Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(19)

“Please take a seat. I will let him know you are here.”

Gina turned around, walked a few steps to the first row of chairs, and sat down. Knudsen took several minutes to finish reading the apparently captivating report in front of him. She considered but decided against another attention-getting throat clearing. Her patience was finally rewarded when Knudsen picked up the phone and began dialing.

Thirty minutes passed. There was no point going over the police report again. She had nearly committed it to memory. She glanced at her watch. Almost eleven o’clock. The slow-turning wheels of justice, she thought to herself.

She heard the phone ring on Knudsen’s desk. He answered and quickly put it back down. “Ms. Gina Kane,” he said, making eye contact with her. He pointed to his left indicating a route she should follow around his desk. A man was waiting for her at the end of a long hallway. He was well over six feet tall. Gina remembered reading someplace that the Dutch were among the tallest people in the world; the average male was over six feet.

“Follow me, please,” he said as he led her around a corner into an area of eight cubicles that were separated by shoulder-high partitions. From nearby voices she could tell that at least some of the cubicles were occupied.

Stopping at the second cubicle, the inspector pulled a desk chair around to face outward, gesturing toward a smaller chair. “Please sit,” he said. “I’m sorry. We are a little cramped for space.”

“I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me, Inspector Werimus. I have several questions I want to ask—”

“Before we go forward, Ms. Kane, I want to clear up a possible misunderstanding. I am Inspector Andrew Tice. Inspector Werimus was dispatched to work on an emergency case and will be unavailable for the next several days.”

“Frankly, that is very disappointing,” Gina said, dropping her notebook on her lap. “I flew all the way down from New York to meet him.”

“I am sorry for any inconvenience. Sometimes these things can’t be avoided. Perhaps I can answer your questions.”

“Perhaps,” Gina said, with an edge of sarcasm in her tone.

Tice opened a drawer on his side of the desk and removed a file. “Before we begin, Ms. Kane, I am interested in learning more about why you are interested in this case. You told my colleague you are a writer?” he said, glancing at the file.

“That’s correct.”

“Of fiction?”

“No. What I do for a living, does that really matter?”

“It might,” he said with a condescending smile. “Tell me, are you an attorney?”

“No, I’m not.”

“You say you are a writer—”

“I am a writer,” Gina responded with a condescending smile of her own.

“Very well. Are you a writer who works for a law firm?”

Gina decided to change tactics. “Inspector Tice, I have no affiliation with a law firm. But the more questions you ask, the more I’m tempted to consult with one. Can we get to my questions now?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Kane. People from the United States have a fondness for filing lawsuits whenever something goes wrong. Lawsuits create bad publicity. Aruba is a small country that is very dependent on tourism, much of it from the United States. I will be happy to answer your questions.”



* * *



Gina stared without seeing out the window of her cab as she headed back toward her hotel. She lamented the waste of time it had been to go to police headquarters. Tice knew very little that was not in the police report. Gina had challenged him on the patrol officer’s finding that there was “a strong odor of alcoholic beverage” on Cathy’s body. “Cathy Ryan had been facedown in the water for as much as two minutes. Can you explain to me how the officer would have been able to smell ‘an alcoholic beverage’ under those circumstances?”

“I cannot. But it would not have been in his report unless he observed it at the scene.”

“So Patrol Officer van Riper noted the ‘strong odor of alcoholic beverage’ based on what he observed at the dock. Did he make this observation before or after learning that Cathy Ryan had been served alcohol at the restaurant?”

“I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sorry.”

So am I, Gina had thought.

Tice had stood by the accuracy of the report that stated Cathy had consumed two drinks at lunch. Gina had been reluctant to name Klaus as her source of different information. If I drag him into this now, he might not be there if I need him later, she thought.

The only area where Tice had been somewhat helpful was telling her what happened to the ski after the accident. “The inspection concluded that the ski was in good working order before the accident, which was caused by operator error,” he had told her. “It would then have been released to Paradise Rentals, its rightful owner.”

“So the police transported the ski from the dock where the accident took place back to the rental shop?”

“No,” he said. “We are not a delivery service. The owner of the ski would be responsible for retrieving it and transporting it to wherever he chose.”

“And you don’t know what Paradise Rentals did with the ski?”

“No, why would I?”

You’re not interested in what happened to Cathy Ryan’s ski, but I am, she thought.