Page 66 of The Writer

That’s good too, because Police 101 says if suspects don’t ask how someone died, they already know.

Although Denise is only a few feet from Declan, she does nothing to acknowledge his presence as she strips out of his shirt and slips into a pair of jeans and a sweater she finds on a chair in the corner of the room. Declan realizes his clothes are still piled on the floor. Denise sees them too and with a swift kick sends them under the bed. She’s back out in the living room a moment later. Saffi says, “He committed suicide.”

“Suicide?” Denise repeats, her voice edged with shock.

“Accidentalsuicide,” Cordova adds.

Then they tell her.

Cordova explains how he found him. In the closet. Pants down. Belt around his neck.

He doesn’t hold anything back; he tells her everything, even the parts Declan wouldn’t have shared had their roles been reversed. The fact that Cordova mentions the photographs means they don’t suspect her, and why would they? How could she possibly be responsible? Hoffman was a small guy, but Denise is small too. No way she could force someone to do something like that, right? Honestly, Declan has no idea how she did it, and he can’t wait to hear. He wishes she’d filmed it. He would have loved to watch that pretentious prick go out like that.

When Cordova and Saffi finish, Denise is crying. The tears turn into sobs. She manages to get out, “It’s finally over. Finally…” Then she’s crying again.

“Maybe you should sit down,” Saffi says.

Declan doesn’t have to see her to know that she does. When he closes his eyes, he can picture the entire scene: Denise dropping into a chair, Cordova standing there looking for a way out—he hates it when women cry. Saffi has her hand on Denise’s shoulder or maybe she’s even hugging her. Saffi is tough as nails, but she can turn on the empathy. Dangerous waters, because she also knows how to use it. More than once, she got a perp to confess simply by switching from Lawyer Saffi to Friend Saffi. Hell, she’s better at it than half the detectives Declan knows. All part of the game. When Saffi says, “Finally over? How do you mean?” Declan feels every muscle in his body tense. He has to remind himself Denise is good too. Denise is better.

Denise sniffles. “Geller Hoffman was blackmailing me.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

“BLACKMAILING YOU HOW?” Cordova’s voice sounds raw. Declan doubts he got much sleep, if any, last night, but he’s never known that to slow his partner down or cloud his judgment. Like Saffi, Cordova is a machine.

Denise is good,he tells himself again.Denise is better.

Better than both of them.

Denise speaks in a thin, quiet voice that reminds Declan of a wounded animal. “You know I’m writing a book about Maggie Marshall, right?” she begins. “Early on in the process, I visited Ruben Lucero in prison. I went several times.” She sniffles again. “It was important to me to get his side of things. With a book like this, it’s best to have all sides so readers can make their own decisions. From our first meeting, he insistedhe was innocent. I didn’t believe him. Who would, right? Then he told me the police fabricated the case against him.” She pauses for a second. “He said your partner planted evidence.” Declan can picture her looking right at Cordova. “Lucero said Detective Shaw took a book from Maggie Marshall’s backpack in evidence and placed it in his apartment. He admitted to having all the other books you found, all those souvenirs, but not that one. He swore it was planted.”

“What about the pictures?” Saffi asks.

Several seconds pass. Declan wishes he could see her, playing them as effortlessly as Giancarlo Stanton sends a baseball over the fence at Yankee Stadium.

“He told me the pictures weren’t his either. He didn’t know where they came from. Lucero insisted he saw another man following Maggie that day in the park. Every time I spoke to him, he drove that point home. ‘Why aren’t the police looking for him? They’ve got to have DNA, right? Did they check all the cameras? He couldn’t have dodged all of them. You gotta believe me, I didn’t touch that girl! It was him.’”

“The other guy,” Saffi says in a quiet voice.

“I didn’t believe him either,” Denise admits. “My first thought was somebody like him would say anything to save his own skin. Nobody locked up at Dannemora is really guilty, right? Then…” Her voice trails off.

Saffi prompts her. “Then what?”

Denise says, “I was on my fifth visit to Dannemora, maybe ten minutes into a conversation with Lucero, when Geller called me.” She pauses. “My marriage with David was on life support. I suspected David might be having an affair, and I’d confided in Geller. He’d had David followed and confirmed it.He said her name was Mia. He offered to show me pictures, said he’d caught them… you know. I told him I didn’t want to see them. Geller insisted I keep my phone close in case he learned more and needed to reach me. Anyway, that’s why I had my phone on while I was talking to Lucero at the prison. When it rang, Geller’s photo came up on the screen. Lucero saw it and jumped out of his chair, started shouting, pointing—the guards had to restrain him. When he finally settled down, he told me that was the man he’d seen following Maggie. That was the man who killed her. He didn’t know Geller’s name, but based on his reaction, I believed him.”

Declan expects Cordova or Saffi to push back on that, and when they don’t, he realizes why—they already know. Maybe something they found at Hoffman’s place. Maybe something Lucero told Cordova at Dannemora.

Cordova says, “Why didn’t you take that to us? To the police?”

Denise doesn’t miss a beat. Her voice is so low, Declan has to strain to hear her. “Because I think Geller would have killed me. And frankly, after what Lucero told me about planted evidence, how could I trust you? You and your partner seemed just as dirty as Geller.”

Saffi asks, “Did Geller Hoffman know that you knew?”

“A few weeks ago, I came home and found Geller in my office, going through my notes. He had pages for the book I was writing all over the desk. He’d logged into my computer, and everything I’d put together with Lucero was there. Geller was just sitting in the dark. He told me it wasn’t true, but I could tell it was, I could see it in his eyes.”

“How did he get in?”

“He had a key. Whenever David and I went away, he checked on the apartment for us. Fed my cat, that sort of thing.”

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