Best Laid Plans(77)
“It doesn’t matter. They’ll get to me in jail.” She stared at Lucy. “The only way I’ll be safe is if you let me go. I can disappear and they’ll never find me.”
“We can and will protect you if you tell us the truth,” Lucy said.
“You can’t!”
“Then I’ll have to charge you with first-degree, premeditated murder.”
“No, no! It was an accident, he wasn’t—”
She stopped talking. Her eyes darted back and forth between Tia and Lucy. She reached for her water again with shaking hands.
“What was an accident?” Lucy asked.
Elise put the water down and stared at the ceiling, tears streaming down her face. With the back of her free hand she wiped them way. She bit her lip and was obviously weighing her fears—was she more terrified of the people she worked for or the police?
“Okay—just this. It was an accident. It was supposed to be easy. Just—go in, seduce this old guy, take pictures. And if I couldn’t seduce him, well, shoot him up with a little happy juice. He wouldn’t remember anything, and I’d still get the pictures. I didn’t know he would die! I didn’t know, I just thought it was, you know, something that would make him sleepy and forgetful. I didn’t even know he was dead until yesterday, when—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, it was an accident.”
“It’s still murder.”
“It was an accident,” she whispered.
“Did you take pictures?”
She nodded.
“You took pictures of Harper Worthington,” Lucy said specifically.
“Y-yes.”
“Where are they?”
“I gave everything to the person who hired me.”
Everything? That sounded like more than just pornographic photos of Harper Worthington.
“Were you hired to take pictures of anyone else? Anyone other than Mr. Worthington?” Lucy asked. Tia shot a confused glance at her, but Lucy focused on Elise’s reaction.
“I—I—you don’t understand.”
“You’d be surprised at what I understand,” Lucy said. “Who hired you?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“He’s the one who shot me. And he’s just a middleman, I don’t know who really wanted them.”
“Who is he?” Lucy pushed again.
“I don’t know!”
“We know you got this job through Mona Hill.”
She frowned but didn’t say anything.
“Mona told us that you are new in town and called her up looking for work.” Lucy turned to Tia. Tia nodded. “We have enough to get a warrant to search Mona’s apartment and bring her in for questioning.”
“She doesn’t know anything. I just called Mona because I was bored, and I had to wait around until they told me this guy would be at the motel. They just wanted the porn shots. Probably to blackmail him, I don’t know, I don’t care! I did my part and got paid and that’s all, but—” She stopped talking.
“But?”
“I f*cked up, okay? I grabbed his phone because I thought I could sell it, but then I lost it and they were so angry. That’s why they shot me, okay? That’s why I have to disappear.”
“Who.”
“I. Can’t. Tell. You! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone, please?”
The machines started beeping again and the nurse walked in and told Tia and Lucy to get out. “If I see you here again tonight, I’ll have security remove you.”
Tia said to the nurse, “Try it. If we need to talk to her, we will, and I’ll get a warrant to transfer her to a prison hospital.”
Tia turned back to Elise. “Everything I said still holds. Think about it tonight, and we’ll talk in the morning.”
She and Lucy walked out.
Barry approached them. “I listened from the nurses’ station,” he said. “Good job, I think you both got more out of her than anyone else could have.”
Tia winked. “High praise coming from you, Crawford.”
The nurse walked back. “Take the conversation elsewhere, please. Now.”
“No one goes in that room except for your nurses and her doctor,” Tia said. “An officer will be on the door at all times. If she needs to be moved, the officer goes with her. If she goes for a scan or x-rays, the officer will be outside her door.”
“Is she a prisoner or under protection?”
“Both.”
“If she’s a prisoner, you need to cuff her.”
Tia glanced at Barry. “We haven’t placed her under arrest yet,” she said to the nurse.
“Then I’ll consider the officer her protection. But if she’s dangerous—”
“Call us if you have any concerns.” Tia handed the nurse her card. She excused herself to talk to the officer at the door.
Barry and Lucy walked to the end of the corridor, to the side of the nurse’s station where they wouldn’t get in anyone’s way as well as have some privacy. Barry said, “Do you think she took photos of James Everett as well?”
That was exactly what Lucy had been thinking, though Elise hadn’t explicitly said it. “I can get her to talk,” Lucy said. She didn’t like browbeating the girl. Elise wasn’t cooperating, but she was scared and Lucy understood what these girls had to do to survive. Survival often made them hard and prickly, and often the only way to crack them was to be just as hard.