Pretend You Don't See Her (22 page)

 
          
It
fits, Sloane thought, because what I’d like to do to you would be better off
unnamed. But he too was incensed by the fact that the original journal, as well
as possibly several pages from the copy, had disappeared from his locked
evidence box in his cubby, which was located in the squad room.

 
          
Clearly
it was his fault. He carried the keys to the box and the cubby on the heavy key
ring that he kept in his jacket pocket. And he was always taking off his
jacket, so virtually anybody could have taken the key ring out of his pocket,
made duplicates, then returned the keys before he had even noticed that they
were missing.

 
          
After
the original journal vanished, the locks had been changed. But he hadn’t
changed his habit of forgetting to take his keys out of the jacket that was
draped on the back of his desk chair.

 
          
He
focused once more on the phone conversation. Baldwin had finally run out of
breath, so Sloane grabbed the opportunity to get in a word. “Sir, I reported
this yesterday because you should know about it. I’m calling now because,
frankly, I’m not at all sure Jimmy Landi is a reliable witness in this
instance. He admitted yesterday that he barely even scanned the journal when
Ms. Farrell gave it to him. Plus he only had it a day or so.”

 
          
“Oh,
the journal’s not that long,” Baldwin snapped. “It could be read carefully in
just a few hours.”

 
          
“But
he didn’t, and that’s the point,” Sloane said emphatically, as he nodded his
thanks to Nick Mars, who had just placed a cup of coffee on his desk. “He’s
also threatening to be difficult, saying he’s going to bring in his own
investigator. And Landi’s partner, Steve Abbott, came to the meeting with him
and was throwing his weight around on Jimmy’s behalf.”

 
          
“I
don’t blame Landi,” Baldwin snapped. “And another investigator on this case
could be a good idea, especially since you don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

 
          
“You
know that’s not so. He’d just get in the way. But at this point it looks like
it’s not going to happen. Abbott just called me,” Sloane said. “In a way, he
apologized. He said that thinking it over, it’s possible that Landi was
mistaken about the pages he thinks are missing. He said the night Jimmy got the
journal from Lacey
Farrell,
it was so tough on him to
try to read it that he put it aside. The next night he got smashed before he
looked at it. Then a day later we took his copy from him.”

 
          
“It’s
possible he’s mistaken about the missing pages, but we’ll never know, will we?”
Baldwin
said,
his voice cold. “And even if he is wrong
about the missing unlined pages, the original journal clearly was taken while
in your possession, which means you’ve got someone in the precinct who’s
working both sides of the street. I suggest you do some housecleaning up
there.”

 
          
“We’re
working on it.” Ed Sloane did not think it necessary to tell Baldwin that he
had been setting traps for the culprit by talking cryptically around the
station house about new evidence in the Waring case that he had stored in his
cubby.

 
          
Baldwin
concluded the conversation. “Keep me posted. And try to hang on to any other
evidence that may come up in the case. Think you can do that?”

 
          
“Yes,
I do. And as I remember it, sir, we were the ones who found and identified
Savarano’s fingerprint on the door to Farrell’s apartment after the
breakin
,” Sloane shot back. “I think your investigators
were the ones who certified that he was dead.”

 
          
A
click of the phone in the U.S. Attorney’s office proved to Detective Ed Sloane
that he had succeeded in getting to the thin-skinned Baldwin. Score one for the
good guys, he thought.

 
          
But
it was a hollow victory, and he knew it.

 
          
F
or the rest of the afternoon, Gary Baldwin’s staff endured the fallout from his
frustration over the bungled investigation. Then his mood changed suddenly when
he received word that the secured witness, Lacey Farrell, had new information
for him. “I’ll wait as long as it takes, but make sure you get her call through
to me tonight,” he told George Svenson in Minneapolis.

 
          
Following
the call, Svenson drove to Lacey’s apartment building and waited for her in his
car. When she got home from work, he didn’t even give her a chance to go
inside. “The man is jumping up and down waiting to talk to you,” he said, “so
we’re going to do this now.”

 
          
They
drove off in his car. Svenson was a quiet man by nature, and he did not seem to
find the need to make small talk. During her indoctrination period in the safe
site in Washington, Lacey had been tipped off that federal marshals hated the
witness protection program, hated dealing with all those misplaced persons.
They felt they had been stuck with what was, in essence, a baby-sitting job.

 
          
From
day one in Minneapolis, Lacey had decided that while it was not pleasant to be
dependent on a stranger, she was determined not to give him cause to consider
her anything more than a minimal nuisance. In the four months she had been
there, her single extraordinary request to Svenson had been for permission to
do her furniture shopping at garage sales rather than at department stores.

 
          
Lacey
now had a feeling that she had earned Svenson’s grudging respect. As he drove
through the gathering evening traffic to the secure phone, he asked her about
her job.

 
          
“I
like it,” Lacey told him. “I feel like a whole person when I’m working.”

 
          
She
took his grunt as a sign of approval and agreement.

 
          
Svenson
was the only person in the entire city to whom she could have talked about how
she had almost burst into tears when Millicent Royce showed her a picture of
her five-year-old granddaughter, dressed in a ballet recital costume. It had
reminded her so much of Bonnie, and she had suffered an almost overwhelming
wave of homesickness. But of course she wouldn’t tell him.

 
          
Looking
at the picture of a child Bonnie’s age had made Lacey long to see her niece
again. An old, turn-of-the-century song had been playing in her head since she
saw the picture: My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea …
bring back, bring back, oh bring back my bonnie to me …

 
          
But
Bonnie isn’t over the ocean, Lacey told herself. She’s about a three-hour
flight away, and I’m about to give the U.S. Attorney information that may help
get me on a plane home soon.

 
          
They
were driving past one of the many lakes that were dotted throughout the city.
The latest snow was nearly a week old but still appeared pristine white. Stars
were beginning to come out, clear and shining in the fresh evening air. It is
beautiful here, Lacey thought. Under different circumstances, I could very well
understand why someone would choose to live here, but I want to go home. I need
to go home.

 
          
For
tonight’s call they had set up a secure line in a hotel room. Before he put the
call through, Svenson told Lacey that he would wait in the hotel lobby while
she was talking to Baldwin.

 
          
Lacey
could tell that the phone at the other end was picked up on the first ring; she
could even hear Gary Baldwin identify himself.

 
          
Svenson
handed her the phone. “Good luck,” he murmured as he left.

 
          
“Mr.
Baldwin,” she began, “thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I have some
information that I think may be very important.”

 
          
“I
hope so, Ms. Farrell. What is it?”

 
          
Lacey
felt a stab of resentment and irritation. It wouldn’t hurt to ask how it’s
going with me, she thought. It wouldn’t hurt to be civil. I’m not here because
I want to be. I’m here because you haven’t been able to catch a killer. It’s
not my fault I wound up a witness in a murder case.

 
          
“What
it is,” she said, forming her words deliberately and slowly, as though
otherwise he might not understand what she was telling him, “is that I have
learned that Rick Parker—remember him?
he
was one of
the Parkers of the Parker and Parker I used to work for—was in the same ski
lodge as Heather Landi only hours before Heather died, and that she seemed
frightened, or at least very agitated, when she saw him.”

 
          
There
was a long pause; then Baldwin asked, “How did you possibly come by that
information in Minnesota, Ms. Farrell?”

 
          
Lacey
realized suddenly that she had not thought this revelation through before
making the phone call. She had never admitted to anyone that she had made
herself a copy of Heather Landi’s journal before she turned it over to
Detective Sloane. She already had been threatened with prosecution because she
had taken the original journal pages from Isabelle’s apartment. She knew they
never would believe that she had made a secret copy of it only to honor her
promise to Isabelle to read it.

 
          
“I
asked you how you came by that information, Ms. Farrell,” Baldwin said, his
voice reminding Lacey of a particularly prickly principal she had once had at
school.

 
          
Lacey
spoke carefully, as though wending her way through a minefield. “I have made a
few friends out here, Mr. Baldwin. One of them invited me to a party for the
road company production cast of The King and
I
. I
chatted with Kate Knowles, an actress in the group, and—”

 
          
“And
she just happened to say that Rick Parker was in a skiing lodge in Vermont just
hours before Heather Landi died. Is that what you’re telling me, Ms. Farrell?”

 
          
“Mr.
Baldwin,” Lacey said, knowing that her voice was rising, “will you please tell
me what you are suggesting? I don’t know how much you know about my background,
but my father was a Broadway musician. I’ve attended, and enjoyed, many, many
musicals. I know the musical theater, and I know theater people. When I spoke
to Kate Knowles, it came up that she had been in a revival of The Boy Friend
that ran off-Broadway two years ago. We talked about it. I saw that show, with
Heather Landi in the lead.”

 
          
“You
never told us that you knew Heather Landi,” Baldwin interrupted.

 
          
“There
was nothing to tell,” Lacey protested. “Detective Sloane asked me if I knew
Heather Landi. The answer I gave him, which happens to be the truth, is that,
no, I didn’t know her.
I,
like hundreds and perhaps
thousands of other theatergoers, saw her perform in a musical. If I see Robert
De
Niro
in a film tonight, should I tell you that I
know him?”

 
          
“All
right, Ms. Farrell, you’ve made your point,” he said without a trace of humor
in his voice. “So the subject of The Boy Friend came up.
Then
what?”

 
          
Lacey
was gripping the phone tightly with her right hand. She pressed the nails of
her left hand into her palm, reminding herself to stay calm. “Since Kate was in
the cast, it seemed obvious to me that she must have known Heather Landi. So I
asked her, and then got her to talk about Heather. She freely told me that
Isabelle Waring had asked everyone in the cast if Heather had seemed upset in
the several days before she died, and if so, did they have any idea what the
cause could have been.”

 
          
Baldwin
sounded somewhat mollified. “That was smart of you. What did she say?”

 
          
“She
said the same thing that I gather Isabelle heard from all Heather’s friends.
Yes, Heather was troubled. No, she never told anyone why she was troubled. But
then—and this is the reason for my call to you—Kate told me that she was
thinking of calling Heather’s mother with one thing she had remembered. Of
course, she’s been on the road and didn’t know that Isabelle was dead.”