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 right above 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.”
De Kuyper shook his head. “Those things are lost causes. Police are entitled to collect evidence. They certainly had probable cause once they saw the two bodies at the Pinsky’s. And your car could be full of incriminating stuff. It isn’t, is it?”
“No.”
“Any drugs, stolen merchandise, pornography, large amounts of currency?”
“No. The only things I even care about getting back are in an overnight bag in the trunk on the wheel of the spare tire.”
“What’s in it?”
“Some clothes I packed when I left home a couple of days ago. I also took some papers—my deed, licenses, bank statements, passport and stuff.”
“Why would you need those? Were you planning to go on the run?”
“So the killer couldn’t find them and use them. I wouldn’t go on the run and expect to have access to my bank records and credit cards, so no.”
“I know that, but I didn’t know you did. Is there anything else you should tell me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I can sum it up quickly. There is a man or men who are trying to kill me because I shot those two home-invasion robbers at the Pinskys’ house. The night after it happened, they killed my boss, Ben Spengler, while they were looking for me, and now one has killed my neighbor Art Grosvenor, also trying to get at me. The police are behaving as though they want to charge me with something, and they don’t seem to want to protect me or let me protect myself. They both said they knew I was innocent, but I know they’re allowed to lie.”
“You definitely need legal help.”
“Can you fix this?”
“We’ll try.”
The driver pulled up in front of a tall building on Wilshire Boulevard and de Kuyper looked out the window. “Good. We’re here.”
“Am I about to go broke and never get out of debt?”
“Forget money. You don’t have much, and in a couple of days you won’t have any, but we’ll still help you long after that. We don’t take cases like yours for the fees. We’re taking you on so we can turn you into Joan of Arc. People—especially women—with real money will learn about it and stand in line to get in our door.”
Justine said, “Even the guilty ones?”
“If they’re our clients, they’re not guilty.” He got out of the car and held the door open for her, then took her arm and conducted her toward the front door. She noticed that the driver had gotten out of the front seat and was looking up and down the street, his right hand near his open coat. It was a stance she had taken many times, so she knew what it meant.
She didn’t know if the driver knew who she was or not, but she knew that bodyguards knew far more than their clients thought. She smiled at him. “Thanks for the ride.” He smiled back and made a small gesture like the tipping of an imaginary hat. He knew.
De Kuyper walked past a security desk where a pair of tall men in suits were on duty and entered a larger-than-normal elevator without features except for a single button, which de Kuyper pressed. It rose and opened so quickly that there was a sensation that the building was what had moved.
The office was ultra-modern with featureless surfaces but ostentatious at the same time. The lobby was round and three young receptionists sat at desks so many feet apart that each seemed alone. All were carrying on conversations with invisible people and looking at screens.
Justine was still wearing the same clothes she had worn since she’d put them on to check out of the airport hotel yesterday. She felt that the three sleek young women must be pitying her, but she never caught them looking at her at all, which at this moment seemed worse. She followed de Kuyper into a too-large conference room where they both sat near the end of a long table. Through some unseen preparation, he was sitting in front of a blue folder. He said, “We can sit anywhere you’re comfortable,” although she couldn’t detect any difference among the twenty chairs.
“I’ll start with a ladies’ room.”
He pointed. “That way, third door on the right or left. Unisex.”
She found two doors which each had a triangle with a circle superimposed on it. Everything she saw was lit by skylights and every fixture conveyed the message, “This is the best, not just the most expensive.”
When she returned, de Kuyper had placed several short stacks of paper along the table in front of her with the print facing her. “This one appoints us as your attorneys. This one allows us access to your financial, personal, and business histories in the defense against any criminal or civil charges.” He went down the table telling her what each was for. He stopped halfway through. “These are duplicates.” He held out a black Montblanc pen. “If you want to read them, I can come back later.”
“No point,” she said. “It’s like inspecting the only lifeboat.”
“Okay. I’ll follow along and scoop them up as you sign.”
The process took no more than five minutes, and the papers all ended up in the blue folder. He said, “Okay. Here comes the important part.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to turn on the recording equipment now. We need to know everything that has happened to you since you went to work on the evening of August 1. I’m going to stop you from time to time to ask questions, but otherwise this is your show. It’s all protected by the attorney-client privilege you just acquired.” He used his cell phone to trigger some remote switch in the room’s electronics and held up his phone to show her a red indicator was on. “Start by telling us your name.”
She hesitated for a second. Should she go into the whole Anna Kepka business now? “Justine Poole is a work name. The one I was born with is Anna Kepka.” She began to tell the story. It took her about an hour. She included every detail that she could remember, and she had been training herself to notice details for at least nine years, so there were many. She told the truth about everything, and although she told only part of the truth about a few things, at least she kept out the lies that kept offering themselves to her unexpectedly.
When she talked vaguely about leaving the coffee shop and staying the night with a friend, she added, “Someone I met at the coffee shop.”
“That morning?”
“Yes.”
De Kuyper said, “I’m not prying now, but is this friend male or female?”
“Male.”
“Again, I’m not trying to pry, but if this comes up, and it will, we’ve got to have answers. Is this relationship intimate?”
“This will come up? Why?”
“It’s an opportunity for the other side to prejudice a certain kind of juror.”
“It’s not intimate. I just met him.”
“Why did you stay with him?”
“I didn’t feel I could go home, because the killer had already broken into my condominium once, the same night he murdered Ben Spengler. And of course, he knew where I worked. He knew or could find out who else worked there. I didn’t want to put any of them in danger by staying with them. If I went off with a perfect stranger, there was no connection that the killer could find. He couldn’t trick anybody I know into telling him about this guy. Neither of us could be identified on each other’s Facebook accounts or anything else. He was safe, and I was safe. I left his place early this morning while he was asleep.”
“What’s his name?”
“Joe—Joseph—Alston. He’s a freelance writer—news investigations, research essays, that sort of thing.”
“I think I may have heard of him. It’s possible we may have sued him, or thought about it. And you picked him because?”
“He seemed like a nice guy. It turned out he is.”
“Good,” de Kuyper said. “Last question. What made you choose our law firm?”
“Because a couple of the clients I worked with at Spengler-Nash had mentioned the name, and they were the sort of people who could be choosy.”