Date Rape New York (20 page)

“You were set up,” concluded Cargill. “I wonder in how many ways.”

***

Luigi was behind the reception desk when Grazia and Detective Cargill walked in. He paled.

“Edmondo is at your, uh, office,” he murmured, with a nervous glance at the hotel guests pulling on their coats in the small lobby.

“Waiting for me,” replied Cargill cheerfully. He leaned on the reception counter and pointed at the phone in front of Luigi. “Sunday night you took a message for Miss Conti. ‘Give up. You won’t find me.’ You remember that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You told Miss Conti that you didn’t write down the caller’s phone number, even though the number was right there facing you on the auto-redial panel. That seems odd to me. You wrote down the message and alerted Edmondo because you thought the message was important. But you didn’t write down the caller’s phone number. Why was that?”

“Sir, I’m busy right now. I can’t talk.”

“I’m not busy. I have lots of time. And Edmondo isn’t here to tell you what to do. In fact, he isn’t coming back for a while. Would you like to chat now, or shall we go to the police station, and you can wait there while I talk to Edmondo?”

“What is it that you want to know, sir?”

Cargill’s voice remained patient. “The phone number of the caller who left the message ‘Give up. You won’t find me.’ My heart tells me that you wrote it down.”

“I wrote it on the message slip that I gave Edmondo. That’s what we always do when there’s a message, write down the number of the caller.”

Grazia pulled the message slip out of her journal pocket. “The number isn’t on this.”

Luigi peered at the slip. “That’s not what I gave Edmondo. He must have copied it.”

“You wrote the number down for yourself, didn’t you?” said Cargill. “You come from a country where information is insurance. Give me the number, Luigi. Even if you don’t, I’ll tell Edmondo that you did.”

Luigi’s face grew even paler. With a shaking hand, he reached into his wallet and handed over a paper. “Don’t tell Edmondo,” he whispered.

“Later you can tell me why you’re so worried about what Edmondo knows,” commented Cargill. He turned to Grazia. “Go up to your room. Lock the door. And don’t open it for anyone, not even your friend the maid. I’ll call you in the morning.”

* * *

Grazia hurried down the hall to her room. Only a few short minutes ago, she had felt secure. Now panic was back in full force. Cindy was right. Everything was in the mind—security, insecurity, peace, and panic. She double-locked her door, slid on the chain, and scanned her sanctuary. Except that it didn’t feel like a sanctuary anymore. Evie’s sand rattles may have broken up the negative vibrations but they hadn’t touched the dark memories in her mind. She paced the room. To calm herself, she sat down on her bed to check her email.

The sender’s name was “Your unknown lover.” The subject was “Memory back yet?” The message read, “Hi Grazia. Memory back yet? Let’s get together again.”

She couldn’t breathe. Her heart pounded in her ears. She felt like she was floating, like her shaking hands weren’t her own. She could barely get Cargill’s name on her phone contacts.

“He just sent an email.” Her hands were so sweaty, the phone kept slipping. “It’s just an email. He’s not here in the room. But it feels like he is!”

Cargill’s voice became very calm. “Can you handle reading it out loud?”

Grazia had put the laptop on the table. She didn’t want to touch this contaminated object. Cargill was silent for a long minute after she read it to him. “Are you going to reply?”

“No! That would be like speaking to him!”

“OK, then don’t answer.”

“Is that good?” she quavered. “Not to answer?”

“Waiting might make him nervous. He might do something stupid like phone you. Then we’ll have a number we can trace.”

“Can’t you trace this email?”

“A computer geek might be able to trace the IP address. Google has a database of IP address locations. But my guess is this guy is sending it from an Internet café or a public-access computer like at a library. The thing is, tracing his IP address is not enough in court to prove he sent the email. However, it might be enough to catch him. If we know where he’s sending the emails, we can wait outside and hope we eventually spot a familiar face.”

“Can you trace a phone call from my cell phone?” Her voice quivered.

“We can track phones. But if he turns off his cell phone, we can’t find him. Also, he probably bought a burner—that’s a cell phone that uses a SIM card. They’re hard to track, but it can be done if we can locate the tower it’s communicating with and then narrow down where he’s calling from. The trouble is, that all requires staff and technology experts, and my captain isn’t going to authorize that expense for a foreign woman who’s leaving on Friday. The best we can hope for is that you exchange emails with him and hope he slips up and says something that will identify him.”

Grazia was feeling calmer. “Cargill, he’s smart. He won’t admit anything in an email. Maybe he’s in Italy, like you say. Oh, what am I saying? He pushed me under a car not six hours ago!”

“He could have hired someone to mug you. Listen, do me a favor. Answer the email. Conquer your fear. Start a conversation. And send me a BCC.” He gave her his email address.

“If I email him, what do I say?”

“Ask, ‘What happened Saturday night? I don’t remember anything. Did we have sex?’”

She hung up and stared at her laptop. Then she took a deep breath and tapped ‘Reply.’ She wrote, “Can’t you have sex with a woman unless she’s unconscious? What’s your problem? Are you worried that she will see how tiny you are?”

She added Cargill’s email as a BCC and hit “send.” Then she looked around at the quiet, peaceful room, the soft bedside light, the turned-back coverlet. A hot bath was what she needed. She still couldn’t feel clean. But panic reared its sharp head. What if the rapist had a passkey? What if he threw his weight against the chain and snapped it? She would be naked in a tub of hot water.

“Stop this crazy thinking!” she exclaimed aloud, appalled at how close calm was to panic. When would she be her old courageous self! She dragged out her suitcase and was reaching for her anxiety pills when Cindy’s voice came into her ears. “Find the trigger. Connect it to the emotion. Then do what you had decided to do to get back in control.”

“You are a lawyer,” Grazia said out loud. “The more control you have over yourself, the more control you have over the situation.”

She locked the suitcase in the closet. Then she wrote on the hotel message pad, “You are in control, Grazia,” and propped it against the lamp on the bedside table. She sat down at the round table and opened her journal. She began adding details to what she had written about the day. She still couldn’t write about the results from the medical examiner—that there were two men. So she started with the mugging, then the hypnosis, then Cargill and the Brazilian Bar, then dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant, then Luigi in the hotel lobby, the anonymous email, and her resolve to get control.

Then she ran her bath.

Chapter 30

The ping of a video call came through before dawn Wednesday morning. Grazia was awake but still in bed. She got out to activate the laptop on the round table. The caller was Francisco. She returned to bed where she resumed her relaxed position against the pillows. Why should she answer? Francisco had fired her. She no longer worked for him. She slipped back into her quiet mental state of the previous half hour, letting her thoughts expand, float, and form new patterns. This was how she planned her legal cases. It was a form of concentration that went deeper than facts. Thank heavens her mind could still function this way.

Before that, she had been reading her journal and coming up with possible scenarios to fill in the gaps. So frustrating! Somewhere in her notes there must be clues about the men who had assaulted her. Her notes were very complete, she was satisfied to see. Despite her foggy mental state on Sunday and Monday, her years of legal discipline had enabled her to keep coherent, orderly notes. The journal started Saturday morning when she reviewed her draft of the contract and got the call from Kourtis saying she could have it couriered to Francisco. She had called the international courier, handed it off, and had gone to Lord & Taylor where she had her odd encounter with Laura. Laura had been in the café talking on her phone, and then had disappeared. She had reappeared at Grazia’s elbow, evincing surprise at the meeting. That action bothered Grazia. The journal then moved through Sunday morning when she woke up nauseated and sick. After that, her recordings included every event, meeting, phone conversation, and speculation. It also included every physical symptom, sensation, and emotion. This last was immensely reassuring. She could see that her health had improved vastly since Sunday morning. She could stop worrying when she was hit by spasms of grogginess or nausea. She would be fine, and so, she fervently hoped, would her memory.

After studying her notes beginning to end, she opened her laptop and copied everything into her hard drive. Having it up on the screen made it easier to see the gaps. She could tell what she needed to know to connect the dots.

And time was moving quickly. Today was Wednesday. She had only today, Thursday, and part of Friday before she climbed on the plane for Naples. Francisco’s call pinged again. She sighed and swung her legs out of bed. Her eyes fell on the note she had written to herself the night before and propped against the bedside lamp: “You are in control, Grazia.”

Grazia smiled. She actually did feel in control. Something inside her had resolved during the night; some intention had settled into her bones. Her courage was back. The clenched fear in her stomach had eased. Maybe this was temporary; maybe she would panic when a young, Italian-looking man passed her on the sidewalk. But for now she felt like her old self. Cargill, Janine, and Cindy had pulled her out of yesterday’s crash, when she had tried to wall off her emotions behind the white soap.

Even an element of her old recklessness was surfacing, the courage she felt when she was in the middle of a tough case and needed to take risks to win. Perhaps the Rohypnol had worn off and her brain was functioning properly. Maybe Raoul’s soothing support at breakfast was easing her back to normalcy.
Cindy’s counseling sessions were giving her a solid perspective for handling the situation. Her faith in herself was returning, thanks to Janine’s practical wisdom and Evie’s certainty that she would remember what she needed. Or maybe it was that lovely dinner with Detective Cargill that made her feel good about herself.

Whatever the cause, Grazia felt stronger physical and mentally. She even felt a twinge of exhilaration that her attacker had sent her an email. In her experience, when an opposition lawyer called for no reason, it meant he couldn’t figure out what she was doing and was worried. Worried people were vulnerable. The rapist was venturing out into the open.

The audio call pinged again. Grazia felt a twinge of annoyance. Truly, it was time for a new job. Thank heavens for the email she had received from the recruiter at the Brazilian Bar Saturday night, setting up the job interview Monday afternoon. She reached for her yellow silk dressing gown and stood still, feeling a hovering memory. It had to do with the Brazilian Bar, something she had seen. But it drifted away.

She peeked through the curtains. Still dark. Heavy flakes swirled in the streetlamps. She logged into her video account. Francisco’s face appeared, scowling.

“Miranda’s geeks say there’s no computer leak from either of our offices—not the Milan office, either.”

“Are her investigators coming to New York?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Ask your bodyguards. They were in New York Saturday morning, probably before, weren’t they?”

She watched his face, waiting for him to deny it. He didn’t. He was keeping her off balance by withholding information. He poured himself a glass of water from a crystal pitcher. The muscle under his left eye twitched. She felt a twinge of compassion. Poor man. He may be a corrupt lawyer, a liar, and a womanizer, but his empire was threatening to crash. Her reaction stunned her. She was wondering at herself when he cut the connection.

She sat back, thinking. If his bodyguards were in New York, and if they had followed her Saturday night, why hadn’t they helped her? She made herself a cup of tea, gathered up her journal and smartphone, and got back in bed. She wrote down what Francisco had said. She read it over and slowly circled his name, waiting for a thought to surface. Something vague was drifting through her mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She went into her smartphone photo file and pulled up a shot she had taken of Francisco at a restaurant in Naples. His two bodyguards sat at the table behind him. She copied it onto her memory stick to print in the hotel business lounge. Another photo to show Nick. Maybe he would recognize a bodyguard as having been at the bar Saturday night.

She flipped to her journal where she had written the names of the Italians who had stayed in Laura’s hotel or hotels near the Brazilian Bar. Detective Cargill thought that searching for these men on the Internet to find their photos was a waste of time. Logically, it was. The odds of one of them being her rapist were near zero. Besides, they probably had all checked out and returned to Italy. But she had not done an internet search for their photos as she had planned to do yesterday afternoon, and now she had two hours before breakfast with Raoul, time enough for an online search. She went to an Italian search engine and typed in the first name.

As the first photo appeared, she felt the surge of excitement that came when she was working on a case she knew she could win. An hour later, she had located the probable photos and office phone numbers of every name but one—Valentino Agresta—a lawyer in her own firm based in the Milan office. She clicked on the website of the Francisco Pamplona Law Offices and found his email and phone number, but no photo. Odd. Francisco was adamant that all employees post their current photos on the company website. A professional photo crew came every year to take new ones.

Grazia leaned her head back against the pillows and ran her mind over the staff she knew from the Milan office. They had all been at the Christmas party at Francisco’s lavish Milan apartment. Belinda had been wearing a backless black dress studded with sparkling sequins and she was dancing with any man courageous enough to put his hand on her bare back. Francisco had given Grazia two strong vodka cocktails and rekindled their affair on the oriental carpet in his study.

Grazia typed in her password, logged onto the company website, and did an internal search for a photo of Valentino Agresta. His name and office phone number came up quickly but no photo. She called the phone number and got the switchboard. “Mr. Agresta is not in today,” said the operator. “Send him an email.”

Grazia hung up and shot off an email, identifying herself as a lawyer in the Naples office. “I’m in New York until Friday, and I understand you are staying in a hotel near mine. Can we meet?” Then she clicked on “Contact webmaster.” She sent an email asking for Agresta’s photo, identifying herself as a lawyer in the firm working directly under Francisco Pamplona in the Naples office. She looked at her watch. She needed to get going if she were going to meet Raoul for breakfast.

Her cell phone rang. It was Detective Cargill. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” she replied curtly. She was tired of her emotional collapses and even more tired of having Cargill think she needed constant propping up, even if she did. “Francisco called this morning by video. He asked if I had anything to tell him.”

“Is he sending up the Miranda investigators?”

“He didn’t say, but my guess is no.”

“Why not?”

“His bodyguards were up here following me, I’m pretty sure. They’ve told him what happened to me Saturday night. Miranda’s investigators already called you, so we know that Francisco knows you are investigating an assault on me. Sending Miranda Security investigators here won’t help them find the informant and Francisco doesn’t need any more ammunition to destroy my career.” She paused to get her voice under control. She changed the subject. “I’ve found photos of all but one of the Italian men in nearby hotels. That one was staying in Laura’s hotel and he has the same name as a lawyer in Francisco’s Milan office. I’m getting that photo from the webmaster. Also, I found a photo on my phone of Francisco with his bodyguards in the background. I’m going to print all these photos and show them to Nick. Maybe he will recognize somebody.”

“If we haven’t found the perpetrator by the time you leave New York, as soon as you get to Italy, get some objects with the DNA of the bodyguards and have their DNA identity done in a private lab. Email me the results. I’ll have the medical examiner run a match with what came from your room and off you.”

“What if there is a match? What happens then?”

“Technically, I can ask that the suspects be extradited to New York so we can prosecute them.”

“Will they do that?”

“Sexual assault isn’t high on the Italian police’s priorities, you said. But at least you can light up that dark hole of yours.”

She was silent. Then she pushed herself onward. “Have you called the phone number that Luigi gave you of my anonymous caller?”

“I did. No answer.”

“Let me try. Maybe he will pick up if he recognizes my number on his caller ID.”

“Grazia, I’m delighted to hear that you’ve conquered your fear of talking to this guy. But don’t call him until I and another police officer are with you. We’ll do a controlled call. We’ll put it on speakerphone, and I will tell you what questions to ask. We can all hear what he answers.”

“Give me the number, please.” Grazia’s voice was hard.

He hesitated, then read it off. “Don’t scare him off. We’ll lose our only lead.”

“Edmondo is a lead,” she retorted immediately. “Why did he lie about being in the lobby Saturday night?”

“He was protecting Manuel, he says.”

“Does he say where Manuel is?”

“In Italy with his mother, who doesn’t have a phone, if you believe that. Even bums sleeping in New York subway entrances have phones.”

She hung up, staring at the number Cargill had given her. It felt familiar. Her memory for numbers was near perfect, but she couldn’t place this one. What if she called him—what harm could it do to hear his voice? She lifted her hand to tap the number into her phone.