“Not a thing.”
“So someone took everything out-wallet and cash and identification-but either left this in place if it was actually his, or planted it there.”
“It’s not your case, Coop. Spinning wheels in that anxious little brain isn’t going to help anything. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”
“I’m grateful for that.” I’m not sure I really was grateful. I felt like I’d been standing in quicksand since the earliest hours of Sunday morning, and now it had covered my ankles and was pulling me down as it aimed to swallow my kneecaps.
“Is Luc involved in any trouble that you know of, any business problems at all?”
I shot Mike a glance, confident he would recognize the mix of pain and anger I was trying to express, without my saying a word.
“I’m not being funny, kid. I’m not being mean to you,” he knelt in front of me and put one hand on my knee.
“I know that.” I focused on the phone, which was the only thing still left on the old wooden desk. “I don’t think that he is. It’s a huge undertaking, opening a business like this in New York. It’s very risky.”
“Does Luc talk about it with you? Would you know if there was a problem?”
“I just arrived in Mougins on Friday, so we never got around to discussing business. We weren’t even together for forty-eight hours before the woman’s body was pulled out of the pond. And that was after I found the bones.”
“What bones?” Mike stood up in front of me.
“Old ones. Some kind of joke, the cops think, from the catacombs in Paris.”
I knew I needed to tell Mike that the same type of matchbox was recovered from the floater in the pond, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I didn’t want Luc to be dragged any deeper into the quicksand beside me.
“You mean there are people with worse senses of humor than me?” Mike asked.
I smiled and nodded.
“Now I know you’re in a bad way, Coop. You didn’t correct my grammar.”
“That’s a full-time job,” I said, as I got up and walked to the desk. It was three in the afternoon in Mougins. Luc was probably in his office. “Who’s going to handle the case for Brooklyn Homicide?”
“You have to forget I was even here today. Don’t ask questions like that. Read the story in the tabs like everyone else. You don’t know about the matchbox, you’ve never seen a photo of the corpse. Play dumb, kid. It could be a refreshing change.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to burn you with the brass at One PP. I’m thinking about Luc and all the pressure on him now. He’s trying to figure out how to spend so much time away from his kids, whom he adores, and he’s already put a ton of money into this deal.”
“And you should be back in your office with the team. There’s as much pressure on you as there is on Luc. I’m almost sorry I came by,” Mike said. “No good deed, as the saying goes.”
“Thank you. I really mean that. Go on your way and just give me a minute to compose myself. Tell Mercer I’ll be right there.”
Mike watched me for a few seconds, then turned to leave. “I’ll talk to you later.”
When he closed the door, I waited twenty seconds then lifted the receiver and dialed the DA’s office switchboard. “Hi, Mona. It’s Alex Cooper. Would you please give me a line for an international call, and charge it to me personally?”
She asked for the number, so I slowly recited the country and city codes for Mougins.
The door opened and I swung around. Mike charged at the desk and grabbed the phone from my hand, slamming the receiver into its cradle. “I told you to play dumb, Coop, not be completely stupid. Do I have to cuff you to a chair till the evening news breaks the story, or can you just sit tight on this little secret for the rest of the day like I’ve asked you to do?”
SIXTEEN
I didn’t need a distraction of this magnitude to interfere with navigating the MGD case work ahead of us. I needed more focus than I was struggling to regain at that moment.
When Mike escorted me back to my office, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Blanca Robles had made the right choice. She’d told Byron Peaser she would see him at the end of the day. To my mind, that reaffirmed her commitment to prosecute Mohammed Gil-Darsin and let the civil suit be secondary to the criminal trial.
Mercer and I led Blanca down to the conference room where Ellen Gunsher and Ryan Blackmer, backing me up as a witness from the Sex Crimes Unit, waited for us. June Simpson was out of the picture because of my return. Since Ellen had started the questioning yesterday, it made sense to leave it in her hands. She and Blanca exchanged greetings and she got to work.
“I’m going to ask you to go over exactly what happened when you entered suite twenty-eight-oh-six, is that all right?”
“Again?”
“Yes, once again. When you testify before the grand jury, both Alex and I will be with you. I’ll ask all the questions, and you’ll know exactly what they will be before you go inside. No surprises. That’s why I want to be sure we have all the details correct.”
“Mr. Peaser told me there are a lot of people in the room. You know how many?”
“There are twenty-three grand jurors,” Ellen said, going on to describe the ampitheatrical shape of the room. “But only jurors. There’s no judge, and there’s no defense attorney to cross-examine you.”
“Twenty-three people?” Blanca seemed startled by that large a number. She looked up at the ceiling and made the sign of the cross. “Is he there, too? This man who attacked me?”
“No, no. He’s in jail. After you testify, he has to appear before the judge on Friday.”
“But I don’t have to see him, do I?”
“No, you don’t,” Ellen said, as Blanca crossed herself again. “Do you mind starting your story from the beginning, from the time you were sent upstairs to clean the suite?”
Blanca spoke clearly, making eye contact with each of us at different points in her narrative. She explained that the door to the room was ajar, and she had just seen a man from Food Services removing the table tray, which confirmed her belief that the guest had vacated.
“I knocked on the door a couple of times and called out ‘Housekeeping.’ We always do that, announce ourselves, in case the guests are still there. I didn’t hear anything, so I went inside.”
As she spoke, Mercer unfolded a diagram of the large suite. “The hotel sent this over to my office last night.” He spread it out so that we could follow Blanca’s story and see where each act transpired.
“See this corridor here?” She pointed at a long, narrow hallway that led into the enormous bedroom suite. “I was just at the end of this the first time I saw the guy. He was coming out of the bathroom. Right here. And he was naked. Totally naked.”
“What did you do?” Ellen asked.
“I-I kind of froze.”
That would be the first point of attack for the defense. Blanca was putting them ten feet apart, with nothing separating her from the exit. Why didn’t she back up and out, why didn’t she turn and walk away?
“Who spoke first?”
“Me,” Blanca said. “I did. I remember calling out ‘¡Dios mío! Oh my God! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’”
“Then what?”
“He told me not to be sorry. He started walking toward me and told me again there was no reason for me to be sorry.”
And why didn’t you move when he walked toward you? I wanted to ask. That was your chance to get out of the room. I don’t expect he would have chased you into the common hallway stark naked.
“Is that when he grabbed you?” Ellen asked.
“Yes, exactly. That’s when he grabbed me.”
Why are you putting words in her mouth? Did he “grab” her or motion to her or command her to come to do what he wanted? It’s Blanca who has to tell the story. Grabbing, pushing, pulling-and forcing-would be the most critical words in her narrative, and she needed to be the first person to use them.