Deadfall

One Police Plaza—NYPD headquarters—was adjacent to the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District.

“We spent thirty-six minutes going through the tapes that aired on the local news channels Monday night,” I said. “And lucky for me, one of the cameramen actually set up directly across the way from Ms. Wintour—behind the last row of seats on the opposite side’s fifty-yard line. One photographer—that’s all it takes—was more interested in Wintour’s reaction to the runway show than in the models vamping on the catwalk.”

Prescott had picked up a yellow pencil and was holding it with both hands.

“Would you like to know what that tape showed, Skeeter? Because it seems your team stopped searching after they found the one shot they thought nails me as a conspirator,” I said. “Because contrary to this optical illusion you’re banking on to skewer me, I never had the reason or the opportunity to speak with Mr. Kwan.”

“What then?”

“I was all over the Savage investigation, because the dead man’s daughter, Lily, grew up with me,” I said. “She called me when his body was found. When everyone else—Battaglia included—believed Savage was a suicide. When everyone else was ready to shut the case down and bury the man without an autopsy.”

“So Lone Ranger of you, Alexandra,” Prescott said. “Along with Tonto, of course, always faithful to you.”

I reached for my iPad and opened the photograph app. “Here’s a screenshot I took just an hour ago,” I said. “It’s a better angle, don’t you think?”

I handed the device to Prescott, who put his thumb and forefinger on the photo to enlarge it.

“Can you see all the players?” I asked.

He wouldn’t answer. He just shifted the image from larger to smaller and back again.

“That guy sitting next to George Kwan, on his other side—the one who looks like Oddjob,” I said. The muscled Asian man with the stone-faced expression was a body double for a character in a Bond movie. “The one that has ‘killer’ written all over him. He’s one of Kwan’s bodyguards, but you couldn’t see him in the photos you were working from, because of the angle.”

“Next to him is my childhood swim-team pal,” I said. “Wolf Savage’s daughter, Lily. You can’t see her in your set of photographs, can you? She just moved into that seat beyond Oddjob from the back row, seconds before I went by.”

“You’re telling me that’s the person you leaned in to talk to?” Prescott said, his voice lowered a notch. He seemed almost disappointed by the visual proof that I wasn’t in cahoots with Kwan. “This woman? This—this Lily? You actually remember that encounter, despite your—shall we call it your state of shock?”

“Frankly, James, I didn’t remember at all until I saw the tape at headquarters this morning. I was blank on the whole thing—alcohol, shock, exhaustion—that part of the evening was all a total blank to me,” I said. “Then this popped up on the screen this morning. Full-frontal image, with no dead angles to skew the view.”

“You were talking to Lily,” Prescott said, all hostility drained from his voice. “Why?”

“She was the only person in that row I knew, James. Nothing else makes sense. She had talked to me backstage and started to ask me, earlier in the night, if I thought we were close to catching her father’s killers.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t answer her. I cut her off, actually, because there were too many people around to bring up that subject, and I was trying to keep a very low profile,” I said. “Lily was standing up, looking for her husband, when she saw me walking by, as this photo shows. She waved—she waved repeatedly to me—and so I stopped.”

“She asked you something, didn’t she?” Prescott said.

I shook my head. “Lily told me something,” I said. “She told me that the DA—that Battaglia—had just texted her. That he told her he wanted her to come to his office the next day.”

“Did you answer her?” he asked.

I didn’t speak to Prescott. I took the photograph of Lily and me and held it up in front of his face.

“What did you say to her, Alexandra?”

“Go to the videotape, James. You can read my lips,” I said. “You can read my lips for yourself, on the outtakes from Channel 5.”

Prescott put down the pencil and banged his clenched fist on the desk. “What the hell did you tell your friend Lily about Battaglia’s invitation?”

“‘Don’t go,’ is what I said to her. Just two words, behind George Kwan’s back. ‘Don’t go.’”





TWENTY-THREE


“When does he want you back?” Mike asked.

We had grabbed lunch in the federal courthouse cafeteria and were finishing up, shortly after one P.M.

“Tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “We’ll be going over my phone records, emails, and texts, if you want to talk about painful.”

“Too much gossip with your buddies,” Mike said.

“That’s only because I haven’t had any business to discuss while I was on leave,” I said, scraping my tray and following Mike out the door. “No worries. It’s not like I’ve been talking about the size of your—”

“My appetite?” he said, reaching back to tousle my hair as he interrupted me. “Talk all you want. Any surprises you should be prepared for? You or I, that is?”

“No old lovers, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “Joan’s latest manuscript, Nina’s kid, manicures and pedicures, hair color. It’ll sound like a broken record.”

“You were doing plenty of e-chatting and texting about the Wolf Savage investigation,” Mike said. “That will give them some fodder.”

“I went rogue and you came along with me,” I said. “Old news.”

“They must have all of Battaglia’s communications by now, too,” Mike said. “They’ll wonder why the text to Lily didn’t show up as outgoing on his phone. They must have run all of Monday’s numbers on his devices by now.”

“When he was communicating from home,” I said, “he often used his wife’s phone. No point to that, really, but whichever device was closer to where he was sitting. I’d better tell Prescott to get Amy’s records, too, or he’ll challenge me about that text.”

“Lily can back you up.”

“Yeah. That’s true.” I hadn’t heard from Lily since the takedown of her father’s killers at the Met. But then, without a phone, it was hard to know whether she or anyone else was trying to call me.

“Did you tell Prescott we’re going to the Bronx Zoo now?” Mike asked.

“I didn’t see the need. He’s been briefed on everything we know, including the possibility that Battaglia was at the hunting preserve the night Justice Scalia died, but he never went near that subject with me.”

“Okay.”

“Besides that,” I said, “James is still refusing to take Jaxon Stern off the case. He ended by telling me that he thinks the solution to this whole thing—Battaglia’s murder—is within my grasp, if I can just clear all the emotion out of my head.”

“What kind of bullshit is that?” Mike asked. “He thinks you’re holding something out on him?”

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