Page 3 of Witness To Murder
“Are you armed, Ms. Gerard?”
“No. Please. Hurry.”
The dispatcher assured Leah a unit was already en route to her location. She was to stay in place and on the line until help arrived.
Then Leah did the only thing she could… She waited.
Sunday, August 10, 2:00 a.m.
FOUR UNIFORMED POLICEofficers had arrived. One had stayed with Leah, taking her statement, and three had searched the entire restaurant. They had combed through the alley behind it…the dumpsters. They had scrutinized all vehicles parked in the area. Neighboring businesses had been checked, but all were closed for the night, with no signs of breaking and entering or other foul play. There was no one else on or around the property except Leah and the police.
Presumably, whoever had…hurtRaymond had also taken him away, completely disappearing by the time the police arrived.
Harold Manafort, the restaurant manager, had been called.
The good news was, they had not found a body.
There was no blood anywhere.
There were no signs of foul play whatsoever.
Nothing.
The bad news was that Leah looked like a fool.
She sat at a table now, only a few yards from the corridor where she’d hidden in that ladies’ room for what had felt like an hour but was likely only fifteen or twenty minutes. Detective Anthony Lambert sat at the table with her, a pen poised above his notepad. He scribbled and turned pages and scribbled some more as she told her story for the second time.
She’d told it first to the female police officer who had come into the ladies’ room looking for Leah after the four had forcibly entered the building. Her three fellow officers had spread out and begun the search that proved futile.
Eventually, a detective, the one now seated at the table with Leah, had arrived, and she’d repeated her story. He’d askeda few questions, and then he’d spoken with the uniformed officers and gone through the restaurant and the alley with them. A moment ago he had returned to her table and started to ask more questions. Throughout it all, the female officer, whose name Leah still could not remember, held vigil nearby. Leah wasn’t sure whether they feared she would take off—obviously she could get out, now that the front entrance had been breached—or that she would call someone on her cell. She was surprised they hadn’t asked for it yet. After all, she was no doubt considered suspicious at this point, seeing as how no body or blood had been found in the place where she’d insisted on having seen both.
“So,” Lambert said, drawing her attention back to him, “you sat out here alone in the near darkness for forty-five minutes, waiting for your date.” He leaned forward and peered at his notebook. “One Raymond Douglas.”
It sounded particularly sad when he said it aloud that way. Who waited that long in a dark restaurant for a man she didn’t even know—had only met briefly that one time? “Yes. He’d asked me to wait in the dining room for him and I did.”
Desperate.Besides suspicious, the detective likely now believed her to be desperate.
Lambert studied her over the bifocals he’d settled into place on the bridge of his wide nose. He was not a large man. Average height, slim build. Yet it was obvious he spent some time in the gym. His arm muscles bunched and flexed against the sleeves of his shirt. He’d long ago removed the suit jacket and hung it on the back of the chair next to him.
He had keen, probing eyes. He seemed alert, ready to dive across the table and kick some butt if necessary. Not at all the cliché detective so often depicted on television. If not for his gray hair, she would never have believed the man was fifty-eight. She wouldn’t have known his age had he not said something to one ofthe uniformed officers about being too old at fifty-eight for these sorts of calls. At this point, Leah was feeling far older than her twenty-eight years as well.
“He’d never asked you out before,” Lambert said. Not really a reasonable question, because she’d explained the extent of her knowledge of Raymond Douglas already. But she’d watched enough crime dramas on television to recognize the drill. He was fishing around to see if her story would change.
“We didn’t know each other before two weeks ago.”
He flipped back a page and appeared to verify that his notes were correct, or maybe he was simply buying time. He looked up. “Do you understand the ramifications of making a false statement to the police?”
Leah’s jaw dropped. “What?” Was he seriously asking that question? She really had not expected him to go in that direction. What kind of person did he think she was?
“We found no body. No blood. Nonothingto suggest what you say you saw happen actually happened.”
Anger flared in her belly. “I know what I saw.”
“Perhaps you fell asleep while you were waiting and dreamed it.” He shrugged. “It’s happened to me. I fell asleep once and dreamed my wife left me. Only difference is, three days later she did.”
“I did not fall asleep,” Leah said, unable to keep the bitter edge out of her voice. This was bordering on ridiculous.
“Mr. Manafort said Raymond Douglas told him and the investors who came to last night’s meeting that he was leaving immediately after that meeting for a long-awaited vacation.”
