Джеймс Паттерсон - NYPD Red 6

“He kidnapped me on a Sunday, Detective. I escaped on Wednesday. It was all of seventy-two hours. I wouldn’t exactly call that a life together .”

“I’m talking about the fifteen years before he kidnapped you,” Kylie said, reaching to the floor and hauling up a large carton. She stacked Bobby’s diaries on the table.

She handed one to Erin and opened it to the house-hunting entry. “Read this, and you’ll understand.”

We watched as she read it. At first she was horrified. And then she burst out laughing. “Well, he’s right about one thing. He calls the network a bunch of idiots. But the rest is all in his head.”

“Thanks,” Kylie said. “We needed your answer for the record. I’m sorry, but there are several more entries we were hoping you could either confirm or deny.”

She shrugged. Clearly this was a waste of her time and ours. Then she gave us a smile and a nod. Noblesse oblige —the privileged generously accommodating the wishes of the masses.

“Did you and Bobby go skiing in Vermont?” I asked.

“Oh God, no. Everyone knows I despise the cold.”

We rattled off several more places that we’d had on our rants side of the whiteboard. She dismissed each one with a snarky comment and a wave of her hand. By the time we got to the Tower of London, she was totally relaxed. The diary entries were now more of a parlor game than a threat.

“Here’s one that supposedly took place close to home,” Kylie said. “I know you said you hadn’t seen him for a year before he kidnapped you, but he has the two of you holding hands and walking in Pelham Bay Park a few weeks before your wedding.”

Erin’s jaw tightened, but she coasted smoothly into the lie. “No. I don’t even know where Pelham Bay Park is.”

“It’s in the Bronx,” I said. “You should visit it sometime. It’s the largest park in New York. Three times bigger than Central Park.”

“Funny thing about Pelham Bay Park,” Kylie said. “As big as it is, it’s basically a camera-free zone.”

By now I was standing on Erin’s left side, Kylie on her right, both of us ping-ponging comments back and forth, making her work hard to figure out exactly what we knew.

“It’s the perfect place to go if you don’t want to be videotaped,” I said, and I could see her jaw unclench. “Of course, someone like Bobby would know that.”

“There’s one thing Bobby didn’t know,” Kylie said. “Our mounted police unit has a stable there.”

“And …” I said, waiting for Erin’s head to snap back toward me. “It’s got a state-of-the-art surveillance system.”

“I’m sure that’s lovely for the horses,” she said, “but I really don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“You tell us,” I said, and I slid the image of her and Bobby across the table.

“That’s not me,” she said, barely looking at it. “It’s fake.”

“No, Erin,” Kylie said. “This is an official NYPD photo.

There’s nothing fake about it. What you see is exactly what the camera saw.”

Erin picked up the picture and stared at it hard. Then she put it down, leaned back in her chair, smiled at us both, and said the one thing we didn’t want to hear.

CHAPTER 79

DO I NEED a lawyer?” she asked.

She’d said the L-word—the one that can bring an interview to a crashing halt. Kylie and I hadn’t charged Erin with a crime, so we weren’t obligated to Mirandize her. But Miranda warning or not, as soon as a suspect asks for a lawyer, it’s over—no more questions.

But of course, Erin hadn’t asked for a lawyer. Her exact words were “Do I need a lawyer?” And she’d sort of chirped it more than said it.

Some people called her Airhead Easton, but I’d come to understand how damn smart she was. She knew the rules of the game as well as anyone. She knew she could shut down the interview in a heartbeat.

But she didn’t. I wondered if she thought that asking for an attorney would make her look guilty. Or maybe she didn’t want to have to deal with TMZ and the gossip-rag headlines screaming “Erin Lawyers Up.” And then I looked at the smirk on her face, and I knew.

She was dicking with us.

She didn’t think this was a fight she could lose.

“I can’t tell you if you need a lawyer,” I said, “but it’s totally within your rights to contact one.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, “but I think I can clear up the misconception, and we can tie this up in a bow for your boss, just like you wanted.”

Another smirk. The Ping-Pong match had now become a game of cat and mouse, and Erin was positive that she was the cat.

“Please,” I said. “Clear it up for us.”

“That’s not me in the picture with Dodd,” she said. “I know it looks like me. But a lot of women try to look like me. And a few of them are so good at it that they make a fabulous living doing shows and corporate events and all kinds of private parties. Trump has impersonators, Elvis has impersonators, and so do I.”

And just like that, she was as famous as the president of the United States and the king of rock and roll. Nicely done. Except for one small detail .

“So it might be you or it might not be you,” I said. “Knowing you have all these impersonators would certainly create reasonable doubt in my mind.”

“Exactly,” she purred.

“Good thing you had that chip under your skin,” Kylie said. “That ought to help us sort it out.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Detective, but I thought I heard you say the picture was taken a few weeks before the wedding.”

“May twenty-seventh, to be exact,” Kylie said.

“Unfortunately, the chip stopped working weeks before that, so I’m afraid we’re right back to reasonable doubt.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “It turns out someone made a mistake. The chip didn’t stop working. It just stopped transmitting data. The GPS kept a record of your every move right up until the day you had Bobby cut it out of your arm.”

“We took the liberty of downloading your itinerary,” Kylie said, producing the report from TARU. “If you look at May twenty-seventh, you’ll see that LyfeTracker has you in Pelham Bay Park at the exact moment the NYPD cameras picked up you and Bobby Dodd working out how to murder your mother-in-law.”

Erin bolted up. “I had nothing to do with Veronica’s death! That was all Bobby’s idea.”

“Bullshit!” Kylie said, pounding the table for effect. “Do you expect anyone to believe that you teamed up with a maniac just to get a mere twenty-five million dollars in ransom? I don’t buy it, my partner doesn’t buy it, and I guarantee you a jury won’t buy it. You had your eye on Veronica’s money from the get-go.”

“Not true,” Erin said, slumping back into her chair. “Not true.”

“Then why would you have yourself kidnapped?”

“You wouldn’t understand. This Red cop shit sounds good on paper—a big fancy police force that caters to the high-rollers. But then it falls apart because you’re all nickel-and-dime players. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”

“Enlighten us.”

“I’ve been world-fucking-famous for twenty years, but I’ve got a clock on me, and it’s ticking louder and louder. It’s saying, ‘Erin, your fan base is aging out, the new fans have found a dozen younger idols, and your TV show is about to tank.’ I’m not an actress. I’m not a performer. I’m a personality. I’m a brand, and my brand was starting to circle the drain.

“I’ve seen it happen to other women, and it’s not pretty. One day you’re an A-list superstar with money pouring in and then all of a sudden you’re a face in the where-are-they-now montage on BuzzFeed. The money’s not coming in anymore, but it never stops going out, and I could see myself in five years doing game shows, showing up with my tits half out at insurance conventions in Vegas, and starring in cosmetics infomercials aimed at a bunch of desperate women who think their lives would be better if they looked like me.