The Flight Attendant(60)

“Yes. They will.”

Cassie was disturbed by the cadence of Ani’s words. “You make it sound like there’s a but coming.”

“There is. We already know there’s no woman named Miranda who worked with Sokolov. There’s no Miranda at Unisphere Asset Management.”

“So?”

“What if there’s no Miranda anywhere in his life?”

“Look, I didn’t make her up. I’ll admit, Alex barely knew her—if at all. I told you, maybe she’s just a friend or relative of an investor.”

The bartender glanced at the two of them, and Ani grew alert. Cassie understood that her lawyer wanted her to lower her voice.

“Another round?” he asked the two of them.

“No, thank you,” Ani told him, and Cassie felt a pang of disappointment. Then her lawyer took a deep breath and said to her, “You drink too much. You pass out. You black out. And you are, by your own admission, a liar. You lie all the time.”

The words hung in the air, revealing and hurtful. “I thought you believed me,” Cassie murmured. She could hear the devastation, almost childlike, in her response. It was as if Ani had betrayed her.

“You’re not even sure you believe you,” Ani said quietly.

“Sometimes!” she shot back. “Most of the time I am absolutely confident: I did not kill him.”

“Fine,” said Ani. “Fine. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t think you did, either. Does that help or make a difference? Not at all. Let’s hope there is evidence in the hotel room that this Miranda person exists.”

“There will be. Won’t her DNA be there?”

“It’s a hotel room. There’s DNA from a hundred—a thousand—guests in there.”

“Of course,” she agreed, but then an idea came to her. “Her DNA might be on the glass she used. So might her fingerprints. I wiped the glasses down, but who knows how thorough I was. I was kind of panicking.”

“Aside from the reality that wiping down a couple of glasses just screams guilt, how do they compare the DNA to a person they can’t even find? How do they compare the fingerprints? It’s not like there’s a database of DNA and fingerprints of people who say their name is Miranda.”

“I see…”

“I just don’t know what you were thinking when you volunteered the information to the FBI that you slept with the guy and spent the night in his suite. I am just…incredulous.”

“Either I wasn’t thinking, or I was thinking they already knew from the photos that I had spent the night with Alex and they were going to find my DNA or my fingerprints or my stupid lipstick in the room somewhere. I honestly don’t know which.”

“You are making the assumption that you’re even going to allow them to swab your cheek to get your DNA. Or take your fingerprints. I will still try and stall that for a very long time, but you have made my job that much more difficult.”

“I’m sorry. I really am.”

Ani’s face went a little pensive. “You said the day we met that the cuts on your hands were from a broken glass. Were they?”

“Yes. What are you suggesting? Do you think I tried to kill myself?”

“No, of course not. They were on your hands, not your wrists. I was thinking defense wounds. You were trying to protect yourself. You were fighting off a knife or that broken bottle. Tell me honestly: did Sokolov attack you at some point that night? Maybe—forgive me, I have to ask—some sort of creepy sex play that got out of hand?”

“He never attacked me, Ani, at least that I can recall. But that doesn’t sound like him. He was…”

“Go on.”

“He was really good in bed. It was our first time, and he was pretty gentle. Those cuts on my hands? I saw a Dubai news article with the two security camera photos of me, and I dropped the wineglass I was holding. It was in my bathroom the night before we met.”

“You even drink in the bathroom?”

“I had brought a glass of wine with me into the tub. Not the worst thing I do,” Cassie said.

“Okay, so the cuts had nothing to do with an attack,” said Ani. “I get it. You told me about Sokolov’s neck. Did he have any defense wounds on his hands or his arms? As if he were trying to parry the broken bottle?”

“You mean if I were attacking him?”

“Or someone.”

“There was blood everywhere, but I don’t think so.”

“There was absolutely no evidence of a struggle?”

“If there was a struggle, don’t you think I would have remembered it?”

The lawyer replied by raising a single eyebrow.

“No,” said Cassie. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have remembered. But I don’t think there was a struggle. I don’t recall seeing any cuts on his hands or his arms. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Well, it’s not a good thing. I wish I’d thought to have photographs taken on Monday morning of the cuts on your hands. That’s on me, that’s my bad. If they do decide you killed him, it would have been nice to claim there was a fight and you were desperately defending yourself.”

Cassie looked at her hands. She hadn’t even bothered with Band-Aids today. The cuts no longer looked like very much. “I guess it’s too late now.” Nevertheless, Ani took out her phone and used the camera to take a series of pictures, posing Cassie’s fingers and hands on a white paper placemat on the bar.