Page 15 of The Writer

“I don’t remember.”

The room goes quiet for a long moment. Saffi reaches across the table, lines up the corners of the folders in a neat stack. Pulls them closer. She opens the top folder and reads something, shielding the text with her hand, then closes it. When she leans back to Morrow, the concern that filled her eyes earlier is gone, replaced with a flash of ice. Declan has seen that look before and never wants to be on the receiving end of it. It’s go time. “Mrs. Morrow, security footage has you arriving home at nine twenty p.m. You didn’t dial 911 until nine thirty-one. That’s eleven minutes. It takes a minute or two to get to your apartment from the lobby. The actions you just described account for maybe another minute. What were you doing for the remainder of that time?”

Morrow says nothing.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Saffi says.

“Nothing. I told you everything I remember. I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

Saffi leans closer to her. “I think we need to cut the bullshit, so I’m going to ask you a very simple question: Did you kill your husband?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MORROW DOESN’T EVEN hesitate. “No.”

Saffi doesn’t let up. “First responders arrived at nine thirty-seven p.m. That’sseventeenminutes after you arrived home. Did you let them in? No. Instead, you fired a round at the door. Forced them to stay outside. You didn’t let a single person into your apartment until Declan got there, and he didn’t go in until a little after ten. That gives you more than forty minutes. What exactly were you doing during that time?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You claim there was an intruder. You’re obviously an intelligent woman. Why stay in that apartment with a possible intruder for forty minutes?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Were you struck? Did you hit your head?”

Hoffman raises a manicured hand to silence Morrow before she can answer. “I think we’re done here. This was a home invasion that went bad. Nothing more.” He starts to rise.

“Sit,” Saffi tells him. “We’re hardly done.” She shuffles through her folders, settles on the third in her stack, and opens it. It contains a series of photographs. “Sit,” she tells him again.

Hoffman hesitates, then lowers himself back into his chair.

Saffi slides the photos across the table to Morrow along with a blank notepad and pencil. “Those are shots of every room in your apartment. Every table, drawer, and countertop. Go through and make a list of everything out of place. Anything missing.”

“Right now?”

Saffi leans back. “I’m not in a hurry.”

Morrow looks to Hoffman, who nods reluctantly.

There are close-ups of jewelry. A drawer containing at least a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of high-end watches. Purse and shoe collections large enough to stock a shop on Fifth Avenue. Photographs of artwork, televisions, sound systems, the handgun found in David Morrow’s nightstand. A closed safe, apparently untouched, in the closet of the main bedroom. Morrow flips through the pictures three times before finally sighing. “I don’t see anything.”

Hoffman says, “We’ve already established David surprised the intruder. He fled through the main bedroom. It’s obvious he didn’t get a chance to take anything. He was understandably spooked after finding David andstabbinghim.”

Saffi ignores him. “So, for the record, nothing missing or out of place?”

“Don’t answer that,” Hoffman tells Morrow. He glares at Saffi. “You can’t expect my client to make that determination from photographs alone. We need to do a proper walk-through of the apartment. This was a break-in gone wrong. Nothing more.”

Saffi lets out a huff. “That’s your story?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes don’t leave Hoffman’s when she says to Declan, “Detective Shaw, you reviewed the security camera footage, correct?”

“My partner and I did, yes.”

“What time did David Morrow get home?”

“Four forty p.m.”

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