Smyth was cautious not to give them her outright approval. “You don’t have much time.” She requested of Daphne, “Should anyone ever ask: You loaned me your office, where I remained while you two were in there with her, okay?”
“Near as I can remember.”
Boldt and Daphne moved quickly down the hall. “I have an idea. Back me up in here,” she requested, meeting eyes with him as he reached to open the door for her.
“I’m there,” he promised.
“We turn the volume way up and she’s going to talk. Bet on it. But it may get a little nasty.”
“That suits her, I think.”
He followed her into the Box. Daphne never broke stride. She burst through the door, leaving it for him to close, and she hollered at the suspect, “Out of the chair. Now!”
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Cornelia Uli wore a haggard expression from her two dismal nights in lockup. Uli sprang to her feet.
“Come over here,” Daphne said, indicating the end of the table. “Right here.”
Uli stood at the end of the interrogation table, looking concerned.
Daphne said, “Now let’s get one thing straight: If you do not cooperate with us, your life just got ugly. You’re going where girls do other things to girls that are not pleasant-things you’ve never heard of-and where the guards just do worse things, so no one ever says a thing to them. You keep your mouth shut, unless someone has use for it. That’s option number one. Option number two is you open that same mouth for me, right now. This is not some two-year drug charge we’re talking about. It is not some check-kiting scam. This is not some free ATM card that your pal set up for you. This is murder one. This is the end of your pitiful little life, Cornelia, if you do anything but exactly as I say.”
“I’ve got nothing to say.”
Daphne glanced once, hotly, at Boldt, turned to face the suspect, and said, “Lean against the table.”
“I will not,” Uli protested.
Daphne slapped the table hard, jarring the woman. “Lean against the table.”
“Go ahead,” Boldt said.
Reluctantly, Uli leaned onto her hands.
“Your forearms,” Daphne said. “Good. Now open your legs. More. Move ’em. Good!”
“What do you think?” Daphne asked, stepping back to view the profile as she might a painting.
Having no idea what he was agreeing to, Boldt said, “I think you’re right.”
Daphne stepped up behind a nervous Cornelia Uli and reached around her, careful not to make contact, and leaned over her in a provocative position impossible to mistake. She rocked her hips unmistakably. In an intimate whisper she asked the suspect, “Remind you of anyone?”
“Get off me.”
“I’m not on you. Neither was he. He was in you.”
Boldt felt like an idiot for taking so long to see it: The woman in Kenny Fowler’s apartment. The night Daphne had taken the hotel room and sat in the dark.
In that same intimate whisper Daphne said, “I saw you two up there.”
Uli’s head jerked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It didn’t look like you enjoyed it very much,” Daphne said. She added quietly, “Whatever he has on you is gone. We tear it up, burn it, whatever. We’re not interested.”
“All I do is squeal, right? Forget it.”
The first crack.
Boldt said, “We’re talking about extortion, accessory to murder. The rest of your natural life spent behind bars.” he added, “We know it was you.”
The door swung open and an angry male voice demanded, “Out of here now!”
It was Uli’s public defender, and he left the door for them to close as he rushed to his client’s side.
On the other side of the Box’s one-way glass, Uli, her attorney, and Penny Smyth were waiting impatiently for Daphne and Boldt, who had been talking it through for the last several minutes.
Wrapping it up, Boldt speculated, “Being one of the few insiders, Fowler knew how to word the extortion threat so that we would attribute it to Caulfield.”
“But he blew it-the extortion demand neglected to blame Adler, something that bothered both Dr. Clements and me.”
“We expected extortion demands. He simply gave us what we wanted.”
Looking at Uli through the glass, Daphne explained proudly, “It was her body language that caught my eye. When she started prancing around the room like that, I knew I recognized her. I sat in that hotel room watching them for hours. It just took a second for it all to click.”
Boldt said cynically, “Both of them in that apartment-right there across from us …”
“He was angry with her about something. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to show up there. He took a quickie at the dining room table for payment and sent her packing.”
“He’s such a prince,” Boldt said, swinging open the door as they joined the others.
Uli’s public defender was a young Jewish kid fresh from the law boards named Carsman. He looked like an unmade bed. He had a high, squeaky voice and he protested Boldt’s every breath. Penny Smyth, looking the most dignified of any of them, dragged Carsman into the hallway for a conference, and when they returned to the Box, Cars-man did not utter a single objection. He took notes furiously, and occasionally passed one to his sagging client.
Boldt passed Uli her arrest record. “Badge number eight-one-six-five. That badge number belonged to Detective Kenneth Fowler when he was a police officer. He arrested you in a gang situation, and you were charged with a second-degree homicide. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.”
Daphne stated, “We saw you in his apartment that night.”
“Shit,” the suspect said, and she hung her head and shook her hair in defeat.
Boldt felt triumphant. His face revealed nothing. Impassive. Exhausted.
Daphne said, “What does he have on you, Cornelia?”
She mumbled. “A videotape. A surveillance tape. I was seventeen.”
“Sex?” Daphne asked.
“A homicide,” Boldt stated knowingly.
“Don’t answer!” Carsman interrupted.
Boldt said, “Lester Gammon. Age eighteen. Stabbed seven times.”
Cornelia Uli obeyed her attorney, though she locked eyes with Boldt. “He asks me to do stuff now and then. I do it.”
“Like the other night?” Daphne asked.
“Go stuff it,” Uli said vehemently. “What do any of you know about the streets? Let me tell you something-out there you do favors and people leave you alone. It’s simple in the streets. It’s basic survival. You and your perfect hair and your strawberry douche,” she said spitefully to Daphne. “You make me sick.”
Daphne blushed and held herself back in a formidable show of internal strength.
“You did Fowler favors,” Boldt repeated.
“Like this ATM thing. Yeah.”
“Do not say anything more!” her attorney advised.
“Shut up,” Uli told him.
“I can’t represent you if-”
“Shut up!” To Boldt she said, “I went where he told me to. I did what he said to do.” To Daphne she said, “And yeah, he jumps my bones now and then. And no, I don’t particularly like it. But it’s not like it’s something new, okay? He’s been doing it since back when he was a cop. He had a lot of the girls doing it back then. If Kenny busted you, you went down on him. No charges. It was that simple. That’s what I’m saying. You get why I’m afraid of cops? It started when I was fifteen and running with a gang. Kenny liked me. Too bad for me.” She seemed to be apologizing to Daphne. “You get kinda used to the ones like Kenny Fowler. But it’s better than the alternative, and that’s the way it works out there. Doing favors for people beats the hell out of living under bridges in cardboard boxes. Getting gang-banged. Getting bad needles. You don’t know until you’ve been there.”
“You’re right,” Daphne said, overcoming her personal agenda and striving to establish rapport with the suspect. Daphne’s friend Sharon had been there. Daphne knew all about it, but was not going to say so, was not going to defend herself. Boldt admired her for that.