“Name the location and person or persons you received the samples from.”
“Bedford Organics, 400 South Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, third floor. I met a woman named Kate and a woman named Vittoria, who said she was the owner.”
“Were the samples that you received from this company in the hands of anyone else at any time?”
“Besides Detective Hutton? No.”
“Did they come directly from the shelves?”
“Yes.”
“How much product would you estimate is on the premises at 400 South Bedford?”
“Maybe a few thousand bottles? I couldn’t really tell how deep the shelves were, but there was a ton of product in there.”
“Did it look temporary? Like a storage facility?”
“No. It looked like a wholesale showroom. I would expect a lot of it to still be there.”
“Do you know how Hillary Whitney came to possess the eyedrops?”
“No.”
“Do you know anyone else who has purchased products from Bedford Organics?”
“Not that I know of. I thought about that. The moisturizers smell like dozens of other products. Anything that uses natural herbs and oils will have the same scents.”
He turned off the recorder. “Thank you, Cat. I think that’s all we need.” He stood up and moved toward the door. Cat followed, but he motioned for her to remain seated.
“Can you wait here?” he asked.
“Love to,” she replied.
“I’ll be right back.” Hutton slipped out the door, handed the recorder to a secretary, and checked his watch. Once the paperwork was complete, signed warrants could be generated by the department’s vast post-9/11 security apparatus in a matter of minutes. As he ran down the hallway to Sergeant Roth’s office, Hutton imagined dozens of federal judges sitting at a long library table, rubberstamping pages over and over while a clerk walked around with a copy of the Patriot Act, calling out the relevant statutes over and over like a reader in a nineteenth-century factory. His supervisor sat casually at his desk, watching ESPN on his tablet.
“Carol’s uploading the statement now,” Hutton reported to his boss. “We’ll have the warrant shortly.”
“The DEA’s been in the building for the last twenty-four hours,” Roth said, barely looking up. “Keep track of her. We’ll find you later.”
Hutton nodded and jogged back down the hallway, but Cat was already gone.
After the nearest police officer had escorted her outside—all it took was a light hand on his arm—Cat hit the pavement and turned east, walking as fast as she could. She wanted to break into a sprint, but the crush of pedestrians on all sides forced her to move apace with the collective current, a tide rolling east. All her mind would do was endlessly run through everything she thought she knew.
One: Something from Bedford Organics, probably the eyedrops—although Hutton hadn’t confirmed it—had killed Hillary. If she’d been dosing herself with their products for a while, that certainly explained all her bizarre behavior over the last few months of her life, and Cat had been too self-absorbed to ever call her out on it. Now Hillary was dead.
Two: Hutton had flirted with her, using the personable sleaze of a reporter, dressed up with the moral authority of a cop, then ignored her completely once he had a bag full of evidence. Cat should have known better. So embarrassing.
Three: Cat was now a key witness in a drug investigation.
The list echoed around her skull. I’m a thirsty snitch, she thought to herself. Hooray. Somebody get me a pen, I have a bucket list to update. She leaned against the nearest building, pulled a cigarette out of her bag and lit it, sucking down nearly half of it before realizing that he still had her phone.
Shit.
She walked back to the precinct, clocking Hutton when she was still half a block away as he leaned against the exterior wall, hands shoved into the pockets of his navy jacket, his battered brown oxfords crossed in front of him. Her breath quickened. She tried to ignore how attracted to him she felt. Get over it, Cat. He spotted her and walked in her direction, keys in hand.
“I need my phone,” Cat demanded as soon as he was close enough.
“Sorry. I can’t give it back to you until we’re done with our raid on Bedford Organics.” Hutton shook his head. “I’m parked over here. Get in the car.” He motioned to the opposite side of the block and they crossed together to the bottle-green Volvo he’d been rummaging in on Monday night. She hesitated.
“I have to go to work,” she insisted. “I have things to do.”
“I can take you home or you can sit in the station in a locked room for an indeterminate period of time. It’s for your own safety. It’s up to you,” Hutton said gruffly as he unlocked and opened the passenger’s-side door. Cat sighed and climbed in. He closed her door gently before crossing over to the driver’s side.
He started the car but didn’t move it into gear. Instead, he reached across and put his hand behind Cat’s shoulder.
She froze.
Time slowed to a crawl.
He pulled out her seat belt and clicked it into place without touching her.
Turned the dial to WNYC and pulled out into traffic.
Cat felt like an idiot.
An awkward silence filled the car. Cat punctured it by opening the window and lighting a fresh cigarette without asking. Hutton, after a beat, motioned to indicate that she should hand him one, too. She lit one and passed it over, their fingers remaining chastely distant as he opened his window. He cut through SoHo and cruised straight over the Williamsburg Bridge onto Broadway, weaving through the heavy traffic easily, never swearing or seeming even remotely flustered. He briefly took a phone call, but the only things he said in reply were “Yes” and “That’s fine.”
“How long am I supposed to sit in my apartment?” she finally asked.
“Just a few hours.” He gave her a forced smile; though it was meant to be reassuring, she sneered in reply.
At eleven o’clock Bess was sitting in her cubicle, idly rubbing the bright-red-ink penis stamp off the top of her hand and clicking through the badge board for Judy and the Technicolor Housecoat, when Constance Onderveet’s face rose above the black plastic wall like a solar eclipse.
“Bess!” Constance barked. Bess jumped in her chair.
“How are you, Constance?” she replied steadily.
“Where’s Cat?”
“She’s at a personal appointment,” Lou explained, walking out of her office with perfect timing and a huge monogrammed Goyard weekend bag. “Approved by me. But! It’s a summer Friday, Coco. No one’s doing anything! I’m catching a seaplane with Bitsy and Margarita from the East River in half an hour.”
“No one but me.” Constance half scowled at her friend. “I’ve got proofs to approve and freelancers to whip. Even Stephen went up early to go fishing.”
Lou leaned in and left a big wet kiss on her cheek. “Well, I hope you make it tonight. Crumb and Cosmo got the whole Point and all the cabins across the lake, and they hired a gondolier collective from Gowanus to ferry us back and forth. It’ll be marvelous.”
Bess assumed they were talking about the weekend-long Adirondack nuptials of Cressida (Crumb) Popplewell and Cassiopeia (Cosmo) Groggin-Butz. Cosmo, a long-list potential heiress to the British monarchy who’d spent the last two years in New York giving away her first husband’s frozen orange juice fortune to every cultural institution with a checking account, was on the outskirts of a social circle that RAGE’s former and current senior staff members seemed to dominate—a circle that had once included Hillary—and she appeared to be buying her way in with no trouble at all. Bess, too junior for membership, was usually included in these discussions only when they needed something from her, like logistical help or gossip. Lou hoisted her bag to leave, but not before Constance turned her glare back to Bess.
“Is Ella going?” Constance demanded. Bess’s older sister Ella had been in the same class as Hillary a
t Miss Sawyer’s, and though she was a serious person with a serious job—she had a law degree, but worked as a film and television agent—Ella had a reputation for consuming champagne like a Ukrainian teenager. Bess suspected that Constance was concerned she’d find her husband, Stephen, in the bushes with Ella, an annual ritual since they’d clerked together for Ginsburg. Hopefully, this time he wouldn’t also be consuming Veuve Clicquot anally.
“I’m afraid so,” Bess warned her. “Keep all lighters and matches out of reach, and make sure someone puts a life jacket on her. Last time we talked, she said it’s been an extra-stressful summer, so I imagine she’s due for a real rager. Have the gondoliers sign something.”
Lou laughed. “This is going to be the best wedding of the whole year,” she announced. Constance’s face puckered.
“Is there another seat on your flight?” she asked Lou, who nodded. “I’ll just grab my purse.” Constance bolted back to her office.
“Thanks for all your help earlier,” Lou said to Bess. “Someday I’ll get this whole CoopDoc thing figured out! And the chat. I’m dying to understand the chat bit.”
“No problem,” Bess said, “but remember to change your password!”
Constance came running back with a matching prepacked Goyard duffel and a strained look on her face. Bess suspected that Stephen’s so-called fishing trip consisted of just him and Ella.
“I’m so glad you can make it, Coco,” Lou said to her nicely. “We’ll have the best time. And Boots,” she said to Bess, winking, “if you’re as trousered as your sister this weekend, I hope you have twice as much fun.”
“Not possible.” Bess laughed. Constance and Lou headed for the elevators. Five minutes later, Bess saved her documents, closed up her computer, dismissed Molly, grabbed her bike helmet, and headed for Brooklyn.
As he drove through Bushwick, Hutton watched Cat’s floaty purple dress ride up, exposing the full length of her bare legs. She didn’t tug it down but instead smoked nervously out the window, her orange-tipped fingers twirling her hair when they weren’t tapping the ash off her cigarette. When they got to her block, he pulled over and parked in front of the nearest hydrant, throwing a dog-eared NYPD parking pass onto the dashboard. Cat hopped out of the car the moment it stopped and marched toward her building, the dress hovering around her, the morning sun lighting up the veins in her otherworldly skin, her hair shaking in a glossy curtain across the bones of her back. Hutton locked the car and chased after her, but she ignored him completely, pulling open the building’s graffitied metal door and taking the stairs two at a time until she reached the hallway and unlocked her apartment door with two separate keys. Hutton caught up as it was closing, grabbed the top of the door and held it open before she could yank it shut. He felt his phone ring in his pocket and declined the call without looking at the screen.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She shrugged, pulled herself up to sit on her kitchen countertop, a cold-looking polished concrete, and poured herself a glass of water from the sink. Hutton took this as a yes.
“It’s not that big a deal,” he assured her, closing the door, turning the dead bolts, and setting his keys and phone on the coffee table before taking a seat on her sofa. “You don’t have to freak out.”
Cat stared at him but didn’t speak. He watched the skin on her legs turn to goose bumps.
“You did the right thing,” he tried.
She leaned back against the kitchen cabinets and stayed quiet, sipping her water and refusing to speak or make eye contact. Hutton looked around the loft. It wasn’t any particular category that he could identify; it wasn’t girly, it wasn’t kitschy, it wasn’t modern. It seemed purely functional. A king-size bed, velvet sofa, vintage armchair, coffee table, and a dining table that could seat a dozen people were the only pieces of furniture in the cavernous space. It looked like she used the dining table as a makeshift desk.
The kitchen was clean, but the wood cabinets she leaned against were flaking paint, the bargain-basement appliances at least a decade old. The apartment’s two painted-brick walls were covered salon-style with framed pictures, prints, posters, drawings, and a huge, overflowing bookcase; the other two walls of the unit were nearly all lead-paned windows. Pale gray linen curtains hung near the bed. A metal IBM clock on the wall read eleven thirty.
“I’m sorry,” he ventured. “I realize you weren’t expecting this.”
“Why did you lie to me?” she asked. “I thought I was just coming in and out. I thought it was…I didn’t realize what was happening.”
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “Things…changed.”
“It’s not great for me. I don’t have room for this kind of thing, to be in a trial, to be a witness, to be vulnerable.”
“I know.”
“Cooper hasn’t promoted me yet. I don’t have a green card, so I can’t get another job anywhere else. I’ve never done anything else, except graduate school, which I failed. My job is competitive. Anybody would take my place in a heartbeat. There’s no room for mistakes.”
“I know,” he said again.
“Why are you still here?” she asked. “You got what you wanted.” A wave of sea-scented air popped off her skin.
“I didn’t.” He stood up and walked over to the edge of the kitchen counter, two feet from her purple dress and long legs, realizing what he was doing but unable to stop.
“Cops can’t act like reporters. You’re supposed to have boundaries. You shouldn’t fraternize with suspects or informants or witnesses or whatever I am to you.”
“All of the above,” he said.
“Lucky me,” she said, though she no longer looked mad.
He moved closer, a foot from Cat, who now matched his height only by sitting on the countertop. Their faces were even for the first time. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. She pushed her cowboy boots halfway off her feet, revealing a pair of white cotton men’s socks with athletic stripes, the silliness of which made him smile in return.
“You don’t have to stay here,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. You don’t need to keep an eye on me.”
“Yes, but I want to,” he said again, moving closer. The cowboy boots fell to the floor.
Cat finally broke into a grin. “You don’t have to keep pretending to like me.”
“I’m not pretending.”
“Then why were you so rude to me on the phone? Or at the precinct?” She raised an eyebrow to maintain the now ten-inch distance between them. “Maybe you’re the one with the mood disorder.”
“No.” He laughed and added, “But you’re right, I’m not supposed to date you. It’s unethical.”
Cat snorted. “Dating me is unethical, but camping out at night in front of my friend’s house is totally okay.”
He blushed. “I wasn’t camped out.”
“You weren’t sweaty enough to be running.” She reached out and wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “That’s sweat.”
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it.
Cat took a deep breath when Hutton’s fingers closed around hers, her heart racing. She reached out with her other hand and traced his jaw with her finger.
Hutton didn’t hesitate. He moved between her legs and wrapped his arms around her; she bit his lower lip. He didn’t make a move to kiss her in response but held still, looking into her eyes and leaning forward with just the right amount of his weight. He nuzzled her neck. Cat felt every single cell in her being pulsing with his.
“Am I still being rude?” he asked, kissing her shoulder.
“I don’t know what you want.”
“I want to rip your clothes off,” he mumbled into her ear, pressing himself against her with more weight. “I want to make you come all day.”
Cat found herself biting his neck, pulling his earlobe into her mouth. Hutton folded his legs and brought them both down to the cold floor of her loft, shifting her into his lap.
They kissed. The full taste of be
ll peppers and cut grass—the cleanest taste in the world—flooded through Cat as he lowered her all the way to the ground, his hands pulling her dress over her head, finding their way through her coral lace underwear. He pushed his fingers against her as she shivered, holding on to his mouth with hers, their tongues moving in beat with his hand.
He moved his fingers up and down as she pushed herself against him, finally releasing something she’d been holding in since the second he walked into RAGE’s offices. A scream let out from the back of her throat. He worked frantically to pull her underwear off.
Somewhere, his phone rang. Loudly.
And rang.
And rang.
It stopped.
She yanked off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and fumbled with his jeans, pushing them to the floor.
“Condom,” Cat demanded. “Now.”
Then his phone rang again. His voicemail beeped, then the phone beeped with text messages; one, two, three, four, before ringing again.
It rang.
And rang.
Cat felt his mouth move away from hers, his fingers slip out of her. He was pulling them both up off the floor with her legs entwined around his waist. She tried to keep up with him and planted her mouth back on his. In between their heavy kisses, he grabbed her hips, unwrapped her legs, and said,
“I
have
to
answer that.”
Holding her hips with both hands, he lowered her to the floor to stand on her feet, holding her up against him. Cat stayed on tiptoe and looked up at him. His jeans were shoved down around his calves, his naked body pressed up against her as he looked around for his phone.
Then her apartment’s buzzer rang.
“Are you expecting anyone?” Hutton asked.
“No,” Cat said slowly as she leaned over and pressed the intercom. “Hello?”
“It’s Bess,” crackled the speaker.
“Oh. Right,” she said to Hutton. “I’m expecting Bess.”
He shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said. “I have to take that call.”
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