammed the key into the slot. Kim reached around, pushed the door open and burst out onto the hot, dusty concrete slab that abutted the alley. She lunged for the alley and started running, footsteps pounding the hard cement. She rounded the corner, and turned into the far end of the parking lot. Hot coals burned her lungs, her calf muscles were cramping. She had an instant view, like the snap of a camera, down the front of the mall. Beckman was nowhere in sight. Ericka had already let her in!

In a couple of minutes, Kim had backed out the BMW and pulled onto the side street. Avoiding the main streets, she wove through neighborhoods of bungalows and apartment houses and cars parked along the curbs. She was about to turn west onto Speer when she realized the mistake she had made. It was like a black cloud enveloping her, a blunder that could be fatal. She passed the turn, pulled into the vacant place at the curb and dug her cell out of her bag. She punched in the number at the agency. There was no ringing noise; she was calling nowhere. Finally an automatic voice came on: “Please leave your message.”

“Don't tell Detective Beckman where to find me. Please, Ericka. She's the one who killed David.” She could hear the note of despair in her voice, the futility of trying to stop something probably taking place right now. Oh, she could see Ericka, the upright, legitimate therapist, telling the police detective everything she wanted to know. This would be it, the end of the road, unless she got to the condo, collected her metal box, and got out before Beckman came for her.

30

“Who's there?” The woman's voice in the intercom sounded tentative and scared.

She was at the right place, Ryan thought. You could tell by the tone of a voice before you said anything, asked any questions, whether you had collared the right person, rung the right doorbell. It was laughable, really, the way the guilty almost begged to be caught. But that was because they believed they were guilty, and that was their mistake.

“Denver police,” she said. “Open up.”

Inside, the clack of footsteps on a hard floor, the tentativeness present even in the footsteps. The woman on the other side of the door knew all about Kim Gregory, she was certain. But the woman would be cagey—she'd encountered the type before. The woman would try to cover up, play dumb, claim she'd never heard of anyone named Kim. She might have to get rough, Ryan thought. Well, so be it. There wasn't time to fool around, play pussyfoot with the taxpaying citizen. Kim Gregory, if she had any brains at all, should have left town by now. Instead she had contacted that reporter. If she did leave town, there would be no peace. Every day for the rest of her life, Ryan knew, she would be waiting for the conscience-stricken whore to show up and spill what she had seen. What difference would it make? David's murder was solved, Sydney Mathews was sure to be convicted. Ryan and Martin would be commended on wrapping up a high-profile homicide in an expeditious manner.

Kim Gregory would make a difference. This morning, Captain Donnell in Internal Affairs had called her in and handed her a statement signed by somebody she didn't know existed. Some fool in Aspen who had seen her and David and made it his business to care who David Mathews drank with in a bar. The whole thing was stupid, which was what she had told him. Mathews had a reputation as a womanizer, she'd said. He could have been with anybody, any blonde. So what if the fool thought she was the blonde? She wasn't anywhere near Aspen that weekend.

“But you had taken off that weekend.” Captain Donnell had done his homework, and that had set her a little off balance. What other part of her life had he delved into?

“I was sick.” She stopped herself from telling him to check with her doctor. No more lies. She had played it safe that weekend and called in sick. It would check out. She had to be careful and not offer anything that could be contradicted. “I was in bed for two days with my annual cold. Whoever he is”—she dropped the statement on the desk—“it doesn't mean anything.”

“You knew Mathews.”

“I helped the DA investigate theft charges against him last year,” she said. “That hardly qualifies as knowing him.”

The captain had retrieved the sheet of paper, slipped it inside a folder and gave her a weak smile, the kind she gave perpetrators to let them know she knew they were lying. She had marched out of the office, head high, shoulders straight. He couldn't prove anything, and they both knew it. Unless Kim Gregory walked into his office. Then, there would be two witnesses to connect her with David, one bolstering the other. The scenario had unfolded in front of her: she would be taken off the case; a new investigation would be ordered, charges dropped against Sydney on the technicality that the detective in charge had been involved with her husband and was seen at his house after he was shot.

She had to make certain that never happened.

The sound of footsteps had stopped, and Ryan leaned toward the intercom. “Open the door,” she said. She could hear the shallow breathing on the other side. The woman was standing at the door, composing herself, no doubt, getting her lies together.

The door opened. The woman before her was a surprise: a middle-aged former biker babe, maybe, with a short, stylish haircut, quick eyes and a tiny silver ball in the side of her nose. She looked like she had spent a lot of time sunning herself and drinking fine wines and eating rich foods in expensive restaurants that contributed to what was probably a permanent flush and an expanding waistline. “How can I help you?” she said, and Ryan noted the tentativeness was gone. This was an experienced actress.

“Some questions about a homicide case.” Ryan held up her badge and stepped inside. “You're Ericka Frasier?”

The woman nodded, closed the door and led the way into a back office. “I wouldn't know about a homicide,” she said, taking the chair behind a computer. That was a mistake, Ryan thought, assuming a subservient position where she had to look up. Ryan remained standing, ready for anything that might happen during an interview, just as the police manuals said. The computer screen glowed a sickly purple.

She glanced around the small office with the cheap desk and folding chairs, the credenza that looked as if it had been dragged out of a Dumpster. Pieces of ceramic and pens and pencils littered a section of the linoleum floor. Ericka Frasier must have noticed what Ryan was looking at because she started going on about how the pen holder had fallen and she hadn't had time to clean up.

Ryan looked back. “One of your girls is involved.”

“Girls? I don't understand.” The woman's hands flopped above the keyboard. “Are you referring to my clients?”

“Your whores,” Ryan said, making the most of her advantage. “One of your whores, Kim Gregory, is involved. We have an e-mail she sent from this office. I need to know where I can locate her.”

“I don't understand . . .”

Ryan leaned forward and brought a fist down hard on the desk. The handle of the Ruger she'd slipped inside her belt bit into her hip. The woman looked genuinely startled. She reared backward against the chair and bit at her lip until a tiny drop of blood appeared. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Ryan said. “I can arrest you this minute and march you out of here in handcuffs for solicitation, operating a prostitution ring and other offenses I know will come to me. I can get the information out of your computer while you enjoy the accommodations of the Denver jail. Sorry, no court hearings until Monday, so you'll have two and a half days to enjoy the food. Or you can tell me the whereabouts of Kim Gregory.”

The woman swallowed hard. “I don't know her whereabouts,” she said finally. “She shouldn't have dragged me into this. I run a good business. It's a worthy service and nobody gets hurt. I've never had any trouble with the police.”

“That's about to change,” Ryan said.

“Okay, so Kim just left here.” The woman threw up both hands in a kind of surrender. “I swear I don't know where she went. She said somebody wants to kill her. She knows who shot David Mathews, and now the killer is after her. Is she crazy or hallucinating or something? Is somebody really after her?”

“Her address and telephone numbers. Now.” Ryan poked at the computer.

“You'll leave me out of this?” Ericka said. “I don't know anything about what she does on her own time. I'm not her employer. She's freelance. Sometimes she takes jobs from me, that's all. I need your word I won't be dragged into this.”

“You're not in a position to negotiate,” Ryan said.

Ericka moved forward and started tapping the keyboard. The purple screen disappeared and black text flowed into place. Finally she jabbed at a single key that brought the small printer at the side of the desk coughing into life. After a sheet of paper emerged, Ericka tore it off and handed it over the top of the computer. “I don't give a damn what happens to her,” she said. “She should never have gotten me involved.”

Ryan studied the sheet. Beautiful. Kim Gregory, age twenty-seven, five foot nine, 120 pounds. And this was ironic: she lived in a condo complex not far from her own. Two telephone numbers. At the bottom, one of those glamorous, touched-up photos that made her look like a movie star, reddish hair, a small sprinkling of freckles, eyes golden brown and full, smiling lips. So this was the shadowy figure out on the sidewalk.