False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) (21 page)

Samantha looked at him, puzzled, and crossed her arms almost in defiance. “Do what you got to do, Steel, but I guarantee he didn’t kill anyone.”

Steel nodded, the same look on his face. “It’s okay, McCall, I believe he has an alibi. In fact I will be shocked if he doesn’t.” Steel walked out of the small viewing area and headed for the interrogation room. Before he reached for the handle he looked back at McCall, who was now sitting on the table ready for the show.

John Steel was finishing sending a text as he entered the interrogation room.

“I have been waiting here for over an hour,” the angry newspaper editor began, getting to his feet. “I don’t know what game you are playing, Detective, but by the time I am finished with you you’ll be—”

Steel put his cell phone away and slammed a large file onto the desk. It made a loud metallic crack.

“Sit down, Mr Cruise!” Steel yelled.

Cruise looked at him, shocked for a second that he had actually yelled with such fury. Cruise sat down like a frightened child.

“So, Mr Cruise. On the night in question you said that you spoke to Edward Gibbs on your office phone, is this correct?” Steel’s voice was calm and soft, as though he was just making general inquiries.

Cruise looked puzzled at the question and scoffed: “You brought
me
down here to ask me that? Are you serious?”

Steel just sat opposite the smug Daniel Cruise, imagining how many bones he could break in the man’s body before someone came in to stop him.

“Sir, are you saying that these facts are correct?”

Cruise looked at his watch again. “I want a lawyer. I am not answering any of your ridiculous questions.”

The detective sat back in his chair and rasped his fingers on the hard surface of the table between them. “You have that right of course, sir, but that will take time and as you are only here to help us with our inquiries I am sure it will be a waste of your time and mine.”

Cruise looked puzzled for a moment. “Wait, let’s get this straight. So you’re not charging me with anything? I can go?”

Steel shook his head and smiled. “Sir, you just requested a lawyer, so that means before we do anything you have got to wait for your counsel.”

Cruise’s face dropped. “Okay, so I don’t want a goddamn lawyer. Can I go now?”

John Steel rocked on the back legs of his chair for a few seconds. “If that is your wish, I cannot keep you.”

The newspaper editor stood up, wearing the smug grin once more, as though Steel was one of his employees.

“However,” John continued, “I will just say we asked you to come down to clear up a matter in a civilised and less public way than we might have done. If we find that you have lied to us we will be forced to do so publicly, by arresting your smug little ass. So if you walk out of that door now privacy is off the table and I will make it my mission to find every little secret you have, every dodgy deal you ever made and, believe me, I will bury you. So please, sir, feel free to leave.”

Cruise was halfway standing when the lightning bolt of reality hit him. He sat down hard on the chair, his face full of panic.

“You see your phone records do not show you talking to Edward on your office phone but your cell phone records do,” Steel continued, as if his outburst hadn’t happened.

Cruise smiled as if there was an explanation, and Steel could almost see the lie that was just about to leave his mouth but he didn’t have time to humour him.

“Mr Cruise, if you tell me you were in the building when the call came in I will charge you with obstruction and put you in a cell with Brandy, who is a seven foot, three-hundred pound fag just coming down from a bad trip. You should see the size of the man’s feet—and you know what they say about big feet. So the truth, please.”

Cruise closed his mouth . An embarrassed looked crossed his face. “Look, I went out that night and this girl came on to me. Well, one thing led to another and we went up to her room.”

Steel got ready with a pen. “Where was this?”

Cruise froze, and his face turned pale as he realised something. “My phone! You traced it to the area of Edward’s apartment?”

The detective nodded slowly.

Daniel Cruise looked distracted, as something came back to him. “It was some apartment building down from some church. I went up to the room to have a good time and the bitch had drugged me. At first I thought it was just a wallet snatch but now—”

Steel put down his pen and just watched Cruise’s face for any signs of lying. “So why didn’t you say anything before now?”

The editor looked at Steel, a shocked look on his face. “And what would your partner have thought? That I just go and have sex with anything that has a pulse?”

The detective noticed him check his watch again. “Well, Mr Cruise, I am glad we could clear that up, I don’t want to keep you from your date with Samantha.”

Cruise looked almost lost at what he’d said. “I—er—I’m not seeing her until later. I have a—well—another appointment, shall we say.” Cruise winked.

It took all the strength in Steel’s body to stop him from throwing a punch that would probably rip the jaw off the man. “Well, we wouldn’t want Sam to think you were a two-timing scumbag, but hey, it doesn’t matter, you just told her yourself.”

Daniel Cruise suddenly looked at the two-way mirror and his jaw dropped as he heard a tap on the glass. The colour drained out of his face as he realised he had blown his chances.

Steel got up and gathered the paperwork on the desk together. “Mr Cruise, I am afraid you are going to have to stay here until we have had time to check out your story. In the meantime I suggest you call one of those expensive lawyers you probably have on a leash.”

Cruise took out his cell phone from his pocket, his hands shaking from the ordeal.

The Englishman walked out of the room with a straight face until he had closed the door behind him. Then he gave an evil grin as he passed the small viewing room and saw the young black janitor mopping the floor of the empty room whilst listening to music on his phone, the end of the mop carelessly knocking into things as he went.

“Couldn’t have timed it better if I had set it up myself.” Steel grinned happily to himself as he headed back to McCall’s desk, where he found a Post-it note stuck to her computer’s monitor screen:
Gone out with Tina, see you in the morning. Sam.

It was still early in the evening so Steel had decided to check out Cruise’s story for himself. He thought there was no reason to disturb McCall—she had been on the case since it had broken and she hadn’t really had a break, so a girls’ night out was what she needed to help her unwind.

He had spoken to Tina earlier and asked if she could help by taking Sam out for the night. The selling point was a limo to taxi them around, as well as a table at the hot new restaurant in town called
The Blue Bottle
.

John had to hold the smile back as Tina had agreed as if she was under some form of duress, but he had seen the twinkle in her eye as he turned to leave the morgue. John had wondered how long she would have waited until she had called McCall with the news, but he had asked Tina to make the call after she had received a text from him.

For the time being she was having a good time with a friend and that self-righteous asshole Cruise was in a lock-up, so, in his view, everything was right with the world.

He had gotten the address of the prostitute from Cruise, as well as a description and her name: Kirsty Tennant. Cruise had described a tall beautiful redhead with a figure to die for and pouting lips.

Cruise had said that he had met the woman at a bar that was at the end of the street. He hadn’t been able to remember the name of the place, only that it was near to an old church. Steel had come on to the street from Second Avenue and the church stood proudly, with its sandstone walls that stretched up to the tall bell tower.

The bar was on the other side of Seventh and not easily missed, as it was right on the crossroads. Steel had turned on to East Seventh Street and followed it until he reached the building. The street was narrow with a mix of red and grey brick buildings with fire escapes clinging to their sides. Tall thin trees lined the sidewalks.

Edward Gibbs’s apartment was at the end of the street and this mysterious woman’s one was in the middle—which was probably why GPS had picked him up near the area.

Steel stood in front of a red-brick building and checked the address on the piece of paper Cruise had written the details on. This was the address.

John walked up to check the names on the call buttons, and there near the bottom was
Kirsty Tennant.
He reached down with a gloved hand and pressed the buzzer. Nothing came over the intercom so he tried again. Still nothing.

The detective looked around and, putting his finger at the top of the row of buttons, he ran it down, so that he buzzed everyone in the building. There was a click as the door was released and he shot inside, just as the yelling from the intercom started, with people asking who it was at the door.

John made his way up to the fourth floor and the apartment of Cruise’s alibi lady.

Cruise hadn’t been able to remember the apartment number, only that it was the last one on the left. Cautiously, Steel made his way down the hallway, following his directions.

He stopped in front of the door and knocked. Nothing. He tried again. This time he could hear the faint sounds of movement emanating from within.

John Steel put his ear onto the wooden door to hear better. There were the sounds of something being dragged slowly across a floor.

Steel reached under his three-quarter length jacket to the small of his back and the Glock 33 that was holstered there.

“Hello, ma’am, it’s the police,” he called out. “Are you okay in there?”

The sounds became louder as they came nearer. Steel moved close to the wall so that he could move quickly into cover if something happened.

There was the metallic sound of door locks being unfastened that echoed through the hallway, then slowly the door opened to reveal a small lady in her late seventies. Steel blew out a quiet breath of relief and laughed at the situation.

“Hi there, madam, I am with the NYPD,” he began. “Do you know a Kirsty Tennant?”

The woman grabbed the ID badge that Steel was still holding and drew it closer so that she could see it better.

“NYPD? But you’re British?” she announced, somewhat confused.

The Englishman didn’t have time to explain, on the other hand he was in no rush to release Cruise.

“Yes, ma’am, it’s a long story. But going back to my question, do you know Kirsty Tennant?”

The woman looked at Steel, from top to bottom and smiled. “Yes I do. Would you like to come in and discuss it?”

Steel could see her wicked smile and stepped back nervously. “No thanks, I am good right here.”

Her face crumpled with disappointment. “Well I am Kirsty Tennant, why, what’s wrong?”

The detective looked beyond her through the open door into the apartment to see if anyone else was there. “Do you live alone, madam?”

The grin came back to the woman’s face. “Why yes I do, Detective, why do you ask?”

Steel took another step back, almost in fear of this lonely woman, who seemed like a man-eater.

“It is just that someone said they were here last Thursday night. Do you have a niece or a neighbour that has red hair?”

The woman shook her head, a confused look on her face. “Last Thursday, you said? I was in Boston visiting my son.” The woman looked round the apartment from where she stood.“Well nothing has been moved or taken, why were they here?”

Steel didn’t want to tell her that some scumbag of an editor was lured here and drugged. He smiled and shook his head. “I’m sorry to waste your time, ma’am, it was obviously a mistake in the information I was given, have a good evening.”And with that Steel quickly walked away and headed for the stairs.

The apartment was a bust. Whoever the woman was, she had done a good job in framing Cruise, she didn’t need to put the blame on him alone, her mission had just been to make the police waste their time.

John Steel walked out into the street. He looked around to see if there were any cameras anywhere close by so that he could get some footage. However the street was empty of ‘watching eyes’.

Then he looked back at the way he had come in at the crossroads of Seventh and Second and smiled: this was a major junction, so there was bound to be some CCTV footage.

But then another question came to Steel as he made his way to the junction to see if he was right. Someone must have known the old lady. And if they didn’t know her, why would they pick her specifically? Or was she chosen at random? Somebody knew she was going to be out of town.

Steel had found enough to release Cruise. Someone had framed him, but then, why had they done so? Why him?

He stopped at the junction and looked around at the cameras as he pulled out his cell phone to call Traffic Division.

Whoever had planned this had done it to the last detail—it required the same sort of planning as the bus escape had. It was too much of a coincidence that all this was happening: the bus crash, the murders and now the framing of Cruise.

It was obvious to Steel that all these things were linked. All he had to do was find out how and why.

Suddenly he received a text from one of his sources:

Found her for you, she is in a disused tenement in Hell’s Kitchen.

The detective nodded as he read the text, then dialled Traffic Division for his request for the CCTV footage.

He had found the girl Megan again, but he now had a bad feeling: if he could find her, so could they—whoever
they
were.

Megan Armstrong had followed
the judge for most of the day but now she was hungry and tired. She had made sure that she had not been pursued by the two goons that had tried to kidnap her the other day by blending in with the crowds and ducking into alleyways.