Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

her, Kim said softly, “Man, if you want some Listerine, I’m sure we’ve got a bottle around here somewhere.”

“I’m good,” I said.

In the box, Piñero jotted something down. “What did you do?”

“What do you mean? You think I came on to him, told him he could have some of this?” She thrust her narrow chest forward. “I fucked niggers before but he ain’t my type.”

Piñero’s snort vibrated through the observation room speaker.

“No. What did you do when he tried to kiss you?”

“What do you think? I pushed him off me and tried to get away.”

He wrote something else. “Then what happened?”

“He grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go! I fought but he knocked me down.”

“So you fought him and he held on?”

“Yes.”

“Tight?”

“Yes! He twisted it and it hurt real bad.”

“Which arm did he grab?”

She appeared to think a bit. Then her face brightened, and the chain rattled through the ring again as she held up her left and worked the sleeve down.

Piñero scanned her arm and made another note. “Are those scratches from him?”

“Of course!”

“Then he hit you and you fell down?”

“Yes.”

“What did he hit you with?”

“His fist. What else?”

“Not the water pitcher?”

“His fist, Paco!”

“All right. How did you get into the corridor?”

“Crawled ‘cause I was still dizzy from being hit.”

Piñero was quiet for a five-count. Then he leaned forward. “Why did you go into that particular room in the first place?”

“I was looking for my friend. I went to the wrong room. By mistake.”

“Your friend’s name?”

“Mary.” She nodded as if confirming her memory. “We went to school together.”

“Last name?”

“Decker,” she said after a moment. As her lie sprouted details, she was beginning to shift more in her seat. “I think that’s her name now.”

“You know we’ll check the name.”

She smiled. “Go ahead.”

Mary Decker—a shot in the dark or a name she had seen somewhere? I had no idea.

“Okay, so you were there in the hospital to visit your friend Marcy,” Piñero said. He paused but she never challenged the name Marcy. “You went to the wrong room, and this guy grabbed you.”

“Sure did!”

“Want to press charges?”

“Maybe.”

“You’ll have to give me your name if you want to file a complaint.”

A dark tooth clamped over her lower lip. She looked down as if avoiding her interrogator’s eyes. “Let me think about that. Maybe it’s best not to get involved.” Then she looked up. “It’s late and I’m tired. I want to go home. What if you just let things go? Tell him to stay away from me or he’ll be arrested?”

“We’re kind of past that now.”

“Why? It’s his word against mine. Can’t we just drop it? Maybe I misunderstood.”

“You misunderstood his tongue in your mouth?”

She said nothing.

“At least help me understand.” He leaned back, folded his arms. “Help me understand why you were in the hospital after visiting hours. Why you were dressed like you work there when you don’t. Why you had a hypodermic we’re gonna find your fingerprints on.”

I turned to Kim. “She’s playing stupid. Any way I can get a note to Piñero?”

“Sure.” He handed me a pad from a small utility table in the corner. “When you’re ready I’ll knock and hand it to him.”

I set down my cup and took out my pen. I wrote Did she come in early, see “Mary Decker” and change into scrubs? How does she know what an SVC line is? I was forming my third question when there was a tap on the observation room door. Kim and I exchanged a look before he stepped out. Then I heard a man say the front desk had sent him up. He asked if the woman who had been brought in was in Interview One. When Kim said yes, someone rapped on the interrogation room door and didn’t wait for a response to open it.

Clearly, Jane Doe was startled by the knock. Now her eyes widened as a tall, russet-skinned man in an expensive navy suit and charcoal topcoat stepped inside and told her to say nothing more. She didn’t seem to recognize him. She nodded anyway.

“This interview is over, detective,” the man said. “My client is leaving with me.”

Kim stepped back into the observation room. “Harlow Graves for the defense,” he said. “Wonder how he got wind of this.”

I’d heard of him and seen him on billboards but had never crossed paths with him.

Piñero stood and positioned himself between Graves and the woman. “Just talking, counselor,” he said. “Trying to sort something out. She hasn’t been charged with anything.”

The lawyer stepped around Piñero and leaned close to look at the woman, who shrank away from him as if afraid. He offered her a reassuring smile, and tension left her shoulders.

“Looks like Abu Grhaib up in here,” he said. She let him slide her sleeves up one at a time. “The commissioner can expect a notice of intent to file.”

“Her face was like that when she got here,” Piñero said. “The hospital treated her before she was brought in. Our video will show she’s been scratching her arms since she got here. Sometimes, people like her have brittle skin.”

“People like—” Graves spun around. “How do people like her get this facial injury?”

“That big—” Having already called me a nigger, the woman appeared to search for a new word to describe me to her black lawyer. “That big cocksucker hit me!”

“What big cocksucker?”

“A PI bodyguarding someone in the hospital. She went into the room, dressed in scrubs and carrying a hypodermic. When he got between her and the patient, she swung the needle at him. He hit her with a water pitcher.”

“His fist!”

“Hard enough to cause serious injury,” the lawyer said. “I want his name.”

Piñero shrugged. “Check with the hospital. He’s the one who said to call nine-one-one.”

“I went to the wrong room!”

“Who was it you were trying to see?” Piñero said. “Mary? Marcy? Margie?”

“He tried to rape me and I tried to fight him off!”

Graves took the cue. “So my client was trying to defend herself against this thug. Clearly self-defense.”

“Funny, but