Almost immediately, his eyes lit up.
Before he could even blurt it out, she held up her hand. “Don’t get excited… I didn’t pay cash. Used a debit card. Comes right off my checking account. Immediately. If you have wireless in here I could pull it up for you right now. You know how to use a computer, right? You know…e-mail…online banking…surfing the Internet… It’s easy now, Kolker, it even shows the time-somewhere around ten thirty. How does that fit into your theory? Pretty well, if you totally want to throw out the time line your Medical Examiner established for the time of death. Or, hey, your theory could still conceivably work…if the body had been found in the dairy section at the mini-mart.”
She saw him glance over at the mirror. They had to be laughing into their fists at him back there by now, and before he thought it through, he shot back.
“The time is fluid, Dean. And I’ve still got you on Hayden’s murder. You may talk your way out of one-and I’m not saying you did-but not the other. You’re dead in the water, Dean.”
The veins on either side of his temple were bulging, and his face was red.
You’d better watch it, she told herself, realizing this might not be the right time to be a smart-ass.
After all, he did have the keys to the jail, literally. “What about Thursday night? Where were you?” Kolker asked without a pause.
She pulled back. “I’m clear on Thursday, too. I ran the East River.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.” The tables turned abruptly. She knew she was in trouble.
“Running alone along the East River? No witness? No running buddy?” Kolker smiled, rummaged in his pocket for a quarter and pushed it across the worn tabletop with the pink eraser tip of a yellow pencil. “I know it hurts, Hailey…but don’t feel too bad. Here’s a present. It’s from me to you…to call your lawyer. Nice try, Hailey.” He stood up and gazed triumphantly toward the mirror, nodding his head slightly to his cronies on the other side, as if he were taking a bow.
She knew he was right. Running by herself…all alone along the East River jogging path…wouldn’t work. No witnesses…but wait…what could she do…Was there any way she could alibi herself? They’d still hold her, even on the single Murder One count, even if the other was weak. Without thinking it through, she spoke.
“Well, you have a point. But, Kolker, I ran with my cell phone tucked into the pocket of my sweatshirt. I was thinking as I ran. I had an idea about an article I’m working on, and before I lost the thought, I called my office. I left a message to remind myself.”
“So what does that prove? You could have easily made the call anytime from anywhere…maybe leaving the body warm on the ground at the scene of the murder, for all I know.”
He was right. Again. She had to think faster.
“So the call, if it does exist, only proves one thing-you’re even more cold-blooded than I thought. Cold-blooded enough to stab some mixed-up, innocent kid and then before you even turn the block, you set up your own alibi.”
He was gaining ground. “And everybody knows that even a high-schooler knows how to change time and date stamps on incoming and outgoing calls. This’ll make a hell of a closing argument for the prosecutor, won’t it, Hailey Dean?”
He sat back in his chair, now relaxed, grinning into the two-way. Kolker’s moment of triumph. He was loving it.
But it didn’t last long. Watching him carefully, Hailey pulled the trump card. “No.”
The moment faded for Kolker and he turned slightly in his chair to look at her.
Her voice was cold now. “In the middle of the message, fire trucks from Sixty-seventh Street pulled out onto Third. It’s Engine 39, I’m sure. It had to have been. I could hear the ladder man over a bullhorn shouting so that they could get the big pumper truck out. I heard him telling drivers to back up so they could get out. Cars were blocking the driveway. The pumper couldn’t pull out onto the street. If the machine picked it up and I’m sure it did…it locks me in on the time. I’m clear across town, practically in the Seventies, the murder is at the other end of the island, in the Village, you said.”
He didn’t respond, but looked briefly toward the mirror as if for guidance.
“Check the message, Kolker. I know I saved it because I didn’t have time to work on the article yesterday before…”
Before you barged into my office and you brought me here…
She held her tongue, saying only, “I can play it back for you right now on remote if you want. You’ll hear the ladder captain in the background and the sirens. They’ll have a record of a fire-truck detail being sent out that night…that time. And you do know how to triangulate, right? To ping? You know, to pinpoint the exact location, sometimes down to the square block, where a cell call’s made?”
Kolker was looking down at the table between them, deep in thought.
She didn’t let up, she went for the kill. “Go ahead…ping me. And oh yes, my doorman, Ricky, saw me when I came back in.”
Hailey put her right index finger on the face of the quarter and slowly pushed it back across the tabletop toward Kolker.
“Keep it, Kolker.” Hailey stood up, preparing to leave. She’d won her way out of the jail and she knew it.
She glanced over her shoulder at the two-way mirror and nodded her head.
“Not so fast, Counselor. Your hair’s usually pulled back, right? Maybe you should have kept it back the nights of the murders, Hailey.”
She stared at him full-on. “Get to the point, Kolker.”
“I told you we have forensics. Can’t argue with the crime lab. You were on the crime scenes all right, both of them. DNA puts you there.”
“There is no way my DNA was at the crime scenes.”
“Save it. We got top-notch crime techs working Melissa’s body within the hour. Hayden’s, too. The best in the state, maybe even the country. They combed the scene, Hailey. It didn’t take them ten minutes to find long blonde hair-not one piece, Hailey, several. We’ve already had it tested, mitochondrial DNA, Hailey, maybe even some nuclear DNA, too … and they’re yours.”
Her hair? At the scene?
“And Hailey, they weren’t just at the crime scene. They weren’t just on the body. Melissa was clutching them in her right hand. She was fighting to live…fighting with you. I think you had them doped up on some of your shrink meds…and they never saw it coming…and from someone they trusted. It’s sick. On Hayden it was caught in a bracelet she was wearing.
“And one last thing, as if we needed it. What about this? Any idea who this belongs to?” Kolker stood up, stretching his long legs. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out something shiny, something silver.
Hailey turned and froze. Hanging from his right hand, on its black silk cord was a small, silver necklace, a tiny Tiffany’s ink pen.
“Recognize this, Hailey?” Kolker asked, gloating.
She did. Of course she did.
She didn’t have to look any closer to know what was engraved: For Hailey, Seeking Justice, Katrine Dumont-Eastwood.
“We found your jewelry, your necklace from Tiffany’s. It was on the Krasinski murder scene. And it wasn’t in her pocket or sweatshirt. She didn’t just pick it up accidentally. It was under her body. And to top it off…the cord’s broken. Lose it during the struggle, Hailey?”
She had once treasured it dearly but now it dangled in Kolker’s fingers like a noose.
59
Atlanta, Georgia
FRANK LAGRANGE HADDEN (THE THIRD) HAD BEEN WORRIED ABOUT being able to walk, let alone run, after being folded into the crapper stall for so long.