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“What?”
“There is a video surveillance camera in the lobby of that apartment building, Miss Blue. Were you aware of that?”
“No.”
His mouth smiled. His eyes most certainly did not. “I didn’t think so. I have a videotape that shows you running through the lobby toward the exit. It sure looks like you were in a hurry.”
And then I remembered Jamal. “Yes, you’re right. I realized that I was late for an appointment with an author.”
“I see.” He stroked his moustache for a moment without taking his eyes off my face.
Detective Marcus Gilchrist was trying to scare me and I didn’t like it. “Is that all, Detective?”
“Can you think of anyone who wanted to harm Mrs. Murray?”
“No.”
“Do you have any information that may be helpful to us in catching her killer?”
“No.”
“Did you like your boss, Miss Blue?”
“Yes.”
“Mrs. Welburn told her husband that you left their apartment in quite a huff the previous Saturday . . . something about a promotion you were expecting?”
Oh Jesus, help me. I chose my words carefully. “Annabelle and I had discussed the possibility of my taking on some new duties. I was a little disappointed, that’s all.”
“I’m going to need you to come uptown and give us a statement, Miss Blue, and I’ll tell you why.”
He leaned over the desk so far that our noses were practically touching. “According to what you’ve just told me, you showed up at Mrs. Welburn’s apartment unannounced, she let you into her home, you tore through that lobby like a bat outta hell, and her sister came along only fifteen minutes later to find her sibling strangled in her own ladies’ room.”
The editor in me wanted to correct him. The term “ladies’ room” was incorrect in this instance since the facilities were used by men as well.
“Do you know why this story bothers me, Miss Blue?”
I pressed my lips together and said nothing.
“It bothers me because between the time you left the building and Mrs. Welburn’s sister entered it, no one else came in or out.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a videotape cassette. “I have the videotape, Miss Blue. No delivery men, no maids, no butlers. No one.”
By this time, I was shaking so hard, I had to hold on to the seat of my chair.
“I’m sure you can see why I need a written statement from you, right?”
“I did not kill my boss, and I’m not talking to you anymore until someone finds me a lawyer.”
Detective Marcus Gilchrist rose slowly from the chair and walked to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob. “You have exactly twenty-four hours to appear at the precinct, Miss Blue.”
When the door closed behind him, I phoned Paul.
11
WINNER
As a criminal defense lawyer to the stars, Keith Williams was unsurpassed in his field. It was he, for instance, who saved a white soap opera star, Clarise Buchanan, from death by legal injection for allegedly killing her mother. He had also won an acquittal for Lawbreaker, the Grammy Award-winning rapper, after a long and costly trial. Several eyewitnesses testified that they saw Lawbreaker beat his valet with a baseball bat for trash-talking him. The servant died several hours later from his injuries, but the jury believed Keith, who told them that the valet had been complaining of excruciating headaches for several weeks before the beating and that his death could have been caused by an aneurysm. I was well aware of Williams’s reputation—that he was a shark, but in a way that had earned him the respect of his peers. He was a smooth operator who left no stone unturned in his pursuit of reasonable doubt.
As Keith Williams recalled in his appropriately titled 1995 autobiography, Winner, which Paul Dodson edited, I decided during my first year out of law school that “not guilty” was the only verdict I would ever accept.
