time.”
I walked away from him, across the stage, and ground my teeth together. “You took her computer?”
“The computer, the cameras, the disks…”
“Your video was there?” Werner nodded. “And you found the video of my brother too, and his wife.” Fear crowded out pain on Werner’s face, and he propped himself on his elbow and tried to slide backward. “Think, Gene,” I said quietly. “You found video of my brother?” He nodded. “And after I came to see you, what happened then?”
“I…I got scared. I recognized your name, and I looked you up. I saw that you were his brother. I figured you were trying to get him off the hook for Holly…that you were looking for someone else.”
“Someone like you.”
Werner shook his head. “I was afraid if the police knew I’d…if they knew about Fenn, and that Holly and I had fought, they’d think that I’d…killed her.”
“And we couldn’t have that, could we? So you fed them my brother and his wife. You sent them that disk.” He scuttled back, like a wounded crab. I followed, and my shadow fell across him. “You sent them that disk,” I said again. He nodded.
I sighed. “Talk to me about that Tuesday night,” I said after a while.
“What about it?”
“We’re almost through here- don’t get stupid now. Tell me what happened.”
Werner looked confused. “Nothing…nothing happened.”
I stepped closer. “Goddammit, Gene-”
“For chrissakes, I’m telling you the truth! Nothing happened that night!” His face was white and his eyes were wild with panic. “I didn’t see her or talk to her or anything. I had nothing to do with what happened. It’s like I told the cops.”
I shook my head. “What line did you feed the cops?”
“They asked me to account for my time that Tuesday night, and I did.”
“With what bullshit?”
“It wasn’t bullshit.”
I crouched beside him. He tried to slide away but I caught his arm. My voice was a low rumble. “Don’t insult me, Gene.”
“I’m not! I was at the theater all night- the Morningside Lyceum, by Columbia. I’m directing and one of my leads was out sick that night. I had to fill in. I got to the theater before six, and all night I was either onstage, or backstage with the cast and crew. We didn’t get out of there till ten-thirty or eleven, and then a bunch of us went to eat. I didn’t get home until one, and I wasn’t alone.” He swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut, and he looked like he might throw up.
“You fucking beat her!”
“I know- Jesus, I know what I did. But I swear to God I didn’t kill her.”
“Then who did, Gene? Who killed Holly?”
Werner looked at me. His mouth was trembling and his face was breaking down. “I don’t know,” he said, and his voice was a choked thing. “I watched those videos, and afterward I thought…I swear to God I thought it was your brother.”
36
There weren’t many lawyers still toiling at Paley, Clay and Quick on Friday night, and certainly no other partners, and the corridors were dim and quiet as I made my way to Mike Metz’s office. He was sprawled on the sofa with his feet on the coffee table. His sleeves were rolled and his tie was loose, and his face was pale and bleak. There were papers in his lap, but his gaze was out the window, at the Midtown towers bright against the inky sky. I hung my coat on the hook and dropped into a chair. He didn’t look up.
“You were downtown for a long time,” I said.
“There was a lot of sitting and waiting,” he said. His voice was ancient.
“How did it go?”
He rubbed his eyes. “Stephanie was nervous, even with the drugs, and the cops were cops. McCue played hard-ass, which was typecasting, and Vines tried gal-pal rapport, which was almost funny. They went at her a dozen different ways about her movements Tuesday night- when she left home, what route she took walking, the weather- they even quizzed her on the movie. And of course they wanted to talk all about her trips to Brooklyn, and Holly being pregnant. All in a very informal way.”
“How did she do?”
“I’d give her a B, maybe a B-minus. She was fuzzy about a few things on Tuesday night, and the anger came through when they played the video of her talking to Holly.”
“They didn’t show her the stuff with David, did they?”
“They tried to- Vines claimed she clicked on the wrong file- but I stopped it.”
“How was Flores?”
Mike shook his head. “Hard to read. She asked some questions, but I couldn’t tell you if she liked the answers. Mostly she just watched.”
“Trying to figure out how Stephanie would play to a jury, no doubt.”
“No doubt.”
“You have a view on that?”
Mike sighed. “Neither one of them would elicit a whole lot of compassion. David comes across as cold and arrogant, and Stephanie is wrapped way too tight- you get uncomfortable just watching her. And, of course, they have too much money.” He dragged a hand down his face and looked at me. “Still, I’m hoping we won’t get to that,” he said. “Tell me I’m not kidding myself.”
I told him about watching Holly’s videos, saying nothing about their provenance, and about my conversation with Gene Werner. He didn’t interrupt, but shook his head and sighed at several points. When I was done, he rose and stood by the big window. He put his palm on the glass, on the palm of his reflection.
“You checked the alibi?” he asked.
“I’ve started making calls. The only one I’ve spoken to so far is the manager at the Lyceum, and he confirmed the basic story- that Werner filled in for an actor that night, and that he was in the theater from around six until close to eleven. He even remembers Werner leaving with a bunch of the actors afterward.”
“You know if the cops confront him, Werner will deny everythingespecially when he finds out you have no witness. He’ll claim he never said anything about a fight with Holly, or he’ll claim that you coerced him. And he’s probably out dumping her equipment as we speak, if he hasn’t already.”
“Already dumped, apparently. He says he got rid of everything right after he sent the disk to the cops.”
“You believe him?”
“Not even about the day of the week, but it’s a reasonable thing to have done.”
Mike sighed again. “Too bad your witness story was bullshit.”
I nodded. “I did what I could with Arrua. He remembers ruckuses at Holly’s, and maybe one around that time, but he’s vague on dates. And he swears he didn’t see anyone.”
Mike nodded. “How did you know Saturday was the day Werner went there?”
“An educated guess. Stephanie told me Holly was fine on Friday- no bruises- and Coyle got a call from Holly on Sunday morning, telling him not to come over, no explanation why. I figured it was because she didn’t want him seeing her injuries- she didn’t want him going after Werner and maybe landing himself in jail again. That made it Saturday.”
“A good guess,” Mike said.
“A thimbleful of luck, in a large ocean of crap.”
Mike was quiet for a while, staring out. His narrow frame was perfectly still, and his pale face floated above the city like a ghost. “You’ve noticed that, have you?”
My jaw tightened. “I’ve noticed that all I’ve managed to discover in the last forty-eight hours is that our two
