“What was she saying?”
“She was saying, ‘You love her, you love her. You weren’t supposed to love her.’”
“And what was Raine doing?”
“He was trying to calm her down, speaking in low tones. She screamed, ‘I betrayed him for you. I thought we were going to be together. I have blood on my hands for nothing.’ Something like that.” He waved a hand. “I don’t remember her exact words.”
His leg was still pumping and he was sweating as if he’d just spent an hour working out hard in the gym.
“Mr. Raine said, ‘Be patient. It’s almost through.’ He tried to walk away but she followed, yelling, ‘You liar, you liar. I’m going to burn it down. All of it.’ She grabbed hold of his arm. But he slapped her hard and she went reeling back. He saw me standing there then. ‘Call the police if she follows me,’ he told me. I was stunned. ‘Charlie, I know I can count on your discretion.’ He left her weeping on the street.”
“What did you do at that point?” asked Jez.
“I couldn’t just leave her there. After he went upstairs, I brought her into the lobby, gave her some ice for her mouth, asked if I could call her a taxi.”
“Where’d you get the ice?” asked Jez with a frown.
“What?” asked Shane. It must have seemed like a stupid question, apropos of nothing. But Grady knew why Jez had asked it. Lies lived in the little things, the details people threw in to make their stories sound truer.
“From a cooler I bring my meals in. I use an ice pack to keep things cold.”
She nodded, satisfied. Shane stared at the wall in front of him. “She seemed very fragile to me, unwell. I felt sorry for her. We talked awhile. I asked her what it was all about, the argument. Who had she betrayed? She said that she’d betrayed herself-over and over until she didn’t even remember who she was or what she wanted anymore. I told her that she wasn’t so different from anyone. We all betray ourselves one way or another. She said, ‘Not like this. Someone loved me, really loved me. And I betrayed him for a life I thought was in my reach.’ She wouldn’t tell me more.”
He paused a second. “She was beautiful, you know. But she seemed like a bird or a butterfly. You couldn’t catch her or touch her. Just look.”
“But you touched her, didn’t you?” Jez had returned to her corner; she was partially hidden in shadow. “A lot of people touched her. She was a call girl, right?”
He nodded reluctantly. “We made an arrangement.”
“You kept an eye on Raine, told her anything you saw suspicious or out of the ordinary, his comings and goings? And she gave herself to you in exchange?”
He gave a weak shrug. “Herself, once. Then passes to the Topaz Room. Other girls there.”
“But why would she want to know that? What was she looking for in particular?”
“She wanted to know things like how often the Raines went out, did they look happy, did he bring her flowers. She wanted to know if he stayed out late, brought any other women back to the apartment when Mrs. Raine was out of town. Things like that-jealous girlfriend things.”
“And what about Raine? Did he mention the incident again?”
Shane nodded. “On the way out to work the next morning, he gave me a hundred dollars, asked that I keep what happened the night before to myself. I agreed, of course. He said he’d continue to appreciate my discretion. And he did-with money, once tickets to a play once a nice bottle of scotch.”
“So you played them both.”
He bristled. “I obliged them both. Gave them both what they wanted.”
“Like any good doorman.”
“That’s right, sir.” But his chin dropped to his chest, shoulders lost their square.
“And this woman?” Grady tapped the photo of S.
Shane nodded. “She was one of the women I let into the apartment. There were four of them. Two women, two men. I let them in and out through the service door behind the building. They came with big empty sacks. When they left, they were all full. I didn’t ask any questions or say a word to any of them. Of course, I had no idea people had been murdered, that crimes had been committed. Until you came that night, I didn’t understand what I had done. I was afraid then. I ran.”
“Was he one of them?” Grady asked, pointing to the photograph of Ivan Ragan.
Shane shook his head. “No. Him-I’ve never seen.”
Isabel Raine had given them a lot of information-the photographs from the thumb drive in Camilla Novak’s purse, addresses, Web sites, names. She’d even drawn a few connections. Authors didn’t make bad detectives, it turned out.
“What else, Shane? What else do you have for us?”
Shane shook his head. “I am paid to be of service. And I did that for the Raines. It’s not my job to ask questions or pass judgment. I just hold open the door.”
Grady just stared at him for a minute. Shane was an oddity he didn’t quite understand. Grady couldn’t stop asking questions; finding the answers drove him. Analyzing, extrapolating meaning, finding connections-it was his job, his life. Maybe he had it all wrong.
“Camilla was a good girl, I think,” Shane said. “She made mistakes, had problems. But she wanted to be good.” He was just thinking out loud, Grady thought. Shane was tired, sinking into the depression that follows too much alcohol.
“Wanting to be good doesn’t make you good,” said Jez quietly, maybe a little sadly. She was looking down at her feet. Grady thought she should spring for a new pair of shoes.
“SO WHAT ARE we thinking here?” asked Grady. They were back at their desks on the homicide floor, facing each other. It was late, most everyone long gone for the night. They were both exhausted, but the adrenaline blast from earlier in the evening still had them edgy and wired.
Jez’s desk was a study of organization-neat stacks of folders, a few photos of her son, and nothing else. Grady’s was a field of clutter-papers waiting to be filed, a box of pens spilling its contents, a crumpled white bag from some meal he’d eaten there in the last week, an old mug in which coffee had solidified and was beginning to send off an odor. He dumped the cup in the trash rather than wash it, cleared a space to rest his elbows.
Jez had a printout of Isabel’s e-mail in front of her and was reading rather than looking at Grady.
“Camilla Novak and Kristof Ragan, if that’s really his name, conspired to kill Marcus Raine and steal his money,” she said. It sounded as if she was certain. This was how they did it-came up with theories, tried to shoot them down, see if they held.
“Then how did Ragan wind up married to Isabel Connelly, running a legitmate business, leaving Camilla Novak weeping on the sidewalk outside his luxury, doorman building?”
She thought about it for a minute, tapping her pen. “He was a con. Isabel Connelly was his next mark. Somehow he convinced Novak to wait, promised her the payout would be even bigger after he’d run his con on Isabel Connelly and her family. Maybe he gave her money, continued their love affair, keeping her hope alive. But she got tired of waiting.”
Grady thought about it, about the e-mail Isabel had forwarded to him. “She started e-mailing Isabel Raine-trying to burn it down, like she threatened on the street.”
“He wasn’t supposed to fall in love with Isabel. But he did. He fell in love with her, with the life they made,” said Jez.
“He didn’t want to leave her,” Grady agreed.
“And his brother, Ivan Ragan?”
Grady already had a theory about this. “Okay. So Ivan and Kristof Ragan both come to the U.S. at the same time. Kristof is the good one, goes to college, gets a job at Red Gravity. There he meets Marcus Raine, decides he wants what this guy has-money, the girl. He enlists the help of his criminal brother-someone to do the dirty work, the kill, the disposal-for a share of the haul.”
“But at the end of the day, Kristof doesn’t want to share,” added Jez. She shifted through her file and found the arrest report for Ivan Ragan, handed it to Grady. “Ivan Ragan was arrested after an anonymous tip that he had enough guns in his home for a small army.”