Girl Undercover 1, 2 & 3: Three-Part Bundle Page 24

  “Yeah, we also tried to stop her from bleeding when he was done with her, but it was impossible. The cuts were so deep.”

  “I know. Don’t blame yourself. You did your best.” I got to my feet. “I really appreciate that you let me talk to you and told me the truth here tonight. I’m going to get going.”

  “No problem. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you guys the entire truth right away.” She walked me to the front door in the first hallway.

  I smiled at her. “Better late than never.” I opened the door, said goodbye and let myself out.

  As I was walking down the stairs and back out onto the street, I pondered the fact that I had been so wrong about assuming she’d contacted someone while in the bathroom. I had been sure she had and I was rarely wrong. Was I losing my touch? Or maybe it had never been that good in the first place. It wasn’t like I had that many years of experience doing police work.

  Well, I had been right about there being more than just friendship between these two, even if I had a feeling Lisa was more into Pete than he was into her.

  I shrugged. I supposed it was only natural that your instincts had an off day. I had accomplished what I needed to accomplish and that was what counted—clearly Eve Koch’s murder had nothing to do with Adler wanting to get rid of her because she was about to sully their good reputation.

  I found my phone in my pocket and speed-dialed Ian. It was late, but I didn’t care; I couldn’t wait to let him know that he’d been way wrong.

  “I’m in bed,” he answered, yawning. “This better be a booty call.”

  “In your dreams. No, this is a call to let you know that Eve Koch is definitely not the sweet, little innocent girl she appeared to be when I met her. She’s someone who hates homeless people with a passion and abusive too. That’s why she ended up killed by one of them. She messed with the wrong homeless guy.”

  There was some rustling at the other end of the line. “Wait a sec. What are you talking about?”

  “I just spoke to the two eye witnesses and both of them told me she basically assaulted the poor bum. Kicked his money cup out of his hands and called him all kinds of names. She basically had it coming.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Unfortunately, it won’t be enough to get him off as his response to her behavior was way, way out of line of course, but it still gave him a motive.”

  “So you’re telling me Pete and Lisa pretty much let Eve die then?” Ian asked, sounding incredulous. “That they could have saved her if they wanted to?”

  “No, I don’t think they could, but they certainly didn’t seem to feel all that sorry for her,” I replied. “And after hearing their stories, I can see why.”

  I kept my eyes wide open as I walked along the street and spoke to Ian. Even if my text stalker hadn’t been in touch for a while, I hadn’t forgotten that he was still out there. I needed to always be aware of that, especially while walking alone on empty streets at night.

  “It’s still sounds a little too convenient that this homeless bloke just happened to have a huge stiletto knife in his pocket,” Ian pointed out in my ear.

  “Really? I don’t think so. The guy lives on the streets. He would be stupid not to have a weapon to defend himself with.”

  “I guess you do have a point there. Well, I’ll find out more about that when I speak to his lawyer tomorrow.”

  “What? How are you going to do that?”

  Ian chuckled. “I have my ways.”

  “Yeah, I’m beginning to see that. But why bother?”

  “Because I want the truth as much as you do, Gabi.”

  Chapter 6

  Ian had once again lured me over to his apartment, this time so he could play me the recording that contained his conversation with Anita Ross, the crazy bum’s court assigned public lawyer. I was against my will dying to hear what they had talked about. He had promised me I’d learn some very interesting information. So now I was sitting on his couch, barefoot and hugging my knees close to my chest as he was getting ready to have me hear it. Before that could happen, he needed to fix some issue he was having with his computer.

  “You never explained how you managed to convince this woman to have dinner with you in the first place,” I said and twirled a piece of hair around my finger.

  “I chatted her up at a Starbucks,” Ian explained while fiddling with a button. “It was pretty easy to get her to agree to go out with me. Believe it or not, women tend to like me. I’m thinking it has something to do with my accent.”

  He shot me a quick glance and a grin.

  “The accent does help, but you’re also not too unfortunate-looking,” I admitted begrudgingly. “I’m sure a lonely lawyer woman in her mid-forties wouldn’t mind having you drooling all over her.”

  “What makes you think she’s in her mid-forties?”

  I shrugged. “Just a wild guess. How old was she?”

  “Hard to tell, but I’d guess mid-thirties.”

  “Oh. Are you going to see her again?”

  He glanced at me over the computer screens, though he was no longer grinning playfully. “No. Why? Does it matter?”

  “Well, you shouldn’t lead her on if you’re not interested in a relationship. That’s f-ed up.”

  His face went dark. “This world going to pieces is even more f-ed up. I did what I had to do in order to get the information I needed out of her. She’ll forget about me soon enough. That is, if she even wanted to see me again. I honestly don’t know if she was that into me. The fact that I told her I was a recruiter for Sullivan & Cromwell might be why she was so eager to have dinner with me in the first place.”

  That got my attention. “You told her you were a law firm recruiter?”

  “Yep. I thought it better not to rely solely on my good looks.”

  I bit on a nail as I considered Ian’s strategy. It was smart, very smart. If the woman was in her mid-thirties, the glory of being a public defender while getting paid peanuts had surely lost its shine by now. As people got older, idealism tended to fade and realism to set in. It was no fun to live in New York with little money. A job at a firm like Sullivan & Cromwell could be life-changing for her. She’d definitely lower her guard and tell Ian anything he wanted to know in order to impress him with her legal skills.

  “Smart move,” I said. “Am I ever going to get to hear your amazing conversation?” I gazed meaningfully at his hands that were still fiddling with the computer attached to the palm-sized recording device he’d been wearing during dinner with Anita.

  “Just give me a few more seconds and it’ll be ready to go.” He replaced a cable and pressed a couple of buttons on the keyboard, then moved the mouse around while at the same time staring at one of his screens and adjusting the speakers. “There we go.” He gazed at me over the computer screen. “Ready?”

  “Couldn’t be any readier.”

  “Okay, here goes. I’ll fast forward through the boring parts. It’s almost ninety minutes long. It’s only getting real interesting as we’re eating dessert.”

  He pressed a button and female laughter suddenly streamed out of the loudspeakers.

  “Oh, you’re too funny!” the woman said as she stopped laughing.

  “Thank you,” Ian’s voice said. “I try.”

  I rolled my eyes at Ian, who fast forwarded again, then switched the recording back on. Ian’s voice spoke again: “…you could tell me about the current case you’re working on.”

  He shot me a glance and nodded, hissing, “The good parts start here.”

  “Well,” the woman’s voice said, “right now I’m in charge of this very interesting case that was all over the news very recently. You might’ve heard of it. A homeless man stabbing a woman to death on the street in the middle of the day?”

  “Ah, yes, I did read about that tragic situation. You’ll be the attorney to defend the homeless man?”

  “Yes, my boss always gives me the most demanding cases
. He knows I can handle it. You know, that I won’t cave under the pressure. Though, I don’t view this case as particularly demanding. It’s really quite routine.”

  “Routine? Why do you say that?”

  “Well, it should be easy to get the bum off with an insanity plea. After all, the poor man is schizophrenic as well as a drug addict. He should never have been discharged from the institution where he was. The only reason that was done was because the city of New York wanted to cut costs. So irresponsible.”

  “I see. Still, who walks around with a big knife on them? I think I read that this man did that.”

  There was some commotion and then a male voice asked how they were doing, the waiter presumably. Ian thanked the man, saying they were fine.

  “Yes,” Anita said, “he did have a big stiletto knife on him. In his mind, that wasn’t nearly enough considering all the threats he was facing living on the streets.”

  “I suppose it can’t be easy living on the streets.”

  “It isn’t. And it’s especially challenging if you hear voices and have imaginary people tell you all day long that people are out to hurt you.”

  “This man imagined people were out to hurt him? How so exactly?”

  “During my first interview with him, he claimed two men came up to him and warned him that a tall, blond and very thin woman was out to get him and that he needed to kill her before she killed him. The only way to kill her was if he stabbed her to death with the stiletto knife. He claims they gave him the knife and drove him to the street where she was walking. They let him out of the car and urged him to go after her as soon as he saw her. He attacked her when she came around the corner.”

  “Wow,” Ian said, sounding truly amazed. “So all that was just in his head?”

  “Of course. According to our staff shrink, paranoid hallucinations such as those are very common among schizophrenics, especially if they are also high on hallucinogenic drugs. Which he was. Forensics found PCP in his blood shortly after the incident.”

  “Makes sense then.”

  “I have to admit that it was curious how he ended up on that particular street. He usually hangs out at the other side of the island, on the west side.”

  “Really?” There was a subtle but distinct change to Ian’s voice. “How then did he end up on that street? Is it possible that there is some truth to what he was telling you?”

  Anita chuckled and there was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. “Hardly. Why would two strange men come up to him and tell him such a thing?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they wanted to see Eve Koch dead. Isn’t that a possibility?”

  “It’s a possibility, but given Ed Thompson’s history—that’s the bum—it’s extremely unlikely. He can’t give me anyone who saw him talk to these men or saw him leave their car at the other end of Manhattan. Really, the only thing that supports his story is that he somehow ended up very far away from his usual digs, which is indeed odd. Even so, that can be explained by him jumping on a crosstown bus while high and just imagining he was driven there. To be honest, I’m convinced those men and their words are all in his head. And that’s how I’ll present the case to the jury. Ed has already agreed to us using an insanity plea. It’s by far his best chance to get off and that’s our ultimate goal. You want to do what’s best for the client.”

  “That’s very true. The client’s interest is always the most important.”

  “Besides, Ed misses being at the institution. He wants to get back there as soon as possible. I’m sure I’ll be able to get him what he wants.”

  “I do too. You seem to be a great lawyer.”

  “Thank you. I always do my best.”

  “I’ll be sure to mention that to the principals at Sullivan & Cromwell. How do you think he got hold of the knife if those men didn’t give it to him?”

  “He’s probably had it for a long time. Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing since he’s not a reliable witness.”

  “Right.”

  Ian cut the recording short then and glanced at me from where he sat at his desk behind his two screens. I realized that I had been completely entranced by Anita and his conversation.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “You’re right, it was very interesting.”

  “What’s even more interesting is that the bum never mentioned he was attacked by Eve Koch the way the two witnesses told you.”

  “Why would they tell me that if it’s not true? As crazy as this guy is, it’s possible he forgot, right? You can obviously not take anything he says seriously. Like that crazy story about the two men telling him to kill skinny, blond chicks ’cause they’re out to get him.”

  “Maybe the witnesses told you that because they knew you were looking for a motive for the bum to kill Eve. You told me yourself it’s possible Pete embellished his story to please you, and that Lisa sounded insecure about what to tell you at first. Didn’t it take her a trip to the bathroom where she stayed for a very long time before she confirmed Pete’s story?”

  “Yeah, that’s true, but she never connected with anyone while being in there, remember?”

  Unfortunately, I didn’t feel nearly as confident about these words as I’d sounded when I said them. Which was why I had contacted George and asked him to find out more about Lisa. I hadn’t been able to stop wondering what had caused her sudden shift in demeanor. Was it possible that she had more than one phone? George had yet to get back to me about that.

  Ian stood up and smiled at me. “What time were you in her apartment? After nine thirty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I did a background check on Lisa Huang and there are two phones attached to her name. And she used one of them to text Pete around the time you were at her house.”

  So I had been right in suspecting that she had spoken to someone then. On the one hand I was relieved to find this out, but on the other, it was disturbing that Pete and Lisa seemed to be lying about what had happened between Eve and the bum. Why were they lying?

  Ian kept smiling at me, which I found extremely annoying. So I snapped “What?” at him.

  “I can almost see the wheels turning in your head, Gabi. You’re trying to figure out what’s going on with them making Eve sound like such a horrible person. Why would they do that if it isn’t the truth? I’d be happy to enlighten you.”

  I smirked at him. “Go head and try.”

  “You were correct to suspect that Lisa is more enamored with Pete than the other way around. If all her texts to him are anything to go by, this is surely the case. I’ve read several of them. Seems she’d do anything for him. But what’s a lot more interesting—crucial, in fact—is that Pete’s father is on the board of directors at the New York branch of The Adler Group.”

  “Really? So you’re telling me that Pete and Lisa were just plants like the bum then?”

  “Well, what does it seem like to you?”

  “Could still just be a coincidence that his father happens to be involved with Adler. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “If you say so. Are you hungry? I’m going to order dinner. Would you like some?”