Page 63 of The Writer
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
ALTHOUGH DENISE MORROW appears startled at the sight of him, she recovers quickly. She makes no attempt to move. She says, her words sharp, cold, “How did you get in here?”
Cordova can’t help admiring her strength, her resilience. Her mind is clearly dancing, weighing every possible option, moves and countermoves. She’s probably thinking about the .22 she has hidden in her pantry five feet to his left. “Answer me,” he says in a soft, even tone, the gun steady in his hand.
“What question am I asked the most?”
“Yeah.”
A long silence ticks by. Beyond her floor-to-ceiling windows, the city breathes and moves, a living thing of harsh lights and rumble of traffic, distant sirens and horns. All of it seems a world away. Inside the apartment, the air is still, growing thick.
Denise Morrow’s left hand twitches; she presses her thumb and forefinger together and gently rolls them in a slow circular motion. He’s seen her do this before, in court. Saffi told him autistic people sometimes do it to center themselves, to force their brains to focus on the now. Her cold gaze locks with his and stays there. “They ask where I get my ideas.”
The words hang between them for a moment, suspended.
“Have you ever answered honestly? Just once?” Cordova shakes his head before she can reply. “Never mind; we both know you haven’t. Probably not even to yourself.” A wry smile crosses his lips. “Does your agent know the truth? What about David? Did he know? I can’t imagine you’ve gone all these years without telling anyone.”
The expression on her face turns to steel, and when she speaks, her voice is eerily calm. “Breaking and entering. Holding me at gunpoint. I hope you understand you’re living your final moments outside of a cell, Detective,” she says flatly. She looks around her apartment. “I saw your friends outside. Are you alone?”
Cordova shifts his weight to his left foot. “I sent them home. It’s just us. I think it’s been a long time coming.”
Morrow’s cat darts across the room, eyes his empty bowl on the floor, then hops up onto a stool by the kitchen island, does an elegant spin, and settles down on it, watching them both.
Denise Morrow’s eyes narrow. “I have no interest in talking to you.”
Cordova thumbs back the hammer of his .38. He’s not ready to shoot her, not yet, but he wants her to know he will if he has to. “Mia Gomez worked for GTS. I wrote that down when we found her body, and I blame myself for not digging deeper. Her death initially looked like a mugging, then things tied to Geller Hoffman. Her employment didn’t seem important, but as you’ve pointed out in your books, sometimes everything hangs on the little details. Those three letters completely slipped my mind until I saw them again this morning. GTS —that stands for Gerhardt Transcription Services. Of course you already know that, right?”
She says nothing, only stares at him.
“GTS is an NYPD subcontractor. I’ve seen those initials on a million reports over the years,” Cordova continues. “Court transcripts, crime scene dictations, interviews, depositions. Private material. Privileged material. That got me thinking. What if a person somehow gained access to those transcriptions? Not just the public material, but all of it? What if that person found a way to get copies of whatever they wanted? Impossible, right? A company like GTS, they keep sensitive data like that behind a firewall as thick as a concrete bunker. They’ve got safeguards to prevent access. They’d have to, right? Top-of-the-line encryption. Hacker-proof.” Cordova shifts his weight back to his other foot. “I’m not a big tech guy, but over the years, something about all that high-tech wizardry has jumped out at me. All that security is no different than the lock on the front door of a house—it can be the best, most impenetrable lock on the planet, but it does no good if the wrong person has a key.” He smirks. “You of all people get that, right? You said Geller Hoffman broke in here while you were sleeping. But didn’t he have a key?”
“Nobody gave you one. You’re trespassing,” she tells him. “And I want you to leave. My neighbors are back from Switzerland. If I scream, they’ll hear me.”
Cordova waves the .38 in the air. “I imagine they’ll hear the gunshot too. Neither of those things will change the outcome.”
Denise Morrow says nothing to that.
Cordova lets the silence linger for a second, then goes on. “Mia Gomez started in data entry and worked her way up. Her coworkers tell me she practically ran the shop. They all trusted her. She was the fastest transcriptionist they’d ever had. She was promoted to account exec, but she’d still help out when the transcriptionists fell behind. They’d give her their usernames and passwords and she’d catch them right up.” Cordova reaches into his pocket and takes out a folded sheet of paper. “I found this in her apartment. She had log-in credentials for more than half the employees, including three of her bosses. I don’t think there was a single file on GTS servers she couldn’t access. Imagine that. Information like that”—he whistles softly—“that kind of information is gold. Particularly if you know how to peddle it. If you know who needs it. Imagine if you were a criminal defense attorney who had the means to view that kind of information without having to go through the discovery process. You’d see the prosecution’s case laid bare, and you could completely undermine it. Or,” Cordova continues, “what if you were an author who wanted details for your books, details nobody else could possibly have?”
A flicker of fear passes across Denise Morrow’s face, but it’s gone as quickly as it appeared. “Authors spend a lot of time playing the what-if game, Detective. That doesn’t make any of it true. Truth is only what you can prove.”
Cordova nods. She’s not wrong about that. “Did you know Mia Gomez owned a boat?”
She says nothing.
“A thirty-five-foot Sea Ray Sundancer. She docked it at Dyckman Marina out on the Hudson. Slip twenty-eight B. Bought it nine months ago for two hundred thirty-two thousand six hundred dollars. Paid cash. Named it Play on Words . Gotta love that. I drove up and took a look. Nothing but teak and smooth lines. The kind of thing that screams money . I could never afford something like that on a cop’s salary, so I pulled Mia Gomez’s financials. I’m not sure how she could afford it either. She made a hundred and three thousand dollars last year at GTS, and that’s her best year in the four I looked at.”
“Maybe she came into an inheritance.”
“Yeah.” Cordova licks his lips. “That must be it. Wonder who left it to her.”
Cordova steps over to the bookcase and, without lowering the gun, runs his finger along the spines of her books. “I called Mia Gomez’s boss at GTS and read off your titles, told her what cases they were about. I asked her if Mia Gomez had access to transcriptions from any of those cases. I heard her click away on her computer, and you know what she said?”
Denise Morrow remains quiet.
“She didn’t say anything. Then I read off the names of several of Geller Hoffman’s high-profile cases. I heard her click away again, and then she said she wouldn’t be able to answer my questions without a warrant. Not exactly a ‘Yes, Ms. Gomez had access,’ but she certainly sounded nervous.” Cordova lowers his voice and says, “I’m sure if I pull your finances or Hoffman’s, I won’t find the payments to Mia Gomez. I imagine they’re buried so deep, even you can’t find them, but we both know they’re there. You’ve been paying Mia Gomez for years.” He nods at the books. “Probably for every one of these. So what happened? She got greedy, right? They always do. Left you and Hoffman no choice but to take her off the board.”
Morrow says nothing, and although she looked rattled when she first saw him, the fear is gone now. It’s like she feeds on it. Like it makes her stronger. Cordova is still pointing the gun at her, but she crosses the room to him. She closes the distance until they’re less than a foot apart. She reaches up with tentative fingers and begins unbuttoning his shirt.