Moment of Truth

by Lisa Scottoline

  Jack knocked at the door of the squat brick rowhouse, but there was no answer. It was cold outside but he felt warm enough in the football jacket he’d bought in the hotel gift shop. I LOVE PHILADELPHIA, it said across the chest. Still he didn’t think his absurd jacket was the reason a little black boy stood on the sidewalk, staring at him. His silent gaze told Jack that few white people came to this section of the city.

  Jack knocked again, then checked the address: 639 Beck Street. It was Brinkley’s house; the address had been in the phone book. He had called and it had been Brinkley’s voice on the machine, but he hadn’t left a message. He didn’t want to leave any evidence suggesting that he wasn’t the killer.

  He knocked again. He had to talk to Brinkley, face-to-face. It was a risk but he would take it if Paige were in danger. He’d been calling her but there had been no answer. He’d left a message with the name of his hotel and had told her to call there as soon as possible. He was worried about where she could be and who she was with. He hoped it wasn’t Trevor.

  Jack pounded hard on the door as the little boy wandered up to him. About seven years old, he wore a black knit cap pulled low over his eyes and his hands were shoved into a hand-me-down jacket. “He ain’t home,” the boy said. “I seen him go.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  “He a cop.”

  “I know.” Jack turned from the door, scanned the block, and walked back down the stoop. “I think I’ll wait for him. Mind if I stay?”

  “ ’S all right with me.” The boy shrugged, staring frankly at Jack’s battered face. “You get in a tussle, mister?”

  “In a way.” Jack smiled, then eased onto his haunches to strike up a conversation with the only person in Philadelphia who hadn’t read today’s newspaper.

  44

  “It’s you!” Mary said, amazed. She took one look at the blonde with the nose job and recognized her instantly. “You’re the woman who was at the train station with Trevor.”

  “Do I know you?” The blonde looked politely puzzled as she greeted them at the glass door of the bustling, modern offices of the FBI in the federal courthouse downtown. “I’m Special Agent Reppetto,” she said, extending a hand, which Mary shook.

  “Special Agent?” Mary couldn’t help repeating. The woman looked more professional wearing a shiny FBI badge on the pocket of her blue blazer. Or maybe it was because her tongue wasn’t buried in Trevor’s mouth. “No, you don’t know me. I saw you meet Trevor at the train station. I didn’t know you were an FBI agent.”

  “You’re not supposed to. I was undercover.” Agent Reppetto grinned, apparently guiltless about her public make-out session, and Mary wondered if she were some new breed of Italian. “We’ve had our eye on Olanski a long time. He moves a significant amount of drugs out of New York and is distributing to a network of dealers here. Mostly he sells to dealers in private school. He sold to the wrong kid a few months ago, the son of a United States Attorney.”

  “Not a smart move. What will happen to him?”

  “We’ll charge him, but he’ll make bail. We’re gonna try our best to put him out of business, keep him away from other kids. It’s mandatory sentencing and we’ll prosecute him as an adult.”

  Paige groaned softly. “Does that mean he’ll go to jail?”

  Agent Reppetto nodded. “I can’t discuss that with you. In any event, he should be out on bail tonight.”

  “I see,” Mary said, but noticed that Paige’s face fell. The teenager was going through so much and she was probably remembering Trevor’s cheating on her. The least Mary could do was to clear up the confusion, however awkwardly. “Agent Reppetto, did you have some sort of affair with Trevor, to bust him?”

  “No, I’m not a spy,” Reppetto answered, with a laugh. “He wanted to make a buy in New York, then take me to Petrossian to celebrate. We never got to the caviar. I just wanted to go to the buy.” She clapped her hands together. “Now, we’ve briefed the interrogating agent on your facts. Shall we go watch the interview?”

  Ten minutes later, Mary and Paige gathered at one side of the two-way mirror into the interview room, and Detectives Kovich and Donovan stood on the other side. Mary had cautioned Paige not to say anything in their earshot as the FBI agents conducted the questioning. The agents had arrested Trevor on the “buy-and-bust,” as they called it, but had been willing to cooperate with the Philadelphia police on investigating the Newlin murder. Trevor had agreed to talk with them, hoping for leniency. He slumped at the table in his brown leather jacket and white shirt, sullen as he fiddled with a can of Mountain Dew.

  “I told you, I don’t know anything about it,” Trevor said, and the FBI agent sitting across from him nodded. The agent was a middle-aged man with dark hair, who looked fit in his dark suit. In front of him sat a can of diet Coke.

  “You don’t know anything about the Newlin murder?”

  “No.” Next to Trevor sat a white-haired man in a three-piece suit, whom Mary pegged instantly as his lawyer. She couldn’t tell an undercover agent, but she could smell a lawyer through glass. The lawyer stayed quiet during the interrogation, taking occasional notes.

  “Were you at the Newlin house that night?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been in the Newlin house?”

  “A coupla times.”

  “Why?”

  “To meet the ’rents.”

  “Where were you the night Honor Newlin was killed?”

  Trevor paused. “What night was that again?”

  “Monday.”

  “I was home studying. I had a French final the next day, and you can check it.”

  “So you weren’t there, with the daughter, Paige Newlin.”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if the daughter was at her parents’ house that night?”

  “She wasn’t. She was at home. She gets migraines and shit.”

  “So you weren’t there that night, but you were dating the daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “The daughter is pregnant by you.”

  “So she says,” Trevor said, and at the window Paige winced. Mary gave her a warning nudge.

  The agent sipped his soda. “What do you know about the Newlin murder?”

  “Nothing but what I read in the paper. That the father killed her.”

  “Did you give Paige any drugs that night?”

  “No, I was home studying that night.”

  “Did you ever give Paige drugs?”

  “Sometimes. It got her goin’,” Trevor said, and it sounded so ugly that this time Mary winced.

  “Did you help her calm down after the murder?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t give her any drugs to calm down?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell her to tell the cops that you weren’t together that night?”

  “No.”

  “Did Paige kill her mother?”

  “I don’t know. Her father did, as far as I know.”

  “Did you?”

  “Objection,” said the lawyer, but Mary had heard all she had to. She took Paige’s arm and led her away. When she left, Detective Donovan was smiling.

  But Kovich wasn’t.

  It was a gloomy cab ride back to the office, with Mary kicking herself for not asking about Paige’s bruises before they’d gone to Walsh. She’d been too eager to get Paige to the police and now Trevor was lying, doing his best not to implicate himself. She looked out the window at the chilly city, speeding by. She felt sick at heart. She had screwed up her only chance to help Jack. How could she have been so dumb?

  Paige shifted in the seat next to her, looking out her window on the other side, and Mary could only guess how she must be feeling. Her father, in jail because of her, and her lover, betraying them both. Her perfect profile faced the city, but her eyes remained remarkably dry. And this on the day she had buried her mother. Mary couldn’t fathom it. She reached over and patted Paige’s hand, resting loosely on her coat. “I
’m sorry I goofed up, with Captain Walsh.”

  Paige smiled sadly. “Don’t worry about it. It was my fault, too, and I’m sorry.”

  “We’re gonna figure this thing out, you and me. We have to.”

  “I know we are,” Paige said, and Mary heard a new determination strengthen her tone.

  “How are you feeling, Paige? I mean, I’m surprised you’re not a mess after what Trevor just said.”

  “Not at all.” Paige shook her head. “Trevor lied to save his own ass. I think I’m finally seeing him for what he really is.”

  “I was wrong about him cheating on you, and I’m sorry.”

  Paige waved her off. “You apologize too much, you know that?”

  “Do I? Let’s make a deal. I’ll apologize less, and you say ‘thank you’ more. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.” Paige smiled. “And Trevor did cheat on me. He left me and went to New York with another woman. He didn’t know she was with the FBI. That’s cheating, isn’t it?”

  “Technically it’s attempted cheating, but I won’t bore you with the legalities.”

  Paige smiled. “So it’s over with him. I want nothing to do with him.”

  “Good for you.” Mary wondered what it meant for the baby, but decided this wasn’t the time or place. Paige had enough to think about. The girl was growing up in only a few days, and Mary wasn’t completely surprised.

  Adulthood never had anything to do with age anyway.

  45

  Mary sat behind the conference room table like a judge while Paige stood up and told what had happened the night her mother was killed, and by the time she was finished Mary had almost succeeded in visualizing the scene. “Tell it again,” she said anyway. “I want to see if there’s anything inconsistent, telling to telling.”

  “Mary, I’m not making this up. It’s the truth, I swear it.”

  “I believe you, but something’s wrong. You have no bruises on you and you should, if what you’re saying is true. Start over. You and Trevor go to your parents’ house …”

  Paige sighed without further complaint. “My mother started to fight with me, right off. Told me I looked fat and I shouldn’t be eating. She started in on the Bonner shoot. How I looked like I was gaining. How I had to watch what I ate to get over.”

  “Get over?”

  “You know, make it,” Paige answered, and Mary flashed on the sweating kids under the hot lights, all hopeful but none with The Face. “I felt like who was she to tell me, I’m not a child, and now I was having a child. I’m going to be a mother, a way better mother than she ever was. So I said, ‘I’m pregnant, that’s why I’m so hungry,’ and she hit me. I fell off the chair onto the floor.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I got up from the floor and I started to cry. Then she grabbed me and threw me down and started kicking me in my stomach. At least I thought she did.” Paige paused, her forehead a knot of confusion. “I remember that happening. I swear, I remember she was trying to kick the baby out of me. She said so.”

  Mary shook her head, confounded. It rang completely true, especially the way Paige recounted it, but it couldn’t have been. “What was Trevor doing?”

  “He was trying to pull her off of me, I think. I don’t really know.”

  “But he was in there, fighting?”

  “Yes, I think. She was yelling, ‘You kill it or I’ll kill it!’ I hurt, so much, and I rolled away, trying to protect the baby from her. But she kept coming at me, kicking.” Paige looked like she wanted to cry but didn’t. “I was so scared. Trevor said I was just crying and rolling on the ground.”

  Mary’s ears pricked up. “Last time you didn’t say, ‘Trevor said.’”

  “What?”

  “Is it Trevor said, or you remember?”

  “I remember. I remembered. Later. I mean, I remember crouching and rolling, trying to keep her away from the baby.”

  Mary frowned. “Do you remember really, or did he tell you? And when did he tell you?”

  “I do remember, but we discussed it later, over and over. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I needed to talk about it. We talked after it happened, a lot. Until you came over. I was so upset, and he calmed me down.”

  “By talking about what happened?”

  “Partly.” Paige brushed a strand of hair from her troubled brow. “I think I remember. I needed to talk about it. Parts of what happened I couldn’t remember. It happened so fast and I was so high. So crazy.”

  “What do you mean you couldn’t remember parts of what happened?” Mary straightened, intrigued. “You didn’t tell me that before.”

  “I didn’t?” Paige’s hand fluttered to her forehead. “Let me think. There were things I wasn’t sure about, I think. Details. It was just so awful, the whole scene.”

  “You know it was awful or Trevor told you that?”

  “I know that. I remember. It happened. Didn’t it?” Paige’s eyes flickered with bewilderment, and Mary dug in.

  “You were high.”

  “Not so high that I don’t know what happened to me.”

  “But think about it.” Mary stood up, wondering aloud. “You go to dinner, you take a drug you never took before, and it makes you feel crazy. You and Trevor are together later and you go over what happened when you were high. How do you know what happened and what didn’t?”

  “I know because I remember.”

  “But how can you be sure you remember correctly? Memory isn’t always reliable. It’s like recovered memory. Those cases with the kids at nursery schools. They question the kids so much they forget what they remember and what they were told. The kids want to please the questioner. They remember what they’re told to remember.” Mary leaned forward. “Consider that there are drugs in this scenario. You were on drugs at the time of the murder and you told me that Trevor gave you a drug to calm you down after, right?”

  “Yes. Special K. Ketamine, like a tranquilizer.”

  Mary thought about it. “How do you know it was Special K?”

  “It looked like it. A pile of white powder.”

  Mary had never taken a drug in her life, except for Midol. “But aren’t lots of drugs white powder?”

  “It made me feel relaxed, like K does.”

  “I would think lots of drugs do that, too. Maybe it wasn’t Ketamine, Paige. Maybe it was some other kind of drug, to make you more suggestible.”

  “What?” Paige cocked her head, her hair falling to one skinny shoulder.

  “Trevor gives you the crystal, or what he says is crystal, before you go over to your parents’ house. By the way, why did you take it, if you had never taken it before? You knew you were going to an important dinner.”

  “I knew it would be hard. I didn’t think I could go through with it straight.” Paige flushed with regret. “I know it was stupid, but Trevor said the crystal would make me stronger.”

  “So he gives you the crystal, and you feel strong. Your memory is spotty. You feel out of control. You come home and he gives you another drug, then he tells you what happened. You said you two went over and over it.” Mary’s excitement grew. “What if you don’t really remember what happened, you just remember what he tells you? In time it becomes the truth, but it’s only in your mind.”

  Paige looked dumbfounded. “Is that possible?”

  “Of course, given what you’re telling me.”

  “So what really happened, with my mother?”

  “Anything could have happened, but only one thing is the most likely. Trevor killed your mother and made you think you did it.”

  “What?” Paige’s eyes widened. “Trevor killed my mother?”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it? We have only your word that he didn’t. No one else was there.”

  “I remember picking up the knife.”

  “But do you remember stabbing her, actually stabbing her?”

  “I don’t know.” Paige raked her hair with her fingers, a gesture of Jack’s. “I don’t
remember. I don’t know what I remember.”

  “You heard what Walsh said. It takes force to kill somebody that way. Trevor is a big, strong guy. You’d have to remember stabbing your mother, actually bringing a knife down, five times. Do you? What were her reactions and yours? Did she fight you? Rip your clothes? How did you fight her back? Do you remember it?”

  “I think—”

  “Don’t answer so fast.” Mary held up a palm. “Concentrate. Think about it, every detail. Do you really remember? Can you tell it to me?”

  Paige’s eyes fluttered closed, then, after a moment, open. “I can’t. I really don’t remember what happened between when I grabbed the knife and when I found it in my hand, later, all bloody. I thought I had gone into like a trance or something.” Paige shook her head. “But I would know if Trevor did it, wouldn’t I? I mean, I would have seen him do it.”

  “But who knows what you perceived, under the influence of whatever drug he gave you? And who knows what you remember or what you saw?”

  Paige blinked. “But why? Why would he do it?”

  “You tell me.” Mary’s thoughts raced ahead. “He had to know your mother had money, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, and he knew I’d inherit it. Even as pissed as she got at me, she’d never disown me.” Paige’s blue eyes lost their focus as her thoughts slipped elsewhere.

  “He used to ask me about it, and I told him what I knew about my trust fund and all, and about the Foundation. His parents have money, but not that much.”

  “And you said he wanted to marry you.”

  “He talked about it all the time. He really wanted us to get engaged, but I wanted to go slower. I wasn’t sure. I had just moved out and all. So I said we should wait.”

  “What did he say?”

  Paige’s face darkened. “Then we got pregnant.” Her eyes glittered with a revelation, and Mary didn’t have to ask what it was.

  “You think he got you pregnant, on purpose.”

  “I always made him use the condom, for safe sex. I knew he got around before we started dating. The time we got pregnant, he said the condom broke.”