As soon as the door closed, Bill looked at her. “Should I even bother to ask?”
“Nope. So is this really what I wanted, or were you just trying to help?” She opened the folder.
“Nah, it’s everything we got on the canvassing of the park and on Paulson’s statement.”
“Perfect. Let’s get started.”
She moved her chair out of the way and helped Bill push a filing cabinet over. As she spread out all the papers on the floor, she couldn’t help but remember the way Tyler had done the same in his office. And the way she’d made him pick the files up. Completely naked. She lowered her head to the task of organizing the papers until she felt the heat of the blush subside. Wouldn’t do to have Bill see that. He’d think it had to do with their idiot boss. God, how could she have ever found him charming and attractive?
The two got to work reading, sticky-noting, and highlighting in silence, mostly.
Three hours later, Layla finally called for a break and ordered some food. She’d been right. Something was missing from the picture.
“I wish the cops had found the murder weapon. I think we’re going to need it.” Their big picture had holes in it, and it was her job to fill them.
“I know. Everything else is pretty solid, though,” Bill said.
For half a second when Brian had threatened to send her home, as if he could, she’d thought about leaving voluntarily. But she couldn’t, not while knowing there was a piece that didn’t fit. If she left and the defense exposed it just right, exploiting that hole, making it warp and grow into something the jury couldn’t ignore, a murderer would walk free. She wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if she let that happen, especially knowing Jeannie Rose could never rest in peace if Paulson wasn’t behind bars. She couldn’t live with that. She hadn’t been in to see Bob and Linda yet. She’d been putting it off until she knew they had a foolproof case. Until she could look Jeannie Rose’s parents in the eyes and tell them their daughter would have the justice she deserved.
“Pretty solid isn’t going to be good enough in the trial. The defense is going to pounce on the fact that the case got pushed through. They’re going to bring to light the span of unaccounted-for time and say it wasn’t enough for him to get rid of the weapon.” She groaned. Why couldn’t she see the way to fill the holes? That never happened in a case. She always found the answers. She needed to get enough convincing evidence that the jury would overlook the lack of the murder weapon. A plausible story for what could have happened to it. What she needed was another two weeks to prepare.
* * * *
Tyler picked up his home phone and put it down again. He slammed his fist into his coffee table. He wanted to call the hotel. Demand Eddie tell him where she’d gone. But he knew Layla now. Knew that if she thought Eddie would tell him, she wouldn’t tell her friend where she was going. Eddie must at least know where she lived in California. Her cell phone number. Something.
The question was, would he give it to Tyler?
He turned the receiver round and round in his hand. Only the fact that he was making headway in the case had kept him from agonizing over Layla every four and a half seconds. He’d managed to go whole minutes without the hollow feeling in his gut overwhelming him.
He put the phone down. He wouldn’t call. Not yet. He had to get out of his apartment, but he couldn’t go back to the office. Aside from the fact that he didn’t want to see anyone else, he’d only be able to think about Layla there.
He took his briefcase and bag with the case files and headed to the library. After finding a small, round table in the corner behind the stacks, he clicked on the small green lamp and laid everything out. He settled into the stiff-backed chair and got started going through the files for the billionth time. Thank God he’d been assigned this complex, crazy mess. None of his coworkers would have gone through all this trouble to help Paulson. Except maybe Williams, who would’ve done it only for the recognition. But was Tyler focused enough, good enough, to win this case?
He stared again and again at the files, the pictures from the crime scene. Someone had handed him three new photos today that hadn’t been in his original dossier. He couldn’t remember whose hand had held the folder out to him. He’d had trouble focusing all day. He zeroed in on those three images, hoping one of them would give him something else. Even concrete and exact blood-spatter evidence wouldn’t be enough to exonerate Paulson.
He paused with one of the new pictures in his hand. It depicted the bloody imprint in the ground after they’d moved the body. Something small and silver was pushed into the soil. He stared at the image. What was it?
It looked like a piece of jewelry. Not something Paulson would own. He wouldn’t spend money on jewelry. Or booze. Because unlike a lot of the homeless population in the city, he wasn’t a drunk. He kept every cent he could in a safety deposit box to try to get out of his tent and into an apartment. Two years of saving, and he only had four hundred dollars. It wouldn’t even be enough to pay a deposit. The man was trying to rebuild his life. Murdering Jeannie Rose didn’t make a lick of sense. He had no motive.
The real killer had left this object at the scene, but something had made the police disregard it, because it hadn’t been entered into evidence. They’d discarded it as something unimportant to the murder. He flicked the picture with his finger, the sound echoing in the cavernous room. Maybe it wasn’t important, but the fact that they’d overlooked it pissed him off.
Just like the cops and the lawyers had ignored the fact that his father could have been, and was, at home with his two sleeping kids at two o’clock in the morning instead of at the bar down the street, where no one sober had been able to say whether he’d been there that specific night or just three or four other nights that week.
The sound of clacking high heels bounced off the walls. His gut leaped into his throat, just as it had all day whenever he’d heard the distinctive sound. He looked up, trying to find the woman who strutted through a deserted, quiet library—in the law section, to boot. He caught a glimpse of dark skin and hair and a white blouse as the woman turned a corner, moving through the stacks of books.
Stop being such an idiot. He got all the way to his feet and halfway around the table before he realized he was going to chase down some innocent dark-skinned woman in the middle of the library just to prove it wasn’t Layla. She was probably already in bed, tired from a day of traveling, all the way across the country.
He forced himself back into his seat and clenched the photo of the bloody imprint in his hand. Central Park was a busy, public place. It could have been there for a week, a month, or longer before she was killed, and she just happened to land on it. The prosecution would poke giant holes through the idea that it belonged to the real killer. But why had it been overlooked?
He dug his fingers into the arm of the chair with his left hand as the sound of high heels teased his ears again. He wouldn’t let himself look. He wouldn’t.
His eyes lifted, clearly unconcerned with his need not to appear as a creepy idiot. The sound moved closer, just on the other side of the stacks to his left. He stood up, determined to put his craziness to rest. Through the small space above the books, he looked at a woman about the same size as Layla. But her facial features were broader, not as delicate. Not her.
He grabbed a book off the shelf for pretense’s sake and sat down, trying to ignore the way his shoulders slumped. If it had been her, that would mean she’d lied to get away from him. Not a ringing endorsement for positive feelings toward him, but it would mean he could at least see her. Hear her laugh. Talk to her about this case. Would she watch the proceedings unfold from the West Coast? See him on television and want to call him? He wasn’t sure he could wait a week to find out.
Tyler corralled his thoughts back on task. Time healed all wounds, right? He would make it through this case intact and maybe take a few days off to realign his life. Or to mope around his apartment in a bathrobe and lie in unwashed sheets that s
till held her scent. Or maybe he’d use the time to go slinking off to California like some lovesick puppy until he found her.
The minute the word love popped into his head, he knew it was a mistake. He couldn’t have that word and Layla in the same sentence, even in his head. He couldn’t. Because how could you possibly fall in love with someone in a week? You couldn’t. He tried to make himself believe that, but the idea just wouldn’t stick.
He was so screwed.
Chapter Thirty-One
Layla had avoided Brian for three days, but she knew that couldn’t last. If he threatened to send her away again, she’d have to go over his head to the mayor and insist she stay on the case. Bob had always liked her better than Brian anyway. If she had to remind Brian of that fact, she would.
She looked around her empty hotel room. This one was set up much like her room at the Marietta, but it was just different enough to remind her she wasn’t home. Despite what she wanted her mother to believe, and as much as she hated parts of this city, that room had become her home while she was there. Carl and Eddie were part of her family. She’d let her mother take that away from her, just like everything else in her life.
She sat down hard on the bed, trying not to let it all swarm her at once. Three days in this new room, spending time here to avoid Brian and going out of her freaking mind thinking about Tyler. She’d tried to call him early that morning—at, like, three a.m. Of course, he hadn’t been in his office, which was the only reason she’d allowed herself to call. She knew he wouldn’t pick up at that hour. So she could lessen her agony about deciding whether to call, she could hear his sexy voice when the voice mail picked up, and she wouldn’t have to talk to him. It was a win-win-win situation. After that first time, she’d called him again. And again a few more times. She never let the voice mail go too far. She didn’t want to know any more about him than she already did. She let him say hello to her, and then she hung up. That way she could pretend she’d called and he’d answered with that sexy hello. She’d only called seven times.
Except, as she looked at the clock and saw it was six a.m. and he would be sitting in his office across town, she still had the urge to call him. She didn’t think she was ready to face all the reasons she’d lied to him, or the anger she’d hear in his voice when he realized it. He probably already hated her just for leaving in the middle of the night with barely a note to say good-bye. Like some prostitute slinking out of bed in the morning. It didn’t come close to his amazing morning-after note.
She grabbed his shirt off the pillow and held it to her nose, breathing in his scent. She shouldn’t have taken it, but she had needed something to remember their time together. Something that would help her deal with leaving him. The scent of his cologne took her back to lying in his arms, in his bed. It was the first time in a long while she’d shared a bed with someone for the night, and she’d practically run screaming from the room like an idiot.
Layla let herself mope for a solid five minutes, still clutching the soft cotton to her face. Then she put it on her pillow and got ready to go back in to the office. If she stayed in the hotel room, she might do something stupid, like call Tyler—when he was there.
Besides, she did need to talk to Brian. Something about a small object photographed at the scene that’d been under the body. She’d found it yesterday when another fax had come in from Malcolm, Johnson, and Klein. She knew the defense would pounce on it, because there was no way to prove it belonged to the perpetrator. And she couldn’t find an evidence number for it. It didn’t even have a separate up close photo that should have been taken at the scene.
That alone might be enough for a mistrial if they weren’t careful. She couldn’t let that happen. She tried to figure out what in the world to say to Brian as she worked her way through the city. She still couldn’t believe she’d been called back out to New York because of her ass. Though why she should be surprised and hurt by that, she wasn’t sure. She ought to be used to it by now. Well, she’d show Brian and the rest of the office that she was more than a piece of ass.
It helped to keep herself immersed in the case. In thoughts of getting Brian fired if he tried to come on to her again. Anything other than torturing herself every few seconds by imagining how much of a future she could have had with Tyler if she hadn’t run away.
She waved to Marie on her way in to see Brian but didn’t wait to be announced or to chat. Brian might be avoiding her as much as she’d been avoiding him, and she couldn’t let this wait. She also needed him to know she hadn’t been avoiding him because she was scared. He had to know about the hole in the case she wasn’t sure she could fill in the next three days. They started jury selection tomorrow.
She opened his door, and he looked up at her, his eyes wide.
“Sorry, but we have a problem.” She closed the door behind her. She opened the files and placed the photograph on his desk. “We’re missing this.” She pointed to the small silver thing mashed into the soil. It had some black smudges on it—a ring, maybe, or a button. Something innocuous enough in appearance, but every detail would matter in a case like this. “It was either never entered into evidence or both the evidence number and any record of it have disappeared. As soon as Malcolm, Johnson, and Klein realize this, they’re going to be all over it. I can’t believe we didn’t see it sooner.”
Brian’s eyes were cool. He took a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. “I’m glad you brought this in. I can’t believe it either. The mayor is pushing us to move too fast.” He wasn’t going to mention their encounter. She could play the professional role too, then. “I’ll call the detective on the case and take care of it this morning. I’m not going to let crappy police work ruin this. Do you know what it is, though? I can’t make it out.”
He handed the picture to her, as if she hadn’t stared at it for hours yesterday. “No, I can’t figure out what it is either. A coin or a large earring. Could even be the face of a cocktail ring. But it’s definitely silver. And small. Based on that description, you should be able to get something from the officers and forensics people who were at the scene. It wasn’t that long ago. They should remember.”
He nodded.
“You sure you don’t want me to take care of it?” she said.
“I’m sure. Actually I was just on my way to come find you when you came in.”
Yeah, right. He’d been planted on his ass in that big black chair of his. She let him continue anyway. He ran a hand through his blond hair and gave her a fake smile. She knew she wasn’t going to like whatever he had to say.
“I think with this last piece of the puzzle, you’ve helped us find all the issues we’re going to have in this case. Which is great. Job well-done. Really. I’m glad you were able to come all the way out here to help on this case on such short notice.” Right, since her skills had been why he’d called her. He’d made that abundantly clear. And now he wanted to send her home. Fat chance. She had to see this one through. There were too many possibilities this guy would go free. She couldn’t live with that.
“Of course. It’s a hard case. It looked pretty simple at first, but I think the trial’s going to be kind of brutal.” He hadn’t even invited her to sit down. Not that she would have, but the prick could have asked. She looked at him across the huge expanse of his light oak desk, the one atop which she’d once pictured herself doing naughty things with him. The thought now made her want to gag.
“I’m confident that I’ll be able to prove beyond reasonable doubt that this man is guilty of killing Jeannie. She was…sweet. Hopefully Bob and Linda can get some peace from it. But regardless of the outcome of the case, you did well.” Calling the mayor by his first name was intentional, to remind her where he stood. What was with the hesitation when he said Jeannie was sweet? God, how had she never noticed such condescension in his voice before? It grated on her nerves.
“Well, I’ll still be around if you need anything else. Bob and Linda have asked me to stay through the trial. I�
��m heading there tonight for dinner, actually. Linda doesn’t like be alone in that house all night now that Jeannie’s gone.” She wasn’t that close with the mayor and his wife, but she did visit them at least once every time she was in the city. And Linda had just lost her daughter. Layla would stick around to help any way she could. Closure wouldn’t bring Jeannie Rose back, but it would help marginally.
“Yes, of course. I’ll call you if I need anything.” His voice turned cold. He didn’t like being outmaneuvered.
Ha. Didn’t hurt to remind your boss you were on a first-name basis with not only the mayor, but also his wife. She had done everything she could to minimize the defense’s chances at a win. If Brian could find that missing piece of evidence, the case would be solid. Impenetrable. Except, of course, for that missing murder weapon.
“I’ll go finish up a few things downstairs and make sure everything’s sent up to you.” She nodded at him and left. She stopped to chat with Marie for a minute on her way downstairs. She’d have to ask Brian tomorrow what he’d found out from the cops, since he’d probably be gone before she left. He would need that evidence, or the whole case would be blown.
She couldn’t stop thinking about what the mysterious object was as she organized and built the rest of the case. Even as she left the building for the last time, she couldn’t help feeling like the linchpin was still missing.
* * * *
Layla dropped the coffee she was holding. The liquid splashed up her pant legs, but she let it stay there. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. Mr. Times Square was on TV. She’d been listening to the news about the case’s proceedings as the lawyers went through the jury selection process. She’d called Brian once to see if he’d gotten in touch with the police department, but he had yet to call her back. What the hell was Tyler doing on TV?
An Affair Across Times Square Page 23