Sergeant Roth, his superior, had immediately contacted the FBI and DEA with the good news: they had what looked like a multimillion-dollar drug operation on their hands. Hutton couldn’t understand how Bedford Organics had kept their business under wraps for so long—unless Cat had been the only client to ever walk into the building without explicitly understanding what the products contained.
After he’d searched the Cormorant storage locker for the Whitney apartment, he’d found a bottle of contact lens solution that turned out to contain traces of the same ingredients in the eyedrops: more Atropa belladonna. Hutton theorized that Hillary Whitney had dumped half the small bottle into her contact lens solution, diluting it for daily use with the colored contacts she wore. The contact lens case contained the same solution, indicating that the lenses were soaked overnight—every night, he guessed—doubling or even tripling the daily dose she intended, which would have seeped into her eyes throughout the day. He suspected that all of the custom samples were intended to be used in the same way, to expand their effects over time, keeping rich women on a constant low simmer of wrinkle-free euphoria.
Hillary Whitney’s body, cremated and crumbled into an ivory urn, was unavailable for further autopsy, but the tissue samples held in the coroner’s office, thankfully preserved in cold storage, had been retested. By midafternoon Thursday they’d concluded that Hillary Whitney had died from cardiac arrest prompted by an overdose of Atropa belladonna.
Hutton still wasn’t sure what to make of the postcard she’d sent to the family cabin in Idaho on the morning of her death. Roth had chalked it up to the drug’s effects, and pointed out that they didn’t need a motive or a suspect, because their drug case now had at least one confirmed homicide and a soon-to-be-unimpeachable chain of evidence. The note might have started his case, but it no longer mattered, and Roth had encouraged him to forget it.
Whether she intended to or not, Cat had given the NYPD what they craved most: a case that was prosecutable. Someone would go to prison, the seizure would be in the newspaper, and other sophisticated drug traffickers—he was sure there were dozens of other schemes—would momentarily panic and shut down. Law and order would be enacted in public in real time. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked, mostly.
“All you need is a statement from the girl to ratify the chain of custody,” Roth had barked. “Get it done first thing in the morning.”
Chapter Eight
On Friday morning, Cat woke up at 6:45 and laced up her sneakers. She jogged through Bushwick and up to Troutman Street in time for her usual Pilates mat class. The workout was grueling, and Cat was determined to fully extend in every posture, pushing her muscles until they screamed as a personal penance for her party-heavy week. She ran home, showered, dressed, and grabbed the subway into the city for work. Today was a summer Friday, which meant the office closed at 1:00 p.m.; she had only a few hours of work to do, and then she and Bess could spend the afternoon getting stoned before finding out what the night had in store for them.
When she pulled her phone out to summon the Cooper elevator, she saw three missed calls from Hutton’s cellphone, along with two text messages asking her to return his call immediately. She stepped to the side of the lobby and dialed.
“Hi,” he said, picking up on the first ring.
“Hi,” she said. “Is everything okay?”
“I need you to make an official statement,” he explained. “You’re not in trouble, but we need you to come in.”
“I have a ton of work to do before I leave today,” she said, annoyed. “Does this have to happen right now?”
“Yes. The precinct is on Thirty-Fifth Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Ask for me at the front desk and someone will escort you up.”
Cat sighed, agreed, hung up, and turned around to see Lou coming up the escalator.
“Hey, Lou, I have to run out,” Cat explained quietly. “I thought I was fine, but now I definitely think I have a UTI.”
“Oh, poor bunny. Take care of you, Kit-Oh. I’m back out in an hour, so I’ll catch you Monday?”
“Thank you. Catch you Monday.” Cat bounced back down the escalator and headed west toward the precinct, texting Bess to come straight to her apartment after work.
The behemoth concrete building surprised her from a block away; even in Midtown, the brutalist architecture of the Lindsay-era police precinct stood out like the butt of a handgun. She strode confidently through the glass doors only to run smack into a long line of irritated Manhattanites queued at the desk. Fridays at the NYPD must be like lunchtime at the DMV, she thought, everybody pressing charges so they can enjoy the weekend.
She tried to wait patiently, but the line didn’t seem to be moving. She read the newspaper on her phone, considered posting to Photogram from inside the precinct—#badbadgirl—but thought better of it.
Time went on.
The line remained immovable.
The clock on her phone now read 10:26.
The line didn’t budge.
She texted Hutton.
I got here at 10. I’ve been waiting in line at the front desk. Happy to keep waiting if that’s the protocol but wanted you to know I’m here.
Nothing popped up on his side—no ellipses bubbles, no message. She waited two minutes, then checked her phone again. Still, nothing. She looked down at her cowboy boots and felt a self-conscious flush come over her cheeks.
“Ah-know,” came a muffled voice over the intercom. “Ah-know to the window.”
Cat looked up and made eye contact with the officer monitoring the line. She raised her hand meekly; he pointed to a bulletproof window on the side, where another officer leaned over and hit a buzzer. “Go through the door to my left and then stop.”
She obeyed. He met her on the other side and gave her handbag a cursory glance before waving her through another set of doors. “Sit on that bench. Someone will be with you in a moment.”
She nodded and sat, gathering her dress around her. Emboldened this morning by adrenaline and endorphins, she’d decided on an eggplant-toned silk and linen dress from last season’s Phoebe collection that evoked Xena, Warrior Princess. The halter neckline dipped in an exaggerated curve, displaying a keyhole of flesh around her left rib, where she’d pasted a small strip of gold leaf; the open back was broken up by heavy silk tassels hanging from the strap around her neck. A rose-gold men’s watch was her only jewelry. Her hair, brushed straight, hung in a black curtain across her pale shoulders, and her repainted nails—still filed into points—matched her matte tangerine lipstick.
She sure didn’t feel like Xena now. When Hutton opened the door and stared at her dispassionately, motioning for her to stand up and follow him without so much as a hello, she wished she’d worn a burka.