Page 34 of The Writer

“Do you have any idea how few of these cases are?” He tries not to raise his voice. “We don’t find every murderer hovering over the body of their victim.”

At that, her eyes narrow and a thin smile edges the corner of her mouth. “If you wanted an easy job, maybe you should have gone into construction.”

Another dig at his father. She’s clearly done her homework. Declan isn’t going to bite. Anyway, he doesn’t get the chance. His phone buzzes with a text from Cordova—they got the warrant to search Geller Hoffman’s apartment. Unable to suppress his smile, he quickly types back,Go, I’ll meet you there.Then he shows the texts to Denise Morrow and says, “Why don’t you tell me about your coat?”

“My…” She settles back in her chair and tilts her head. “It’sa Harlan from Loro Piana. Made from vicuña fur. David bought it for me in Milan. Generous man.” She reaches back and lifts the sleeve of the coat draped over her chair. “Would you like to touch it? It’s soft.”

“Not that coat,” Declan says. “The one you let your attorney borrow.”

She smiles again and nods at his drink. “You haven’t tried your grasshopper.”

He leans forward and whispers, “We know you switched the coats, Denise. The knife. You think we wouldn’t figure that out?” Declan sits back and takes her in. The black-framed glasses, her hair slightly tousled. Thin sweater tracing the curves of a body that clearly is no stranger to the gym. The mousy-librarian thing she wants people to see is hiding something else. Something darker. How much is an act? How much is real? There’s a brilliance hidden behind the facade. Like she’s tamped it down, doesn’t want it to show. Why does Declan get the feeling that he’s playing checkers and she’s playing chess?

“It’s not polite to stare, Detective.”

“I’m just trying to understand you.”

“Is that what you told Ruben Lucero after you broke his arm?”

Declan swallows. “You could have divorced your husband. David didn’t have to die.”

She raises her cosmo again. “Here’s to you catching the man who did it.” She takes a sip, sets the glass down, and retrieves her pen. “If there’s nothing else, Detective, I really need to get back to work. I’m about a week behind schedule.”

“Couldn’t write in jail?”

“Too many distractions.”

Declan gets to his feet and taps the top of her manuscript with his index finger. “Maybe you should practice, seeing as how you’ll need to write the next one from a cell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

DECLAN TAKES A CAB to Geller Hoffman’s place because it’s faster than the subway. The attorney lives on the eightieth floor of Central Park Tower, a pricey high-rise off Fifty-Seventh that claims to be the world’s tallest residential building. It’s located in a part of the city known as Billionaires’ Row. Hoffman has money, no doubt about that, but a billionaire he is not. Declan stares up at the superstructure hoping that whatever warrant Cordova pulled will allow them to dig into the shit-knocker’s finances.

“Dec! Over here!” Cordova shouts from the sidewalk. He’s standing at the mouth of the parking garage, waving.

Declan walks over and frowns. “What are you doing down here? Who’s up in the apartment?”

“So we get here,” Cordova tells Declan as he leads him into the garage, “and Hoffman answers the door in a robe and slippers, not exactly dressed for company. I show him the warrant and he starts spouting ‘privilege’ this and ‘privilege’ that. Claims us serving a warrant on him knowing that he represents a person of interest in an open murder investigation is a violation of his client’s rights. Tells us we step into his apartment and he’ll have the whole case thrown out.”

Declan finds that funny. “I love how Denise Morrow is a person of interest when he needs her to be, but when you put a television camera in his face, she’s the victim.”

Cordova ignores that. “I call Saffi and tell her what’s going on, and she goes off on this rant because I pulled the warrant through Judge Thomas instead of Berman even though it’s Berman’s case—”

“Wasn’t that the reason you went to Thomas? Keep it impartial?”

Cordova ignores that too. “She asks if I told Thomas the warrant was on an attorney.”

“And you obviously didn’t. Look,” Declan says, “that’s how the game works, right? Did Thomasaskyou if you were serving on an attorney?”

“Nope.”

“Then you’re in the clear. Plausible deniability, my friend. There’s no rule that says we have to go to Berman; it’s just courtesy bullshit.”

“Saffi tells me to start with his car while she calls the judge and figures out how to proceed. She says to get it all on camera, don’t touch anything that could contain client data—no file boxes, no briefcase, nothing like that, but the car itself is fair game.”

Declan kicks a loose pebble of concrete. “Your real problem is Hoffman. While you’re down here dicking around his wheels, he’s up there burning evidence, flushing evidence, eating evidence… he’s doing whatever he can before you come through his door.”

Cordova grins. “I don’t care what he does. You won’t either when you see this.”

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