Page 47 of The Writer
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“BLACKMAILING YOU HOW?” Cordova’s voice sounds raw. Declan doubts he got much sleep, if any, last night, but he’s never known that to slow his partner down or cloud his judgment. Like Saffi, Cordova is a machine.
Denise is good, he tells himself again. Denise is better.
Better than both of them.
Denise speaks in a thin, quiet voice that reminds Declan of a wounded animal. “You know I’m writing a book about Maggie Marshall, right?” she begins. “Early on in the process, I visited Ruben Lucero in prison. I went several times.” She sniffles again. “It was important to me to get his side of things. With a book like this, it’s best to have all sides so readers can make their own decisions. From our first meeting, he insisted he was innocent. I didn’t believe him. Who would, right? Then he told me the police fabricated the case against him.” She pauses for a second. “He said your partner planted evidence.” Declan can picture her looking right at Cordova. “Lucero said Detective Shaw took a book from Maggie Marshall’s backpack in evidence and placed it in his apartment. He admitted to having all the other books you found, all those souvenirs, but not that one. He swore it was planted.”
“What about the pictures?” Saffi asks.
Several seconds pass. Declan wishes he could see her, playing them as effortlessly as Giancarlo Stanton sends a baseball over the fence at Yankee Stadium.
“He told me the pictures weren’t his either. He didn’t know where they came from. Lucero insisted he saw another man following Maggie that day in the park. Every time I spoke to him, he drove that point home. ‘Why aren’t the police looking for him? They’ve got to have DNA, right? Did they check all the cameras? He couldn’t have dodged all of them. You gotta believe me, I didn’t touch that girl! It was him.’”
“The other guy,” Saffi says in a quiet voice.
“I didn’t believe him either,” Denise admits. “My first thought was somebody like him would say anything to save his own skin. Nobody locked up at Dannemora is really guilty, right? Then…” Her voice trails off.
Saffi prompts her. “Then what?”
Denise says, “I was on my fifth visit to Dannemora, maybe ten minutes into a conversation with Lucero, when Geller called me.” She pauses. “My marriage with David was on life support. I suspected David might be having an affair, and I’d confided in Geller. He’d had David followed and confirmed it. He said her name was Mia. He offered to show me pictures, said he’d caught them… you know. I told him I didn’t want to see them. Geller insisted I keep my phone close in case he learned more and needed to reach me. Anyway, that’s why I had my phone on while I was talking to Lucero at the prison. When it rang, Geller’s photo came up on the screen. Lucero saw it and jumped out of his chair, started shouting, pointing—the guards had to restrain him. When he finally settled down, he told me that was the man he’d seen following Maggie. That was the man who killed her. He didn’t know Geller’s name, but based on his reaction, I believed him.”
Declan expects Cordova or Saffi to push back on that, and when they don’t, he realizes why—they already know. Maybe something they found at Hoffman’s place. Maybe something Lucero told Cordova at Dannemora.
Cordova says, “Why didn’t you take that to us? To the police?”
Denise doesn’t miss a beat. Her voice is so low, Declan has to strain to hear her. “Because I think Geller would have killed me. And frankly, after what Lucero told me about planted evidence, how could I trust you? You and your partner seemed just as dirty as Geller.”
Saffi asks, “Did Geller Hoffman know that you knew?”
“A few weeks ago, I came home and found Geller in my office, going through my notes. He had pages for the book I was writing all over the desk. He’d logged into my computer, and everything I’d put together with Lucero was there. Geller was just sitting in the dark. He told me it wasn’t true, but I could tell it was, I could see it in his eyes.”
“How did he get in?”
“He had a key. Whenever David and I went away, he checked on the apartment for us. Fed my cat, that sort of thing.”
“He had a key,” Cordova repeats. No doubt thinking about the faked forced entry the night David was killed. A key made perfect sense; the bogus lock jimmying did not.
“That night, when I found him there in my office, I was sure he meant to kill me. I panicked. I swore I wouldn’t say anything. I told him we went too far back, I’d never do that to him. I told him anything I could to get him to trust me. I—” Her voice breaks. “I told him Lucero was obviously some kind of pedophile and prison was the best place for him. That he’d say anything to get out of there and I wasn’t about to stir things up based on the word of some convict. Geller had my book right there, I knew he’d read it. I think that’s why he spared me. It didn’t contain a word about him. The only damning evidence was against your partner.”
“Evidence you got from Harrison?”
“And Lieutenant Daniels. They all know what Declan did—they just can’t prove it.”
“Did Hoffman believe you?”
“I thought he did. He didn’t say another word for weeks. Then he came to the bookstore in Tribeca with… with that bag. He told me… he said he’d killed David’s lover and that he had someone in my apartment ready to kill David too, unless I did exactly what he said. If I didn’t, he’d make it look like I killed them both in a jealous rage. He forced me to put on his bloody clothes and wear them home under my coat. He said if I did that, we’d both have blood on our hands and he’d know he could trust me.” Her voice rises, pleading. “You’ve got to understand. I knew he was a killer, so he had nothing to lose. On top of Maggie Marshall and God knows how many others, he confessed to killing that woman, Mia Gomez. He didn’t seem rattled by it at all. I had no doubt he’d kill David and hurt me and maybe others unless I did exactly what he told me. So I did. What choice did I have? If I wanted to stay alive, I had to do what he asked.” She starts to sob but reins it in. “When I got home, I found David’s body. Geller had him killed anyway. When Geller got there, he told me his partner did it, and they would pin it on me in a heartbeat if I crossed him. He switched the knives, and who knows what other evidence he manipulated. I knew he was the only one who could keep me out of jail.”
“The bloody clothes,” Saffi says, “they were identical to yours. How did Hoffman know what you would wear to the bookstore?”
Denise gives her the perfect answer. “I have no idea.”
Let them prove her wrong.
Silence falls over the three. Cordova finally breaks it. “How do you know Mia Gomez?”
Denise goes quiet for a moment. When she replies, she sounds confused. “Me? I didn’t. I only learned her name through Geller.”
“Page Six had a photo of her standing near you at the Academy of Art Tribeca Ball.”
“At the…” Again, Denise goes quiet. Then she says, “There were a lot of people at that event. Maybe I met her, but I certainly didn’t know her. I didn’t even know her full name until I saw her on the news when her body was found, after what Geller told me at the bookstore, and I connected the dots. By then it was too late for me to do anything. I kept quiet, I had to, to… to stay alive.” She sucks in a breath. “Was she at the ball to see David? My God, was she with David? How long was the affair going on? I wonder if Geller knew. Maybe he knew the whole time and was just waiting for the right moment to use it. He collected dirt on everyone. How do you think he settled half his cases?”
Saffi says in a low tone, “You should have taken all this to the police.”
“You still don’t get it,” Denise says flatly. “How could I go to the police? Geller’s partner was the police.”
“Who?”
It comes out on a breath. “Who do you think?”
“Declan Shaw?”
“Your partner didn’t frame Lucero to guarantee a conviction. Geller paid him to do it.”
Still pressed against the wall in the main bedroom, Declan listens to all of this. It hurts to hear it, but he doesn’t move. She’s telling the story exactly like they discussed.
Three-card monte.
If the evidence isn’t clear, no way you win at trial, and this case is a muddy mess. The evidence is so convoluted, there’s zero chance of prosecution. There’s something else, something he’s sure Cordova or Saffi will realize in the car on the way back to the precinct. They didn’t Mirandize her. Not for one second of that.
In the hands of the right attorney—and he has no doubt Hoffman’s successor will be the best available—none of what Denise said will be admissible.