Page 35

After spending over an hour at the precinct talking to Detective Harmon again, Carmen was on her way to talk to Frank Abbate, the owner of Abbate Construction, or so Carmen thought. Abbate Construction was actually owned by Milton Petty. Abbate was just the face of the company. Behind the scenes, Milton made all the decisions.
Despite the fact that her lawyer, the station executives, and Detective Harmon all told her that she should stay away from this, Carmen was there to talk about the murder of Katana Jackson.
“If you want my advice, and from what Mitchell tells me, you don’t, you’ll let this go. Go to Paris with your friend,” Harmon paused, “And let us do our jobs. Whatever’s going on at Abbate Construction was enough for them to kill two people to keep it quiet.”
It was good advice; advice she should take, and she knew it. Carmen looked over at Max as he drove; she knew that even though he was right there with her, he knew it. She looked out the window and knew that what she should do is turn to Max right then and say, “You know what, Max?”
“What’s that?”
“I think that I should do what Harmon says and let this drop before I get hurt or worse.”
“I think that’s for the best, Carmen. Let the police do their job,” Max would have said and then he would have made a U-turn.
“I’m gonna call Jada right now and tell her to get packed because we’re going to Paris.”
But Carmen didn’t say that. She looked at Max and said, “Was Carolina mad when I called?”
“Not really. She’s gotten used to you calling at all hours of the day and night.”
“Well, tell her that I said that I’m sorry,” Carmen said and looked back out the window, thinking about that morning’s interrogation by the detective.
Where the previous morning, Harmon focused on why Carmen shot Kenneth Castellano when he was leaving the diner and she was in no apparent danger, today the detective wanted to talk at length about where she got the gun.
Carmen went into an elaborate and winding tale about a story that she had once covered. She told Harmon about how she was kidnapped at gunpoint and then locked in a laundry room and had to be rescued. Which was a true story; she and Jada did get themselves locked in a laundry room and they had to be rescued by Black and Shy.
“After that incident was when I decided that I needed to start carrying a weapon.”
“Where’d you get the gun, Ms. Taylor?”
“I had a friend of mine get it for me.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you have a friend get it for you, when you could have easily got one yourself?” Harmon asked.
“I was busy, so I asked a friend to get one for me.”
“You asked for an unregistered gun?”
“No, I just said, get me a gun.”
“And that’s it?”
“I did say please,” Carmen smiled thinking once again that this isn’t gonna be as easy as I thought.
“The reason I bring this up, Ms. Taylor, is that you are licensed to carry a firearm in the state of New York. You could have walked into any licensed gun shop and gotten a gun,” Harmon said.
“After a waiting period,” Carmen said quickly and the detective moved to another point, but he would eventually circle back to the same point.
“Why didn’t you get it at a licensed gun shop?”
That, coupled with the way Harmon said, ‘go to Paris with your friend,’ made Carmen believe that the detective didn’t believe that she was the one who shot Kenneth Castellano.
As Max arrived at Abbate Construction, Carmen wondered if maybe the cook or the waitress told him that it was Jada that actually pulled the trigger.
Yeah, a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, Carmen thought as she got out of the car.