Fiftyish and weary-looking, in shirtsleeves and loosened tie, Detective Sergeant Pete Kim had a firm handshake and a gravelly voice. Taking his coffee from Piñero’s tray, he gestured me into the observation room, dimmed the lights, and opened the curtains. On the other side of the two-way mirror sat Jane Doe, twitching and gazing about. The handcuff chain connecting her to the table ring was long enough to let her chew a thumbnail or scratch her forearms through her sleeves, which she did every few seconds, as if unconsciously. In the overhead light, her bruised nose packed with wadded cotton, she appeared smaller, more fragile than she had on the hospital floor. Despite the blood on the front and puckers left after the fabric dried, her oversized scrubs still bore the fold lines of something recently removed from its packaging.
“The scrubs look new,” I said to Kim.
“And too big. Maybe picked up just for tonight, like a prom dress.” He turned to me and grinned. “Some date you turned out to be.”
I shrugged. “What I get for not signing her dance card.”
We both sipped coffee as Piñero stepped into view, the pad under his arm and a cup in each hand.
“I been here fucking forever,” the woman said.
“I’m Detective Piñero, ma’am. I brought you some coffee.” He slid a cup to her and took a step back as if getting out of range in case she decided to throw it at him.
Chain ratcheting through the ring as she raised the cup to her lips, she took three hefty swallows, despite the steam we could see rising. Then she set the empty cup down, throat apparently intact, and angled her head awkwardly to wipe her mouth on her sleeve.
“Start by giving me your name,” Piñero said. “We’re video-recording. Okay?”
“Already told that chink cop I got nothing to say ‘cause I didn’t do nothing. I’m the victim here.” Gazing up at a space above the mirror—the camera bubble, I presumed—she poked out her lip and absently dug at her forearm. “Jesus! Can’t I talk to somebody white?”
Piñero shook his head. Still standing, he placed the pad on the table and made a show of reviewing his notes on the top sheet as he drank his coffee. “Could be looking at serious charges—criminal trespass, impersonation, disorderly conduct, assault with a deadly weapon, maybe even attempted murder.”
“Attempted—shit!”
“I want to hear your side.”
“I ain’t got no side, Paco!” She scowled at him. “That big nigger tried to rape me!” Her voice was even deeper when laden with contempt. “But you won’t do jack shit about it ‘cause he’s a friend of yours. Yeah, I heard that fucker give your name to the cop in the hospital. He didn’t believe me either and your asshole buddy got to ride in front.”
“Probably to keep you two separated.” Moving behind her, he bent close to her ear. “I know him but that doesn’t mean we’re friends or that I gotta believe everything he tells me.” He glanced up at the glass and fought back a smile. “You’re right. He can be a real asshole.”
Without looking at me, Kim chuckled and shook his head.
She rattled the chain. “Then how come he’s not the one locked up in here?”
“What, you think this is our only interview room? He’s in another one.”
“Cuffed?”
“Standard procedure. He told me his story. Now I want you to tell me yours.” He rounded the table and sat across from her so that Kim and I were looking at his back. He set down his cup, flipped to a blank sheet, and took a pen from his shirt pocket. “So he tried to rape you. That’s a serious accusation.”
“It’s true!” She snorted. “You cocksuckers never believe the woman.”
“Tell me what happened, as much as you can remember.”
She was quiet a moment, eyes blinking rapidly, darting back and forth. Fingernails ragged from chewing disappeared under her sleeves now. “When I came through the door he grabbed me and pulled me to him. Fucker tried to kiss me.”
“Tried to kiss you?”
“Stuck his tongue in my mouth.”
Still watching her, Kim said softly, “Man, if you want some Listerine, I’m sure we’ve got a bottle around here somewhere.”
“I’m good,” I said.
In the box, Piñero jotted something down. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean? You think I came on to him, told him he could have some of this?” She thrust her narrow chest forward. “I fucked niggers before but he ain’t my type.”
Piñero’s snort vibrated through the observation room speaker.
“No. What did you do when he tried to kiss you?”
“What do you think? I pushed him off me and tried to get away.”
He wrote something else. “Then what happened?”
“He grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go! I fought but he knocked me down.”
“So you fought him and he held on?”
“Yes.”
“Tight?”
“Yes! He twisted it and it hurt real bad.”
“Which arm did he grab?”
She appeared to think a bit. Then her face brightened, and the chain rattled through the ring again as she held up her left and worked the sleeve down.
Piñero scanned her arm and made another note. “Are those scratches from him?”
“Of course!”
“Then he hit you and you fell down?”
“Yes.”
“What did he hit you with?”
“His fist. What else?”
“Not the water pitcher?”
“His fist, Paco!”
“All right. How did you get into the corridor?”
“Crawled ‘cause I was still dizzy from being hit.”
Piñero was quiet for a five-count. Then he leaned forward. “Why did you go into that particular room in the first place?”
“I was looking for my friend. I went to the wrong room. By mistake.”
“Your friend’s name?”
“Mary.” She nodded as if confirming her memory. “We went to school together.”
“Last name?”
“Decker,” she said after a moment. As her lie sprouted details, she was beginning to shift more in her seat. “I think that’s her name now.”
“You know we’ll check the name.”
She smiled. “Go ahead.”
Mary Decker—a shot in the dark or a name she had seen somewhere? I had no idea.
“Okay, so you were there in the hospital to visit your friend Marcy,” Piñero said. He paused but she never challenged the name Marcy. “You went to the wrong room, and this guy grabbed you.”
“Sure did!”
“Want to press charges?”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll have to give me your name if you want to file a complaint.”
A dark tooth clamped over her lower lip. She looked down as if avoiding her interrogator’s eyes. “Let me think about that. Maybe it’s best not to get involved.” Then she looked up. “It’s late and I’m tired. I want to go home. What if you just let things go? Tell him to stay away from me or he’ll be arrested?”
“We’re kind of past that now.”
“Why? It’s his word against mine. Can’t we just drop it? Maybe I misunderstood.”
“You misunderstood his tongue in your mouth?”
She said nothing.
“At least help me understand.” He leaned back, folded his arms. “Help me understand why you were in the hospital after visiting hours. Why you were dressed like you work there when you don’t. Why you had a hypodermic we’re gonna find your fingerprints on.”
I turned to Kim. “She’s playing stupid. Any way I can get a note to Piñero?”
“Sure.” He handed me a pad from a small utility table in the corner. “When you’re ready I’ll knock and hand it to him.”
I set down my cup and took out my pen. I wrote Did she come in early, see “Mary Decker” and change into scrubs? How does she know what an SVC line is? I was forming my third question when there was a tap on th
e observation room door. Kim and I exchanged a look before he stepped out. Then I heard a man say the front desk had sent him up. He asked if the woman who had been brought in was in Interview One. When Kim said yes, someone rapped on the interrogation room door and didn’t wait for a response to open it.
Clearly, Jane Doe was startled by the knock. Now her eyes widened as a tall, russet-skinned man in an expensive navy suit and charcoal topcoat stepped inside and told her to say nothing more. She didn’t seem to recognize him. She nodded anyway.
“This interview is over, detective,” the man said. “My client is leaving with me.”
Kim stepped back into the observation room. “Harlow Graves for the defense,” he said. “Wonder how he got wind of this.”
I’d heard of him and seen him on billboards but had never crossed paths with him.
Piñero stood and positioned himself between Graves and the woman. “Just talking, counselor,” he said. “Trying to sort something out. She hasn’t been charged with anything.”
The lawyer stepped around Piñero and leaned close to look at the woman, who shrank away from him as if afraid. He offered her a reassuring smile, and tension left her shoulders.
“Looks like Abu Grhaib up in here,” he said. She let him slide her sleeves up one at a time. “The commissioner can expect a notice of intent to file.”
“Her face was like that when she got here,” Piñero said. “The hospital treated her before she was brought in. Our video will show she’s been scratching her arms since she got here. Sometimes, people like her have brittle skin.”
“People like—” Graves spun around. “How do people like her get this facial injury?”
“That big—” Having already called me a nigger, the woman appeared to search for a new word to describe me to her black lawyer. “That big cocksucker hit me!”
“What big cocksucker?”
“A PI bodyguarding someone in the hospital. She went into the room, dressed in scrubs and carrying a hypodermic. When he got between her and the patient, she swung the needle at him. He hit her with a water pitcher.”
“His fist!”
“Hard enough to cause serious injury,” the lawyer said. “I want his name.”
Piñero shrugged. “Check with the hospital. He’s the one who said to call nine-one-one.”
“I went to the wrong room!”
“Who was it you were trying to see?” Piñero said. “Mary? Marcy? Margie?”
“He tried to rape me and I tried to fight him off!”
Graves took the cue. “So my client was trying to defend herself against this thug. Clearly self-defense.”
“Funny, but that’s what he said to responding officers. She acted like the needle was a dagger.” Piñero angled his head at her. “What was it you called him again? He’s a big what?”
Instead of announcing that I was somewhere in the building, Jane Doe lifted her hands, links of chain taut in the table ring. “I just want to go home.”
Piñero unlocked the cuffs. Harlow Graves led the woman out of Interrogation One. Piñero looked at the mirror and held up a finger. Then he left the room. A minute or two later he joined Kim and me in the observation room.
“They’re gone.”
“That was some weird shit,” Kim said. “He came out of nowhere.”
“Pete, you told her to cool her jets while we sorted everything out, right?”
“Yep.”
“So she never got to make a phone call?”
“Nope.”
“Never lawyered up.” Piñero looked at me. “You know what this means?”
“Somebody was watching. They called Graves.” I paused as I realized I’d likely seen his face at the bar association holiday party. “Somebody inside General or waiting outside.”
“If she can afford Harlow Graves,” Kim said, “she should’ve had a gun in that room.”
I thought for a moment. “Do either of you think she knows him?”
Piñero shook his head as Kim said, “No.”
“He didn’t seem to know her either,” I said. “He never called her by name.”
Piñero ran a hand through his hair. “So what makes a prominent black attorney rush in to help a woman he doesn’t know? A woman with obvious racial bias?”
“A Korean, a Puerto Rican, and an African-American walk into an interrogation room,” Kim said. “Feels like for somebody we were a joke waiting to happen.”
Piñero let out a long breath. “Rimes, this just got more interesting. I’ll push for the round-the-clock. Mrs. Simpkins might be a witness. We’ll definitely process that hypo.”
30
I got to redeem my fully punched caught-a-cop-killer card after all. Piñero woke up Deputy Commissioner Shallowhorn and explained everything. Also, he reminded her I had done a solid for the department six weeks earlier. She authorized protection until Mona Simpkins was discharged and ordered Piñero to review the notes of the detectives working both cases.
I reached home at six and called Oscar’s cell to tell him to sleep in because Mona now had police protection. To my surprise, Louisa answered. Oscar was in the shower, she said, and Winslow was still asleep. But they had told her everything so I didn’t need to try leaving a message in some kind of silly man code. Sorry, she couldn’t see my smile, I told her what happened at the hospital and downtown. “Glad it was you there, not Oscar and Win,” she said. “My husband is more than ready to help, but he’s not as young as he thinks he is.”
“Thank him for me,” I said. “I’ll talk to all of you soon.”
Next, I sent separate text messages to Carl Williamson and Jen Spina. I gave Carl Oscar’s phone number, in case he wanted to reach out to Win, and Mona’s room number, if he wanted to visit. Jen’s message included a reassurance to Keisha that her parents were now safe and a request that she call me some time that afternoon. A subsequent text went to Ileana, Cassidy, and Yvonne, telling them to stand down because I now knew where Keisha was. I thanked them all for their help, giving extra praise to Yvonne for pointing me in the right direction. Then I fell into bed without waiting for replies.
I woke at ten past one and had a fried egg sandwich and apple juice before showering. As I ate, I checked my phone. Three responses, one missed call. At eight Carl had thanked me for letting him know and said he’d take Rhonda to visit Mona soon. Shortly before nine and fifteen minutes later, respectively, Cassidy and Yvonne both typed You’re welcome. Yvonne reminded me I had promised to introduce her to LJ. I texted back that it was exam week but that I would keep my promise by the weekend. The missed call had come from Ileana just before noon. No message. I was just about to return her call when the phone vibrated in my hand.
LJ.
“Hey, G! I got your stuff done.” He sounded cheerful. Probably the thought of the check I would send him.
“Already?”
“I had it last night. I woulda called this morning but I had an exam” He chuckled. “It was simple, once I unmasked every section and printed it all out. Kinda like a jigsaw puzzle with sentences and paragraphs. I’ll email it to you after this call.”
“So what was it?” I asked. “The short version.”
“It was actually three documents, all about taking over some low-cost apartments and renovating them into upscale condos—very upscale places. It was a company I never heard of, FBF Development, Flame Bright Fame. Know anything about them?”
“No.”
“They’re not super-rich—in fact, just a few years old. But they’ve got projects going in a handful of cities. Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh. Now Buffalo, soon Rochester.”
“Nothing in Chicago? New York or Philly?”
“No.”
I thought about that for a moment. Rust Belt cities with populations well under a million. I wondered what, if anything, that meant. “Any other information about them?”
“I’ll put some links in the email to the company website and a couple articles. Also, my bill. It’ll cover the tw
o new first-person-shooters I want to get, so thank you very much.”
“Would it be enough for a night on the town with a nice young lady?”
LJ snorted. “Yeah, if I had one.”
I laughed and said, “I know somebody who wants to meet you. Who’s dying to meet you. She works with Keisha Simpkins.” Then I told him about Yvonne, that she had finished the program right before he started so she had maybe four or five years on him. Something she read about him in a newsletter made her want to meet him. I described her in detail and said I found her strikingly attractive.
“So she’s about my height, older, and bald?” He was quiet a moment. “She have cancer or something?”
“I don’t think so. I think it’s just a choice. Is bald a problem?”
“No!” he said quickly. “I’m just trying to picture her. So far I’m seeing the women in Black Panther, and they’re hot. But I’m wondering why she wants to meet me.”
“She said the newsletter made you sound like a genius and your picture was cute.” I thought of quoting Oscar Wilde—the only thing worse than being talked about—but leveled with him instead. “Maybe she wants to pick your brain for something because you both speak Geek. But she could want more.” I heard him take a deep breath. “Never know if you don’t take a chance.”
After we clicked off, I texted Yvonne and told her I had talked to LJ and she should expect a call or text from him in a few days.
Once the dishwasher was loaded, I opened my laptop, logged into IntelliChexx, and entered Harlow Graves. Born in Rochester. A string of addresses from Monroe County to New York City, where he had completed Columbia Law School, to suburban Buffalo, where he now lived. No liens. No bankruptcies. No criminal record. No bar association censures. Married to Rosalind Morrow-Graves, a Buffalo native and Williamsville elementary school teacher. Two girls in their teens. In addition to their sprawling home in suburban Amherst, the family owned a summer cottage on Lake Ontario in the Niagara County town of Barker, which had very few persons of color. Facebook showed Morrow-Graves was a light-skinned woman with long hair and daughters of similar complexion. Google revealed Graves was the type of lawyer who navigated the intersection of corporate law, personal injury litigation, and criminal defense. He had represented several area companies in a variety of capacities, from mergers to complex lawsuits, and won six and seven-figure personal injury settlements. He had defended Greater Buffalo Oncology Solutions in a Medicare fraud case and, in a drunk driving case tailor-made for local news rivalries, a prominent TV anchor who had struck and killed a college student bicyclist. In his more than two-decade career, Graves had received numerous professional and service awards, served on a very long list of not-for-profit boards, and handled many cases pro bono. Nothing in his resume suggested connections to any kind of organized crime.
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