The Good Samaritan, still wheezing, stared at one of the wrist units Eve held out as proof.
“I … That’s mine!” He looked down at his naked wrist, at the one in Eve’s hand, at the girl now wearing a defiant smirk.
“You’ll need to come down to Cop Central, sir, to make a claim. I’m sorry for the inconvenience. And for the knee.”
He just continued to goggle. “She stole my wrist unit.”
The girl shrugged. “I gotta eat, don’t I?”
He stopped goggling long enough to snarl, “Get a job.”
As a couple of beat droids marched up, Eve hauled the girl to her feet, turned her over, gave terse orders. Winding her way back to Peabody, she rubbed her jaw where the girl had rammed her head during the scuffle.
“Remind me to avoid this area in the future,” Eve said.
“I didn’t spot the girl. Spotted the boy a couple seconds after you, but I didn’t make her until you went after her. Which is why your badge says Lieutenant. He had ear comms.”
“Yeah, her, too. Slick. Just not slick enough.”
“Well, that was fun,” Peabody said on a quick breath. “I contacted Knight’s offices to let them know we’re heading in. This time the receptionist said Knight’s unavailable, in meetings.”
“We’ll see about that,” Eve said and kept walking.
“Here’s the thing, it’s the same one I spoke with before, but this time she came off flustered, hedging—like she’d been given orders to push back.”
“Interesting. We’ll push back harder.”
“I guess that’ll be fun, too.”
They pushed through several levels of building security—and skirted two tours—to reach the lofty level of Knight Productions.
Annie Knight’s offices spread over the fifty-first floor in a style that struck Eve as homey efficiency.
Its central lobby ran to soft, soothing colors, deep-cushioned sofas and chairs, and was equipped with refreshment and entertainment programs. A lot of lush greenery and cheery flowers mixed in.
The reception counter formed a gentle curve, manned by people in more soft, soothing colors, and backed by a huge portrait of Annie Knight with a let’s-talk-about-it smile.
“Middle one,” Peabody said, so Eve aimed for the center receptionist.
She decided to start off discreetly by palming her badge, angling it and her body so those waiting in those cozy sofas and chairs wouldn’t see.
“NYPSD. Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody.”
The woman flicked a glance at Peabody, flicked that glance away. “Building security informed us you were coming up.”
“Uh-huh, and did you inform building security to give us the runaround?”
“No! No, ma’am. I … but as I explained before, Ms. Knight’s not available. I’d be happy to make an appointment for you for, ah, later in the week.”
“How about if I made one for Ms. Knight right about now at Cop Central?”
Pure distress covered her face as she lifted her hands. “She really is in a meeting. And she needs to be on set for bumpers in fifty-three minutes.”
“Try this. Inform Ms. Knight we’re here, and should be able to complete our business in under that fifty-three minutes if we see her now. Otherwise…”
“Listen.” The woman leaned toward Eve, lowered her voice. “Her PA already came down on me for giving Detective Peabody the schedule, and I’ve got direct orders that Annie—Ms. Knight—is not to be disturbed. I’m trying to do my job.”
“I’m going to do mine. Let me worry about the PA. Tell Ms. Knight we’re here.”
“I … Listen,” she repeated, “just let me contact her PA, explain you’re here and you’re insisting. He’s a little protective of Ms. Knight, and it’ll give me some cover. You can take it up with him. Okay?”
“Okay. What’s your name?”
“Melissa Forenski.”
“Melissa, inform the PA in question that I will speak to Ms. Knight here or at Central, today. Easy or messy, his choice.”
“I need a minute.” She swiveled around, tapped her earpiece, did a lot of whispering. And when she swiveled back, looked a little sick. “I’ll escort you back to Mr. Hyatt’s office. Her personal assistant.”
“Good enough. You did your job, Melissa, and he’ll end up so pissed at me he won’t swipe at you for it.”
“We can hope.”
She led the way through a pair of glass doors down an open area of big, important-looking offices. And around a turn straight into another.
Hyatt wore a navy sweater over dark brown trousers. His hair formed a dark, close-cropped cap over a strong, rawboned face. Though he smiled personably, his eyes remained a cold, hard blue.
“Thank you, Melissa, you can go back to your station.”
She left, fast.
“Lieutenant, Detective, what can I do for you?”
He didn’t ask them to sit, though the office boasted a long sofa, two high-backed visitor chairs as well as his desk.
“You already know we’re here to speak to your boss. You can inform Ms. Knight we’re waiting.”
“As you were told, repeatedly, I believe, Ms. Knight’s in a meeting and then has to prepare for a promotional spot prior to her show. She can’t be disturbed, but I’ll try to assist you.”
Eve kept her gaze, cold and flat, on his face. “Peabody, start generating the paperwork that will require Ms. Knight to report to Central for questioning in a murder investigation.”
“Just one moment!”
“Already given you more than that. Time’s up.”
“I’ll contact Ms. Knight’s attorneys, and your superior.”
“Go ahead. Peabody.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hyatt strode to his desk, grabbed his ’link. “Get me Turnbill, immediately, and then contact the mayor.”
“Ooh, the mayor.” Eve just grinned. “Shudder. Hey, Peabody, maybe Channel Seventy-Five would be interested in reporting Annie Knight’s being detained, possibly arrested for obstructing a police investigation.”
“If you dare to— Bob? There are two police officers in my office threatening to have Annie detained. Yes, that’s what I said.”
At the quick rap on the doorjamb, Hyatt’s eyes flashed. He broke transmission, but before he could speak, the woman with her hair in a curly topknot, wearing worn skids, skin pants, and a baggy sweater, whirled a finger in the air.
“Sorry to interrupt. I need five when you’re free.”
“Ms. Knight?” Eve said.
“Yes, sorry.” She pushed at her hair. “I had a meeting right after my workout, didn’t have a chance to clean up.”
“No problem.” Eve took out her badge. “Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD, and Detective Peabody. We need to speak with you.”
“I’ve already spoken to Bob Turnbill,” Hyatt began.
“Bill, calm down. What’s this about?” Then she lifted a hand, pressed it into a fist over her heart. “Oh. Oh, I see. I see. It’s all right, Bill.”
“Annie, you need to let me handle this,” he insisted.
“I’ve got it. Why don’t we go to my office?”
“Annie, I can have Bob here in twenty minutes. You absolutely don’t have to speak to these people.”
“I said it’s all right, Bill.” She turned, started down the corridor. “He’s fiercely protective,” she said in a voice that trembled a little. “And he’ll insist on contacting Bob—one of my attorneys. Sorry,” she added, pulling out her pocket ’link.
She listened for a couple seconds. “Bob, it’s fine. Bill overreacted. No, it’s fine, please don’t. I’ll let you know.”
She replaced the ’link. “My lawyer. I’m afraid Bill gave him the impression I’m about to be hauled off in restraints.”
“Were you informed we were coming, Ms. Knight?”
“No.” She let out a sigh.
“We contacted your offices,” Peabody told her, “in order for you to be prepared for our arrival.”
&
nbsp; “Fiercely protective,” she repeated, and gestured them into the spacious corner office.
A man—mid-sixties, mixed race, wearing a salt-and-pepper beard and a Knicks sweatshirt—sat in a bold red scoop chair drinking what smelled like decent coffee and working on a PPC.
“That was quick,” he said, then looked up and saw Eve and Peabody. Smiled with considerable charm. “Hello.”
“Bic, this is Lieutenant Dallas and Detective Peabody. My partner, Terrance Bicford.”
“Bic to one and all.” He rose, stepped over to shake hands. Then he looked at Knight, said, “Well.”
“Yeah. Let’s sit down.” She didn’t go behind the impressive black lacquered desk centered in between the wide windows, but took the chair beside Bic’s.
“Can I get you ladies some coffee, tea?” Bic offered.
Weighing the different vibe—nerves from Knight, supporting and soothing from Bicford—from the all-out battleground of the PA’s office, Eve opted to give them a little time to settle.
“Thanks, coffee, black. My partner goes for coffee regular.”
“Annie?”
“I could use some of my go juice. Protein drink,” she explained. “I live on them. I’m nervous. I’m going to get that out there. I’m never nervous,” she said as Bic walked by her, rubbed a hand on her shoulder before he continued to the refreshment center. “But I am.”
“Do you have reason to be?”
Knight leveled direct and dark brown eyes at Eve. “Yes, I do. I’m also going to disclose, right away, I’ve already consulted with my attorney just in case we ended up here. He can be here by holo in two minutes, or in person within a half hour.”
“Do you have reason to need an attorney?”
“I don’t know. Bic’s also a lawyer.”
“Haven’t practiced in a few years,” he added as he served the drinks.
“But still, I’m comfortable with his presence and his advice.”
“Since you have an attorney present, I’m going to record this interview, and read you your rights.” Eve recited the Revised Miranda. “Do you understand your rights and obligations, Ms. Knight?”
“Yes. And I’m going to make a statement. As you’re here, it’s clear you’ve learned Larinda Mars has been extorting money from me for the past year and a half.”
“Twenty-one months,” Bic corrected quietly.
“Twenty-one months. I intend to cooperate with you, to some extent against the advice of my attorney. Not Bic.” Knight reached out, took his hand. “Bic’s with me on this.”
“Always.”
“I’m going to ask … I know your reputation. Not only do I pay attention, but I have excellent researchers. By cooperating, I’m going to give you information that could damage my own reputation. That could, worst case, ruin me.”
“Never happen.” Bic squeezed her hand.
“Bic has a sunnier view of human nature than I do. I’m going to ask you, on the record, for your word that the information I share will be held in confidence, and if any legal action needs to be taken against me, you’ll give me twenty-four hours to prepare.”
“Did you kill Larinda Mars or conspire in her murder?”
“No. No, I didn’t.”
“Have you committed a crime?”
Her lips trembled once, firmed. “You’ll decide that, and if you decide I have and that requires my arrest, I need those twenty-four hours. I don’t intend to run, Lieutenant. One way or the other, I’ve been running for a very long time. Will you agree to those terms?”
“I’ll give you the twenty-four, on the condition you surrender your passport, agree to having your accounts frozen for that period, and understand that for that period, you’ll be under surveillance.”
Knight let out a half laugh, looked at Bic. “You called it.”
“Relax, baby. It’s going to be fine.”
“No going back now,” Knight said to Eve. “I’m in.”
“Let’s start with where you were yesterday from six P.M. until seven P.M.”
“We finished the show at four-thirty. I did about a half hour of goodwill—posing for photos, signing autographs. Then I changed, and Bic and I went home. We’d have been home by six. We had a drink. I intended to unwind, then work on some ideas for a special we’re doing in the spring. We’re taking the show to Europe for a week in May. But Bic and I got into a discussion about—” She paused when he let out a sharp, rude snort. “All right, a very heated discussion about Larinda.”
“It’s called a fight, Annie. It’s coming—or was coming up on the payment time,” he continued. “I felt, strongly, it was time to stop.”
“You knew about the blackmail?” Eve asked Bic.
“Yes, of course. I disagreed with Annie’s decision to pay, but … I let it go because the idea of exposure upset her so much. But the fact is, it would never stop until Annie stopped it. And would only get worse. We … discussed for some time.”
“A monumental discussion. My stand has always been the money didn’t matter. She wanted more, wanted information about other people, but that was a line I wouldn’t cross. And the money didn’t matter. I kept repeating that, to myself. Every month. But I knew it wasn’t about the money. I knew Bic was right, and that only made me madder.”
She sent Bic a look full of regret. “I said terrible things to you. I crossed a line with you. I did,” she said as Bic shook his head. “I’m glad I did because when I did, it made me realize what I was doing, what I was allowing to be done to me, what I really felt about the money doesn’t matter.”
She paused, sipping slowly from her pale gold drink.
“I stopped fighting Bic, stopped fighting myself. I’m not a pushover, Lieutenant, but I’d let myself be pushed. I decided to stop that, too. Instead of the next payment, I’d send her a message. No more. It would give me a week to do what I needed to do. I contacted Bob—my attorney—asked him to come over. I told him everything. He advised we all take a day to absorb everything, and for him to begin some work.”
“When Annie and I finally began to wind down, we heard the reports. We heard about the murder.”
“Change of plans.” Annie lifted a hand. “And here we are.”
“When’s the last time you had contact with Mars?”
“About a week ago. Two weeks before payment, she would either text or e-mail. Or she’d come in, just waltz into the studios,” Knight added, with a flash of anger. “I wouldn’t take any ’link tags from her. She’d send me a chatty message, as if we were friends. In it would be a number. Like: ‘There had to be eight thousand people at the party,’ or ‘I feel as if I’ve walked seven thousand miles in these shoes.’ Always between seven and nine thousand. So I could easily justify paying it. This month was to be the full nine.”
“How would you get the payment to her?”
“I wouldn’t meet with her—which is what she wanted. For us to be seen having drinks together, like friends. No, she wouldn’t have that from me. In her message to me she’d routinely suggest meeting at a certain day, time, at a certain location. Du Vin, where she was killed, or Gino’s, uptown. Once or twice, the Russian Tea Room. I’d arrange for a bonded messenger to deliver. I used different companies.”
“You have records of the deliveries?”
“I have records of everything. Her e-mails and texts, her v-mails on my personal ’link. I’ve changed ’links three times since this started, but she always dug out the new one.”
Knight paused, drank again. “She was good at her job, had a way on screen. She didn’t have to do this, it couldn’t have been only the money. Do you understand? She liked squeezing me.”
“Yes, I understand that.”
“I have a file, and I’ll give you a copy of everything. I always knew I’d be here. Not that she’d be dead, but that I’d be talking to the police about all of it. I knew, no matter how I tried to pretend otherwise, Bic was right all along.”
“What did she have on you?”
> “Okay.” Annie closed her eyes a moment. “Okay. My mother was a prostitute. Not my mother of record, not the woman who’ll always be my mother. That’s technically my aunt. But I’m going to call her my mother, and call her sister Carly. My mother took me in, made me hers, when I was barely two weeks old and Carly left me with her. She was only twenty-two years old, my mother, had worked her way through college, had just started a job teaching kindergarten in her hometown in Missouri. I found all this out years later, you understand. She’d raised me as her own, given me everything that mattered. To protect me, she’d moved to St. Louis, taken a job there. Moved away from her friends, her family. My grandparents were and are good people. Carly … was what she was.”
She shifted, took Bic’s hand again. “When I was thirteen, Carly showed up. It all came out, and this woman, this junkie, this prostitute, who’d only given birth to me because she’d been too stupid to even realize she was pregnant, and too afraid of terminating the pregnancy once she did. And calculated my grandparents would buy me from her. She was right about that—I learned that, too. They gave her ten thousand dollars when she threatened to take me away again, and just dump me in a ditch.
“I was thirteen, and I learned everything about my life was a lie. I was so angry, so shocked, so young, it’s all I could see. Instead of embracing my mother, my real mother, not Carly, I rejected her, I attacked her, and while she was trying to explain to me, to reason with me, scrambling to scrape up the money Carly wanted, I locked myself in my room. Later, I snuck out, and I went to the address Carly left with her. A part of the city my mom would never, never have let me go to. She was on the street, soliciting. She wasn’t licensed, you understand—this was before licensing—and the clientele she served wasn’t interested in licenses anyway. Junkies and whores and dealers, a brew of the worst, and I walked right into it.”
Knight shook back the hair that tumbled into her face, a quick, impatient move.
“She was high. I’m not sure I fully understood that, as I’d been so sheltered. I was going to get answers, I was going to get the truth. Not from the woman who’d lied to me every day of my life, but from her. God, thirteen.”
She paused, drank again, slower now, thoughtfully. “It can be such a pissy, know-it-all age. Both fierce and fragile. She laughed at me, put her arm around me, and said how I had plenty of sass, just like her. This man came up—he was high, too—and he said he’d pay her a hundred for a two-fer. I didn’t even know what he meant. She said, ‘Double that, handsome.’ I remember those exact words. She kept that arm around me, so tight, and I was still demanding she tell me the truth, too wrapped up in my own world to see the world around me. They pulled me into the alley. I didn’t even scream, I didn’t know what was happening until he shoved me against the wall, ground against me. I tried to fight, and I can hear her laughing. ‘Not so rough now, handsome, let me warm her up. God, let me warm her up.’”