armpit.
“Why would it be hard for you to imagine it?” Chang asks, and the questioning has begun.
I could put a stop to it. I could say I’m not going to have this conversation without my lawyer, Leonard Brazzo, present. But I won’t.
“There’s never been any indication that Jaime and Marino have ever had anything but a professional relationship,” I tell Chang. “And I certainly can’t imagine him having any motivation whatsoever to harm her.”
“Yes, but you know him. It’s hard to be objective when we know people. It would be hard for you to think anything bad about him.” Chang is on my side. The game of good cop/bad cop, as old as time.
“If there were a reason to think something bad about him, I would be honest about it,” I answer.
“But you don’t know what went on between the two of them in private.” He is looking at the handset he collected from under the bed, holding it in two gloved fingertips, touching as little of its surfaces as possible. “This probably isn’t going to be a waste of time,” he considers. “Since she’s probably the only one who touched it. But to be on the safe side, maybe I should take it in. Do you agree? What would you do?” He looks at me.
“If it were me, I’d want it checked for prints and DNA. I’d retain additional swabs for chemical analysis if that becomes a question.”
“Someone might have poisoned her telephone?” he says, with a straight face.
“You asked what I would do. An exposure to chemical and biological poisons can be transdermal, through the mucous membrane, through the skin. Although I doubt that’s what we’re dealing with or I would expect there to be more victims. Including us.”
“No chance you used the phone back here at any point.” His gloved finger presses the menu button.
“I wasn’t in this area of the apartment at any point last night.”
“A nine-one-seven number at one-thirty-two this morning.” Chang checks the last number Jaime dialed on the handset.
“New York,” I reply, and I’m aware of the burnt-fruit odor of the Scotch again, and it triggers a jolt of emotion.
“Looks like that’s the last call she made, on this phone anyway, and he recites the rest of the number out loud as he jots it on a notepad.
The number is familiar, and it takes a moment for me to realize why.
“Lucy. My niece. That used to be her cell phone number when she lived in New York,” I explain, not showing what I’m feeling. “When she moved to Boston she changed it eventually. Early this year, maybe in January. I’m not sure, but that number isn’t hers anymore.”
Jaime must not have known Lucy had a new number. When she told Lucy she didn’t want any contact with her ever again, apparently she meant it. Until very early this morning.
“Any idea why she might have tried to call Lucy at one-thirty-two in the morning?”
“Jaime and I were talking about her,” I reply. “We were talking about their relationship and why it ended. Perhaps she got sentimental. I don’t know.”
“What kind of relationship?”
“They were together for several years.”
“What kind of together?”
“Partners. A couple.”
Chang places the handset inside an evidence bag. “You left her at what time last night?”
“I left her this morning at about one.”
“So maybe a half hour later she calls Lucy’s old number and then fumbles with the phone when she’s hanging it up. It ends up under the bed.”
“I don’t know.”
“Indicating something might have been really wrong by that point. Or she was really drunk.”
“I don’t know,” I repeat.
“You told me the last time you’d been in here prior to last night was when?”
“I told you I’ve never been in this apartment prior to last night,” I remind him.
“And you’d never been here before. You’d never been inside this room, the bedroom, prior to now. You didn’t come in here last night or really early in the morning before you left, maybe to use the bathroom, the phone.”
“No.”
“What about Marino?” Chang is squatting near the bed, looking up at me as if to give me a false sense of dominance.
“I’m not aware of him coming back here at any point last night,” I answer. “But I wasn’t with him the entire time. He was already here when I arrived.”
“Interesting he has keys.” Chang stands up and begins to label the evidence bag.
“Possibly because both of them were using this place as an office. But you’d have to ask him about the keys.” I expect that at any minute he is going to escort me out and read me my rights.
“It strikes me as a little unusual. Would you give him keys if you had a place?” he asks.
“If there was a need, I’d trust him with keys. I understand my opinions don’t matter, so I’ll stick with the facts,” I then say, responding to his suggestion that I can’t be objective about Marino. “The facts are that except for the sushi, Jaime brought in the food. She served food and drinks to us in the living room. Afterward, and I’m estimating this would have been close to ten-thirty, maybe quarter of eleven, Marino left us alone for a while. He returned to pick me up in front of the building at approximately one a.m., at which time Jaime seemed fine except intoxicated. She’d had wine and Scotch and was slurring her words. In retrospect, she might have begun having symptoms related to something besides alcohol. Dilated pupils. Increased difficulty in speaking. Her eyelids were drooping slightly. This was about two and a half, maybe three hours, after eating the sushi.”
“Dilated pupils wouldn’t be opioids but could be a lot of other drugs.” Colin presses his gloved fingers into an arm, a leg, making a note of blanching. “Amphetamines, cocaine, sedatives. And alcohol, of course. Did you happen to notice if she might have taken anything while you were with her?”
“I didn’t see her take anything or have a reason to think she might have. She was drinking while I was here. Several glasses of wine and several Scotches.”
“What happened after you left? What did you do? Where did you go?” Chang asks.
I don’t have to answer. I should tell him I’ll be happy to cooperate under certain conditions, such as with my lawyer present, but that’s not who I am. I have nothing to hide. I know Marino did nothing wrong. All of us are on the same side. I explain that we spent some time driving in the area where the Jordans lived, discussing that case, and returned to the hotel around two a.m.
“You see him go into his room?”
“He’d forgotten something in his van and went back out to get it. I went on up to my room alone.”
“Well, that’s a little bit curious. That he walked you in and then returned to his van.”
“There was a valet on duty who should be able to say whether Marino did what he said he was going to do and got groceries out of the backseat, or whether he drove off again,” I reply pointedly. “And the van was having serious mechanical problems that made Marino take it to a body shop this morning.”
“He could have gone on foot. The hotel’s maybe a twenty-minute walk from here.”
“You’ll have to ask him.”
“Ambient temp’s seventy-one degrees. Body temp is seventy-three degrees,” Colin says, as he moves Jaime Berger’s body off the side of the bed.
Her arms and head are unwilling, and he has to apply pressure to coax them, and it is difficult to watch. I’ve broken rigor thousands of times, countless times, really, and don’t give it a thought when I’m forcing the dead to give up their stubborn and unreasonable positions. But I can scarcely bear to look. I think of the take-out bag I offered to carry upstairs and feel guilt. I feel to blame.
“Anything else in here you think I should be aware of?” Chang continues to ask me questions that have little to do with what he really wants to know.
“The turned-over glass. And I would swab what appears to be spilled Scotch on the table. But you might want to wait until we’re dealing with the leftover food and what’s in the trash. All of it needs to be handled the same way. Anything she might have eaten or drunk.”
