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Ten minutes after waking, after a change of clothes, they were in a cab heading for the Twentieth Precinct. Justine had given Alison a green T-shirt and blue jeans, which clashed with the high heels she’d been wearing when she had been abducted. They were bright silver, embellished with sequins and tiny crystals. Lovely with the silver cocktail dress she had been wearing for her night out with friends, but impractical for daytime.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said when the cab pulled up outside the precinct after fifteen minutes fighting the morning traffic.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Justine responded. “Your husband did what he thought was right, remember.”
She found the words hard to utter because she felt they somehow betrayed the memory of Lewis, and Jessie, too, who was still hospitalized as a result of Rafael’s actions. But Alison was an innocent in all this and she deserved some comfort.
They went into the precinct. Salazar was waiting in the quiet lobby.
“Good morning, Miss Smith, Mrs. Lucas,” he said. “Follow me.”
He used a key card and punched a code into an alphanumeric pad to get through the lobby security door into the operations area. Justine and Alison followed him past offices into a plain corridor that led to the holding cells and interview rooms.
There were four doors to Justine’s right, each leading to an interview room. To her left was a double door that gave access to the cells.
“He’s in here,” Detective Salazar said, stopping outside the second door.
Alison took a deep breath, closed her glistening eyes to compose herself, and then nodded.
Salazar opened the door and she stepped inside.
Justine saw Rafael try to rise from his chair, but his hands were cuffed to an anchor on the table in front of him.
Justine couldn’t see Alison’s face, but she saw her shudder and tears filled Rafael’s eyes.
Salazar closed the door but Justine could still see the couple through the observation window. Alison sat opposite her husband, although it seemed to Justine that she had partly collapsed, as if her legs had given out on her as she sank into the chair.
“What a mess,” Salazar remarked. Justine nodded. “We’re still figuring out what to charge him with because he was under duress. The DA will make a recommendation.”
Justine was deeply conflicted. Rafael had been put in an awful position by a man who was a proven killer. He’d made somebad choices but wasn’t an inherently bad man, nor a willing accomplice. She didn’t envy the people who had to unpick the legal points here and felt nothing but sympathy for Alison. She was another of Angel’s victims and would have to live with the consequences of his evil actions for the rest of her life.
Justine simply hoped Secretary Carver’s people would break him and then decide on the best way for him to be punished.
CHAPTER 59
I WOKE UP to find Huang Hua standing over me.
“You really need better security,” he said.
He was holding a laptop, which he took to the desk where Zhang Daiyu and I had our makeshift operation center. She was stirring now and sat up in the loose T-shirt and leggings she’d bought to wear as pajamas.
“Good, you’re awake. I have something you need to see,” Hua said.
He set up his laptop in front of the others he’d given us.
Zhang Daiyu said something sharp in Mandarin and he smiled.
“In English, Zhang Daiyu. Don’t be so antisocial.” He turned to me. “She wants to know how I found you and how I got in.” He powered up his machine. “Getting in was easy. I just told the receptionist I was going to visit some friends, and I found you because I put a tracking device on my machines in case theywere stolen.” He gestured at the computers he’d given us. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I can come back later if you’re busy.”
His insinuation wasn’t lost on either of us.
“They don’t have any other rooms,” Zhang Daiyu explained.
He held up his hands. “No need to explain. I’m not here to talk about you, I’m here to tell you about Gavin Hudson.”
“Gavin who?” I asked.
Hua opened a file on his laptop and showed us a photograph of Liu Bao and the blond man with the Stars and Stripes lapel pin we’d observed at the reception the previous night.
