Page 38 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Eddie

We gave Elly the day to get back into the world.

Kate put her up in a hotel downtown. Somewhere expensive and quiet.

She needed time to adjust to the hurricane of pain, loss, confusion and terror that had hit her for the past few days.

We had questions that had to be asked, but now was not the time.

People have remarkable strength, but everyone has their limits.

We said we would talk after she’d had a good night’s sleep, a shower and some decent food.

Yesterday, even as I’d told her to get some sleep, I realized how foolish that had sounded.

Elly didn’t say anything; she’d just nodded.

I got the impression she hadn’t slept properly in weeks – not since she’d found her husband and her best friend in bed together: the betrayal that had started this nightmare.

This morning, we are all in the office early apart from Bloch, who had gone to pick up Elly from the hotel and bring her in.

Bernice had gotten her grand jury indictment and we finally had some discovery.

Not much. But at least we had a cause of death and, thanks to Harry, we also knew why the DA’s office was pushing for an early trial.

‘How do you think she’s going to take this?’ I asked.

‘I think she’s going to be okay,’ said Kate. ‘Right now, she’s hurt and she’s confused. This explains a lot. And it means we know what we have to deal with. Then we can make a plan and let her know that we’re fighting for her. That will make a difference.’

‘Any word on the security footage for the route from Grand Central to the apartment where Elly was poisoned?’ I asked.

Lake said, ‘I talked to Bloch. She said there’s nothing.

She got all the files from the stores. This man knew to walk a few feet from the entrances to the stores so the security cameras wouldn’t pick him up.

The footage from the NYPD cameras were linked to the same cloud as the MTA.

She tracked down the company who is supposed to store the footage.

They’re called Secure One. She’s trying to get more out of them, but the company are stonewalling her. ’

‘Probably afraid of being sued,’ said Harry.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Lake. ‘I’ll tell her to keep pushing.’

‘We could subpoena the CEO,’ I said.

‘That’s going to backfire,’ said Kate. She had more experience in the politics and corporate mindset of company executives.

Roasting Fortune 500 CEOs over a pit was her specialty.

‘If we issue a subpoena, they’ll just lawyer up and the shutters come down hard.

Then there’s no way of getting information out of them without a hearing.

We need to dig into Secure One a little more, find out what’s making them nervous about talking to us.

If we find that, then we’ve got leverage to force a meeting. ’

While we were talking, Lake stood, head down, looking at the scuffed toes of his shoes.

‘Any more leads on Joe Novak?’ I asked.

‘He’s disappeared. Either the stranger with the suitcase got to him, or he’s left the city, or he’s hiding somewhere. I can’t draw a bead on him,’ he said.

‘Have you tried talking to the HOME-STAT people?’

‘I got nothing from them either. They’re super tight with security.’

There used to be a basic human right for New Yorkers to have shelter.

In recent times, those rights have been loosened to an obligation to only provide between thirty and sixty days of shelter a year.

This was due to an influx of migrants, people fleeing warzones to take up residence in the Land of the Free.

In order to help with the overall homeless problem, the city employs survey-takers who walk Manhattan every day, taking a census of who is on the street without shelter and where they are located that day.

The problem is that a lot of people without homes don’t want to take up shelter for various reasons – addiction, mental illness and many other factors all play a part.

‘Try them again. Get to someone on the street conducting the surveys. They don’t make a lot of money. Find the right HOME-STAT survey taker and make the right play,’ I said, and peeled off five hundred bucks and gave it to Lake.

The office door opened and Bloch came in with Elly Parker, who still didn’t look as if she had enjoyed much sleep at all.

She was young and didn’t have a single wrinkle on her face, but there were bags under her eyes, which were red and swollen.

Her hair looked clean, and she wore fresh clothes and a little make-up.

It was easy to see the burden of recent life-changing events crushing down on her shoulders.

She even walked as if she was bent over, head down, eyes scanning the room fearfully.

Still, there was a world of difference between the way she looked now and the time when I’d first met her in the interview room below the courthouse.

And yet, thinking of the way she looked in her social-media videos, she was half the woman she used to be. She’d lost weight and all her confidence.

The world had fallen on Elly Parker hard.

Bloch led her to the conference room. Kate exchanged a look with me.

We had no choice but to tell Elly what we had learned.

We didn’t know how she would react. There was no way to know until it hit her.

I didn’t want to lay this on her. Not now.

She had been through trauma after trauma, and this just might tip her over the edge.

But, at the same time, I had to save her.

We had to save her. That meant we had to do our jobs, even the parts that are most difficult for our clients.

We piled into the conference room, and sat around the table, Elly at the head of it.

Denise brought her some herbal tea, and she made a point of thanking Denise, reaching for her arm and placing her hand gently upon it.

When the world is hell, any act of kindness, no matter how small, helps put out some of those fires.

‘Elly, we’ve had some discovery from the prosecution and some results back from our own labs. There’s . . . ’ began Kate, and paused.

Elly held her mug with both hands, her red, tortured eyes fixed on Kate. Elly was smart, she knew we were gathered here to tell her hard truths, the battle for her life that she now faced. None of us were smiling. I’m sure it felt to her as if we were there to help her plan her funeral.

‘This isn’t going to be easy to hear, and it’s not easy to say . . . ’ said Kate.

Elly’s gaze didn’t waver from Kate.

‘It’s okay, Kate. I can . . . I . . . I . . . can take it. I need to hear this,’ said Elly, her voice breaking, but behind the fear choking her there was something else. I suspected Elly Parker had a great deal of courage.

We were about to find out.

‘I’m just going to say it,’ said Kate. ‘James and Harriet were poisoned.’

At the word ‘poison’, you could almost see it hit Elly physically. Her shoulders bowed, her chest caved and her chin dropped, like she’d taken a punch to the solar plexus.

‘We got the reports from the medical examiner and we analyzed some staining on your bedroom floor. Harriet vomited and it wasn’t cleaned up.

We tested it and found a substance called tetrahydrozoline.

It was also found in toxicology tests carried out postmortem.

This poison is something called a vasoconstrictor.

It causes blood vessels to constrict, stopping blood flow and causing other problems. Both Harriet and James died of cardiac arrest . . . ’

Elly didn’t move. Didn’t react. She held on to the mug as if her life depended on it and she never broke eye contact with Kate. The only change was the small drip of tears falling into her herbal tea.

‘Elly, we believe you were given the same substance.’

A small tremor began in her shoulders. Elly was shaking.

‘I’ve never heard of this tetra-whatever-you-call-it, before.’

Kate leaned back in her chair, and looked to Harry. He nodded, taking out his cell phone. Harry had a way of speaking that most people found soothing. Something in his deep, baritone voice carried empathy and understanding and compassion.

‘We know you didn’t poison your best friend or your husband.

We damn sure know you didn’t poison yourself, but we have a problem, Elly,’ said Harry, flipping round his phone.

‘The prosecutor is going to show this to the jury. It’s one of your videos where you go to the drug store to buy beauty products.

See this . . . ’ He flicked his finger across the screen, searching for a particular point in time in the video.

‘You bought a bottle of Visine eye drops. The main ingredient in these drops is tetrahydrozoline. It’s a vasoconstrictor – gets rid of those little red blood vessels in the eyeballs.

But if you have more than a few drops of this, and you take it orally, it can be very serious.

It can stop the blood flow around the heart.

It can cause a heart attack. This video is a problem.

Essentially, the prosecutor can show the jury you going out and buying the poison, because you recorded yourself doing it and posted it on social media. ’

Elly lifted her hands to her face. The mug tilted over, spilling tea on the conference table.

Elly’s eyes were wide with shock. A small pool of tea spread across the table.

Denise brought over a napkin and wiped it clean.

She put a hand on Elly’s back and told her it was going to be okay, before she went back to her desk and manned the phones.

‘I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . . ’ said Elly.