Page 35 of Hero

Justine stood and said, “I was wondering, is my car in the lot downstairs, or what? Are the keys in it, and how do I find it?”

“You don’t.”

“Why not?”

“We’ll have to hold it for the forensics people. It might have the answers to questions about this morning’s incident.”

“The killer was never in it or near it. How can that be necessary or even useful?”

“We’ll have to let you know after it’s been examined for evidence. You were at a murder this morning.”

“The killer never even saw my car.”

“He found you somehow.”

“Is this because I called a lawyer?”

He shrugged. “Every choice costs something.”

She looked at him for a moment, then walked to the door. He stepped aside and opened it wider for her and she went out into the broad, open space of the office.

There was a man standing in front of her looking at the watch on his wrist. It wasn’t one of those heavy ones with little extra circles that were tachometers and timers. It was a slice of white gold, thin as a coin with a plain white face and a brown leather band, like the ones she’d seen on some of her clients. He was wearing a light gray suit that seemed to complement the gray hair he wore slightly long that she thought of as prematurely gray but probably wasn’t. He looked up and said, “Justine.” It wasn’t a question. “I’m Aaron de Kuyper.”

Of course he would have looked up her picture. She said, “Hello. Thank you for coming.”

“Happy to help. Shall we go?”

She went with him for a few steps, but a voice came from behind them. “Miss Poole!”

She turned. Detective Wright hurried to her. “We’ll still need your phone.”

She looked at Aaron de Kuyper. He shrugged, pantomiming that it was something to be endured, but said to Wright, “You’ll send me the inventory of the belongings you’ve collected, right?”

“Right,” Detective Wright said. His hand was still out, so Justine placed the phone in it, and he walked off.

De Kuyper glanced at her, and she could tell it was a diagnosis. “We’re going to the office. The car is out front.”

23

They stepped out the door of the police headquarters and a black Mercedes sedan appeared a half block away and glided up to the curb at the spot where they stood. De Kuyper opened the door to let her into the back seat and then slid in after her. “Office,” he said, and the driver pulled away. The whole maneuver reminded Justine of the way a Spengler-Nash getaway team spirited wildly popular performers away from concerts.

For the first time all morning, Justine felt the muscles in her back starting to release their tension.

De Kuyper said, “You must have told them things.”

“A few.”

“Didn’t you know you weren’t supposed to talk to them?”

“I had a couple of things I wanted them to know.”

“What things?”

“This morning when I was walking up to my building to pick up some things, I saw a man running toward me to keep me from getting inside. When he realized he wasn’t going to get there ahead of me he took four shots at me, one of which left an impact mark on the safety glass rightabove my head. After I was inside, he saw one of my neighbors nearby and made him open the door at gunpoint. I was already in the elevator so I hit the ‘Close Door’ button and held it. I figured the steel doors might stop a bullet or at least make me hard to hit. He shot my neighbor to death, and then I heard him run up the stairway toward my condo. I slipped out and ran to my car. I also sent Detective Kunkel some pictures of the man taken by a security camera at Spengler-Nash.”

De Kuyper’s tone changed. “Okay. You had to tell him that. Anything else?”

“Since they’ve done nothing to protect me, I complained that they had held onto my pistol, my work phone, and as of this morning, my car and my personal cell phone.”

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