Over Her Dead Body (6 page)

“Did you see anyone else on the floor tonight—at
any
point when you came up here?”

“No, it was empty—though when I was in the reception area I could hear a ton of people at the party over at
Track.
The attack must have happened just before I came in.”

“Did Ms. Hodges often work late?”

“Most nights, yes—but rarely on Tuesdays as far as I know. Monday is the night we close each issue, and that’s always a really late night. On Tuesday people try to clear out by six or so.”

“But not you?”

Oh God, here we go
again.

“Well, first of all, I’m, uh, sort of a part-timer and I don’t work on the same schedule as everyone else. I was out on business all day—you know, covering a story—and like I told the officer, I needed to pick up work from my in-box.”

As I gave the last detail I glanced down, directing his attention to the papers sticking out of my bag. I felt even more uncomfortable lying to Tate. He eyed me curiously. I couldn’t tell if he suspected some prevarication on my part or was just trying to make sense of everything in his mind.

More voices and footsteps burst into the open space. The three of us looked up in unison to see four people come trooping down the aisle along the bullpen—the crime scene unit with equipment and two other guys in sports jackets, probably other detectives. Tate caught the eye of one and cocked his head in the direction of Mona’s office. I assumed that the look he gave suggested he’d be with them as soon as he’d finished with his witness.

“Tell me, to your knowledge is there anyone here at the magazine who might be upset with Ms. Hodges?” Tate asked me, pulling my attention back to him. “Did anyone have a bone to pick with her?”

My brain seemed to freeze. God, what should I say? Robby, of course, had a big fat bone to pick with Mona, but he certainly hadn’t killed her, and I didn’t want to put him on the police radar unnecessarily. Nor did I want to do that to other people I’d heard Mona chew out. In a split second, I decided to err on the side of discretion and be vague with my answer. The police would be interviewing tons of people, including many who were far more entrenched at the magazine than I was, and they would hear soon enough about the staff’s problems with Mona, including Robby’s dismissal.

“I’ve only worked here six weeks and so I’m not really up to speed on everything that’s going on,” I said. “You should probably talk to Nash Nolan, the executive editor.”

“All right, that will be all the questions for tonight,” he said. “Our crime scene unit is here now, and I’d appreciate it if you’d show them exactly where you found the victim and explain how much you moved her.”

“Of course,” I said.

I followed Tate back to the area outside Mona’s office. A portion of it, including the section where the cleaning lady had collapsed, was now cordoned off and there were about ten police types milling around—some inside the yellow tape, some outside of it. Detective Tate left me outside the office while he conferred with one of the crime scene personnel inside, and then he motioned that I should enter. The surreally bright crime scene lights made it seem as if Mona’s office were being readied for a fashion shoot.

A young woman in an oversize navy blue jacket turned and looked at me. “You wanna indicate where you found the victim?” she asked.

“Her head was about an inch or two from the desk leg—in that direction,” I said, pointing. “I moved her about six inches away so that she wouldn’t bang her head.”

Speaking of Mona’s head, there was a big smear of blood on the beige carpet, and it glistened in the lights. I felt sick looking at it.

Tate led me out of the room. At first I thought he was walking me back to my seat, but we kept going and it became obvious that he was escorting me to the door. I was finally being sent on my way.

“Here’s my card,” Tate said, tugging it out of his wallet. “I want you to call me if anything occurs to you or if you notice anything odd at work this week.”

I nodded with all the enthusiasm I could muster, considering that I felt like shit.

“And one other thing. I don’t want you to speak to anyone about the specifics of what you saw in there tonight—is that clear? There may be certain details that we decide to hold back.”

“Yes, I understand.”

“Fine,” he said, and then nodded at one of the patrol cops hovering nearby. “The officer will escort you out of the building so you don’t get hassled.”

He strode back toward the action, and the patrol cop stepped forward to play usher for me. As he pushed open the door to the reception area, I was startled by the scene that awaited us. More cops were congregated in the reception area and also by the door to
Track.
There was no longer any music, just the steady drone of a disgruntled crowd. Obviously, people were being held at
Track
until the police could interview each and every one of them.

But even more shocking was the scene that greeted me when I stepped out of the elevator into the lobby of the building. Through the glass windows to the street I could see throngs of people, including tons of press with cameras, standing behind blue police barricades. Mona, who had dispatched hordes of reporters and photographers around the world, had become the center of the kind of sizzling story that she always demanded they return with.

Though the noise of the crowd managed to permeate the lobby, it was muted and it wasn’t until the police officer opened the door that the full force of the din hit me. It was like that moment when you leave the relatively hushed customs area at an international airport and step into the cacophony of arrivals.

“How were you planning to get home?” the cop yelled over the noise.

“I guess I’ll just take a cab.”

“I better help you get one.”

He took my arm and ushered me through the gauntlet. Cameras snapped and reporters ambushed me with questions. “What’s going on up there?” “Did you see anything?” “Have the police arrested anyone?” “Who are
you
?”

This, I realized, was as close as I was ever going to get to being Nicole Kidman.

The cop hailed a cab and helped me inside. As soon as it was in motion, I fell back against the sticky leather seat, completely wiped. Five hours ago, my plans for the evening had entailed going out for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Village, where I’d hoped to have the roasted game hen and a glass of super Tuscan. Instead I ended up finding my boss beaten and bloodied. I was also now smack in the middle of a criminal investigation. Yet even if I hadn’t stumbled onto that horrible scene tonight, the events would have caught up with me quickly. Tomorrow,
Buzz
would be a nuthouse as people reacted to the assault and worried about how Mona’s fate would impact their own. She might have very serious injuries to her brain; in fact, she might never recover.

As the cab shot down Broadway, I dug my cell phone and BlackBerry out of my purse and found the number for Nash. I reached only his voice mail and left a message explaining what had happened in case he hadn’t already heard and leaving my cell phone number. Then I phoned Paul Petrocelli, an ER doctor I knew who let me badger him with basic medical questions when I was writing stories. Half the time when I called him he was busy trying to stop a heart attack or remove a fishhook from someone’s hand, but tonight I lucked out and caught him between disasters. I described Mona’s head wound and seizure and asked him what he thought the prognosis might be.

“It sounds like the blow to the head was pretty hard,” he said, stifling a yawn. “With this kind of injury, you might not have a ton of
internal
bleeding, but the brain swells from the impact, just like any tissue, and swelling is never a good thing up there. The skull’s a tight container, and there’s just no room to expand. The brain tissue gets compressed and you end up with herniation down through the lower part of the brain. And that compresses the respiratory center in the brain stem.”

“There actually did seem to be a fair amount of external bleeding,” I told him. “Does that alter your diagnosis?”

“Okay, then, well, another possible scenario is that the blow ruptured a blood vessel in the lining of the brain. If that was the case, she would have had a large amount of bleeding in the skull—not just swelling. Though you’re looking at the same end point.”

“Could she die?”

“Sure. Head injuries are no picnic. Look, I’m getting a page. Call me back later if you need more info.”

Next I made a call to Lyle Parker, a former FBI profiler I sometimes interview. I wanted her take on the crime, but her voice mail picked up. I left a message saying that I needed to pick her brain.

I had the cabdriver dump me on the corner of 9th and Broadway and felt a rush of relief as I entered my place. It’s a fairly basic one-bedroom with an itty-bitty kitchen, but it sports a few spectacular features that always provide me solace: a walk-in closet that I’ve turned into a tiny home office, a big terrace, and an enchanting view to the west—a skyline of old brick apartment buildings and nineteen wooden water towers. My apartment was the one good thing to come out of my marriage, unless you want to include knowledge of how a football pool works.

I poured myself a glass of wine, kicked off my sandals, and plopped onto the couch with the force of something dropped from a second-story window. I hadn’t eaten a thing all night, but my stomach was churning and I had no appetite. As I lay against the throw pillows, I let thoughts of Mona consume me. I kept wondering who had done this to her. The cleaning lady hadn’t seen the assailant, but Mona must have—she’d been hit in the front of the head. Maybe the doctors at the hospital had managed to stabilize her and she was even now whispering the name of her attacker into the ear of a detective.

I realized suddenly that I needed to call Robby. Not only was I eager to tell him the news, but I also wanted to report to him about my little white lie to the police and make certain that he didn’t reveal the true purpose of my visit to
Buzz.
Last, I needed to tell him that I had never found the letters he’d been so concerned about.

I reached for the phone on the end table and tried his number. This time he answered on the third ring.

“
There
you are,” I said, my voice full of relief. “Look, I’ve got some terrible news.”

“Mona?”

“Yes, how did you hear?”

“Someone I know at
Track
called me. They’re saying she’s in a coma at St. Luke’s.”

“Did you hear that I discovered the body?”

“What?”

“I’m not supposed to share any of the specifics, but, yeah, I’m the one who found her.”

“
You
found her?” he exclaimed. “You were
there
?”

“Of course I was there, Robby,” I said, trying not to sound irritated. “I went to get the letters, just like you asked me to—which, by the way, weren’t anywhere in your desk. And which, by the way, I didn’t mention to the police. I didn’t want to drag you into it, so I just said I was picking up some work for myself.”

“But you never called me back when you said you would,” he said almost mournfully. “You said you were going to check with your friend and call me right back.”

“It took me a while to reach her,” I told him. “When I finally called your place, there was no answer. I figured you’d crashed, so I just left a message and headed up to the office. Why does any of that matter, anyway? You sound upset about it.”

“It’s just . . .” The tone of his voice was the vocal equivalent of someone wringing his hands.

“It’s just
what,
Robby?” I felt myself growing aggravated.

“
I
picked up the letters. I went there tonight after I didn’t hear from you.”

CHAPTER 4

I
took a few seconds to ponder the bombshell Robby had just dropped at my feet.

Robby had paid a visit to the
Buzz
offices tonight. He had been there around the time that Mona had been in her office. He’d been incredibly shaken about his dismissal. And now Mona lay in the hospital, a gaping hole in her head.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m here,” I said quietly. “Did you see Mona tonight?”

“No, I never went down to that end of the floor. I just grabbed the two letters and left. Do you know what her condition is? Is she going to live?”

“I don’t know, Robby. Tell me—how did you get into the office? Didn’t you say they took away your ID when you left today?”

He expelled a nervous sigh. “Yes, they did. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to get into the office without it. But I realized that I was still on the list for the
Track
party tonight. And I knew that all I would have to do was show up in the lobby, give my name, and present a photo ID—I used my driver’s license. So that’s what I did. They even had a separate security guard checking off names of people going to the party—some guy I’d never even seen before. Once I was on the floor, this guy who works freelance in the art department just happened to be leaving. I don’t think he had a clue I’d been canned, so he held the door open for me.”

“What time was this?”

“It was just a couple of minutes before eight. I checked my watch because I wanted to make sure it was late enough and that nobody would be around.”

“
Was
there anyone around?”

“No, the place was empty. The guy from art must have been the last person to leave. Like I said, I just grabbed the letters and got the hell out of there.”

“Did you leave the front way?”

“No, I went down the stairs—all the way to the lobby. I didn’t want to take any chances. Why are you grilling me on this, Bailey? You don’t think
I
had anything to do with this thing, do you?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just wondering how close you came to bumping into the person who did it. Did you notice the lights on in Mona’s office?”

“No. I mean, they might have been on, but I never went around the corner.”

My mind was reeling. I must have missed Robby by fifteen to twenty minutes. Was he telling me the truth? Or was he the one who had smashed Mona’s skull? I couldn’t imagine him being capable of such an act, yet he’d been despondent about being fired.

“Do you think the police are going to suspect me?” he asked, his voice suddenly filled with desperation.

“Hopefully Mona will be okay and she’ll be able to tell the police what happened. But until she regains consciousness, you’re probably going to seem like a very viable suspect. You have to talk to a lawyer as soon as possible.”

“Oh God, this is horrible,” he wailed.

“I don’t know a ton about these things, but a lawyer may even suggest that you get hold of the police yourself. They’ll be contacting you anyway. Someone saw you go into the office late, plus the cops are going to find out you were fired. It will probably look better if you take the initiative. But you need to get legal counsel and let them figure out the best course of action. Do you know a lawyer?”

“Well, we’ve talked to a lawyer about the adoption.”

“That’s not the right kind,” I said, trying not to sound impatient. “You need a criminal attorney.”

“Brock would probably know someone. He’s in San Francisco this week trying to drum up some business. I haven’t been able to reach him yet.”

“If you can’t find anyone, call me back and I’ll do a little research. Are you going to be okay there by yourself?”

“I guess so. Oh God, this is so awful. Was she—was she in a coma when you found her?”

“Like I said, I’m not supposed to discuss any specifics, but she was in pretty bad shape. Call me back tomorrow and let me know what’s happening, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, choking back a sob.

I put down the phone and began pacing my living room. This was bad, really bad. But most disturbing wasn’t that Robby might soon become the primo suspect. It was the fact that he might have actually
done
it. I just had to keep telling myself that the Robby I knew wasn’t capable of such a despicable act.

I stripped off my jean skirt, kicked it into the corner of the living room, and wandered into the kitchen. I felt I needed something in my stomach, but toast was the only thing that held any appeal. As I was popping a piece of bread into the toaster, my cell phone went off in the other room. I raced for my purse and rummaged through it for my phone. Nash was on the other end.

“I just heard your message,” he said. “Are you still there?”

“Where?”

“At
Buzz.
”

“No, I’m home now. What about you? Had you heard before you got my message?”

“Yeah, I was at the
Track
party. I just escaped. They interviewed all of us, one by bloody one. I got moved up the food chain when I finally convinced somebody that I was worth talking to. What the hell happened?”

“Someone attacked both Mona and the cleaning lady. I have no idea why, though.”

“What kind of shape is Mona in? Do you think she’ll be okay?”

“She was unconscious when I found her and apparently, according to the news, she’s in a coma—at St. Luke’s. That’s all I’ve heard.”

“You said on the phone that she’d been hit on the head. With what, do you know?”

“No,” I said honestly, but also mindful of the fact that I wasn’t supposed to be talking about details. “It was a crime scene, and they don’t appreciate amateurs doing any kind of inspection.”

“What about the cleaning lady?”

“She seemed okay.”

“Did she see anything?”

“I don’t think so. Though she was pretty dazed. Maybe when her head clears, she’ll remember some details.”

“Wait, say it again,” he said. “I’m in a cab in the park and you’re starting to break up.”

I repeated what I’d just told him.

“Christ,” he muttered. “I’m probably gonna lose you again, so I better get off. You’ve got my home number, so call me tonight if you hear anything, all right? And I want you in there tomorrow. Stop by my office as soon as you get in.”

“Sure,” I said, wondering what he had in mind but deciding that this was not the time to ask.

“Hey, weren’t you supposed to be in court today?” he said as an afterthought.

“I was,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “But I—I needed a few things from work.”

It was silent at the other end, and I realized that I had lost him for good.

I finished making my toast and turned on the TV to CNN, but some talk show was playing and the crawl didn’t offer any news about Mona. I figured that I probably wouldn’t learn anything official until the eleven o’clock local news. For the next few minutes I paced my apartment, nursing my wine but barely tasting it. I didn’t particularly like Mona, but seeing her injured like that was immensely disturbing.

For the first time in a long time, I also felt a desperate craving for the company of Jack Herlihy, the guy who’d been my boyfriend until January. Jack was a psychologist I’d met while researching an article about a troubled young girl who’d made everyone think there was a poltergeist in the house. Though I’d fought my initial attraction to him, we’d ended up in a steady, monogamous relationship last fall. A professor at Georgetown, he lived in Washington, D.C., during the week but flew to New York every weekend, and in the fall he would begin teaching at NYU. We’d spent our time together prowling around the Village, seeing movies, listening to music at little clubs, skiing, and having lots of very nice sex.

Then in January he’d knocked me off guard by telling me he wanted us to move in together—with the expectation that we would probably marry in the future. I was crazy about Jack, but as soon as the words spilled from his mouth I knew that I wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. I’d been divorced for just over two years, and I needed more time to figure out how I’d blown things so profoundly and how I could make sure I was never guilty of such bad judgment again. Jack broke things off with me, saying that it had to be all or nothing for him. It stung like a bitch at first, though I knew I’d made the right call. As the weeks went by, the ache subsided—perhaps more quickly than I’d anticipated.

But tonight all I could think about was how great it would be to have Jack to talk to. He had that shrink way of asking lots of the right questions, and when I answered them I generally felt an enormous sense of release, like floodwater gushing over sandbags. But there was no Jack anymore, and I was going to have to be a big girl and suck it up.

I headed for the refrigerator, this time in search of something sweet. In the freezer I found a tub of frozen vanilla yogurt, date and origin unknown. As I popped off the lid, I saw that it looked as old as the south polar ice cap. I scraped off the ice crystals on top and stabbed at it with a spoon. It tasted even worse than it looked.

As I was tossing the tub in the trash, my home phone rang.

“Tell me this isn’t happening, will you?” someone said after I’d answered. There was a frantic edge to the voice.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Me, Jessie,” she said after letting out a big sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m just going out of my mind, and since I knew I was near your place, I dialed your number. This whole thing is just so—I don’t know . . .”

“I know, I know. I’m going out of my mind here as well.”

“Is it true—that you were there?”

“Yeah, I was there—I went by to pick up some work. How did you hear that?”

“I’ve talked to a million people from
Buzz
already tonight. I guess someone who was at the
Track
party heard you found Mona.”

“Where are you, anyway?” I could hear cars rushing by in the background.

“I’m right around the corner—on University and Eighth. Look, do you feel like getting together? We could just grab a cup of coffee or something.”

“Why don’t you come up?” I asked. “We could sit and talk on my terrace.”

“You don’t mind? I feel like a big buttinsky.”

I told her I didn’t mind and made sure she had the exact address.

I retrieved my jean skirt from the corner and wiggled into it again. I liked Jessie, but I didn’t think she was ready to see me in a pair of hot pink boy briefs.

She arrived five minutes later, breathless, her long glossy brown hair shoved behind her ears.

“Hey, come on in,” I said, opening the door to her. “I’m glad you called.”

She was wearing low khaki green pants, a pale green T-shirt, and a necklace made of amber-colored stones. At around five seven or so, Jessie had a great figure—nice boobs, buff all over—but she admitted that her slightly wide hips bugged her. Her fashion strategy, she’d told me, was darks on the bottom and plenty of jewelry on top to deflect attention.

“I’m so glad you were
here.
I just needed to be with someone—someone from work who could understand.” We gave each other an awkward hug. We were on our
way
to being friends but not totally there yet, so it was kind of weird for us to be standing in my apartment late at night with our arms around each other.

“I can’t believe you found her,” Jessie continued, dropping her arms. “What—what had happened to her? I heard someone smashed in her skull.”

“Yes, she’d been attacked. I’d love to talk about it, but I can’t. The police practically threatened me with incarceration if I opened my mouth.”

“Oh, I get it,” she said. “It’s one of those ‘only the person who did it would know certain details’ kind of things. But isn’t it freaking you out—I mean, to have found her?”

“It wasn’t pleasant. How about something to drink?” I pointed to the bottle of red wine on the dining table. “I’ve got wine. Beer. Sparkling water. And a bottle of port that someone brought as a hostess gift four years ago.”

She smiled and thought for a moment. “Uh, just sparkling water if it’s opened. But otherwise tap is fine.”

She followed me to my tiny kitchen, looking around as we went. “This is a great place,” she said, her eyes scanning the room.

“Thanks. Here you go. One sparkling water. Why don’t we sit out on the terrace?”

I pointed toward the door and then followed her out into the night. There’s something about the view from my terrace after dark that reminds me of the backdrop of a Broadway show—the inky blue black of the sky and the apartment buildings dabbed randomly with lights. It almost seems fake. I motioned for Jessie to take a seat at my patio table, and I lit a citron candle. Through the darkness, I heard her sigh.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” she said. “Do you mind my asking—do you
own
this?”

“Yeah, I was married once. This was the consolation prize.”

“Gotcha. So what do you think is going to happen? You’re a whiz at all this crime stuff. Will they be able to catch the person who did this to Mona?”

“You know, those
CSI
-type shows are really misleading. Yes, forensic medicine is amazing today, but often there’s no real evidence to analyze or what they find is totally ambiguous. Hopefully Mona will recover and be able to tell the police exactly who did this to her.”

“Recover?” In the pale light of the candle, I saw a look of astonishment form on Jessie’s face, as if I’d just announced that Peter Pan was about to land on the wrought-iron railing in front of us.

“Yes, people
do
come out of comas.”

“But she’s dead—haven’t you
heard
?”

I gasped. “Dead? How do you know that?”

“I have a contact at St. Luke’s. I talked to him about a half hour ago and he told me that she had died from her injuries. I assumed the news was out there by now.”

“Jesus,” I said, leaning forward in my chair. “The last I knew, she was still alive.” My mind was lurching all over the place. I wondered if Mona had ever regained consciousness and identified her attacker to the police.

“Is there any chance it was a robber?” Jessie asked, interrupting my thoughts. “I heard that one of the cleaning people was attacked, too.”