Fashion Victim by Sam Baker

Author:Sam Baker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345484420
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-05-31T00:00:00+00:00

Leaving New York had been more of a wrench than Annie anticipated. Although nothing like as tough as leaving her source behind. When Officer Ramirez had appeared at Annie’s hotel on Monday and, after handing Annie a copy of a witness statement to sign, told her she was free to leave, Annie found herself praying for more snow. Not because she needed any extra time to grill Patty but because, in some weird way, leaving Patty to the demons Annie had watched dance behind the model’s eyes felt like letting her down.

And not just Patty, her dead husband, too.

As she was packing to leave, the phone in Annie’s hotel room had rung three times and then gone silent. So Annie counted down from sixty and picked up the next call on the first ring. It was an old code, much used by the tabloids. A way of getting through to people who weren’t answering their phone. You fixed how many times you’d ring before hanging up, how long you’d wait before calling back.

Moscow Rules, Ken Greenhouse called it. Whatever that was meant to mean. Annie and Patty had agreed to use the system when they’d met again the day before. Annie hadn’t been remotely surprised that Patty already knew the system. You didn’t have her relationship with the press without learning their tricks.

“Annie, you’ve got to listen to me . . .”

The first words were practically inaudible beneath Patty’s jagged, almost hysterical gasps, and several seconds passed before her sobs abated sufficiently for Annie to make any sense of what she was saying.

“We . . . need . . . to talk.”

“When?”

“Now. There’s so much you don’t know. You’re my only friend.” Patty gulped air between the sobs. “No one else will listen.”

Annie put down the coffee she’d ordered from room service. It had gone cold anyway and now it tasted bitter. I’m not your friend, she wanted to say. I’m a journalist.

“They won’t listen,” Patty repeated. “They just keep saying Mark’s case is closed.”

“I know.” Annie wasn’t surprised, since that was what Officer Ramirez had just told her.

“How can it be closed? Mark was shot, killed . . .”

“I don’t think they’re questioning that,” Annie said, sounding calmer than she felt.

“Homicide, the cop said. It was that O’Connell guy. Murder in the first degree. Mark was shot in the pursuit of a robbery, that makes it first, but since that creep is dead there’s no case to pursue. So, it’s closed . . . over.”

“It’s okay,” Annie promised, knowing it wasn’t and never would be. “Look, I’ll come around. Give me twenty minutes. Do you need me to get you anything on the way?”

Patty’s only request was for three packs of Camels unfiltered.

By the time Annie had put in a call to O’Connell and managed to enrage the cop one final time, it was more like an hour before she made it to Patty’s Murray Hill apartment.

“Are you calling as a witness or a journalist, ma’am?” Sergeant O’Connell had

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