The Last Flight(81)

My mind jumps back to the conversation I just had with Kate Lane. To Danielle’s messages and the voice recording. And I know now why Eva left the phone behind. “Did she know?”

He shakes his head. “She was working with us on an active investigation, and we couldn’t risk her changing her patterns with the people she worked with. But we began to worry when Eva failed to show up at a prearranged meeting last week. And then you arrived.”

I look down at my hands, resting in my lap. I think about the car Kate Lane is sending for me, and whether Agent Castro will let me get in it, or whether I’m going to be stuck here, answering his questions until the moment Rory arrives.

“Why don’t we start with how you met Eva,” he repeats.

“If you’ve been listening in on my phone conversations, then you already know.”

“Fair enough. Then tell me more about what happened at the airport. Whose idea was it to switch places?”

I’m unsure how to describe my role. Am I a victim? A co-conspirator? I was neither, just a woman desperate for a solution. Any solution. “Eva approached me,” I finally say.

Castro nods. “How did she seem to you?”

“That’s an impossible question to answer, since nothing she told me was true.” I think of the way she stared into her drink, as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders, and know that beneath her lies, the fear was real. “She was scared,” I finally say.

“She had a good reason to be. Did anyone come to the house looking for her?”

I tell him about the man who showed up on the porch, about what he said and what he didn’t say.

“Describe him,” Agent Castro says.

“About my age. Maybe a little bit older. Dark hair. Olive skin. Long coat, and these crazy gray eyes. Not quite blue.”

“While you were staying at Eva’s house, did you see any drugs?”

“No.” I think about that basement lab. Of the hours Eva must have spent working underground, and what it had cost her up above. And I think about the notarized letter and recordings, carefully gathered and documented, and weigh the benefits of handing them over now. If I do, Castro will have what he needs, or as much as Eva is able to give him, which might be enough to fulfill whatever promises she made.

I retrieve the envelope and voice recorder and slide them across the table to him. “I found these yesterday when I discovered her basement.”

He sets the recorder aside and flips through the pages of Eva’s statement, then jots the notary information into a small notebook.

“I had no idea what she was running from. She told me she had just lost her husband to cancer. That she’d helped him die and that she might be in trouble because of it.” As I recount the story, it sounds even crazier than it did at the time. “You have to understand, I was desperate enough to want to believe pretty much anything. And I think she knew that.”

“Eva has had years of practice deceiving people. She’s very good at what she does. She had to be, to have done it for so long.” He leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “I need you to understand that my job is to investigate drug crimes,” he says. “Not fraud. Not identity theft. And you are not under investigation by me.” His voice softens, now that his questions have been answered and I get a peek at the man beneath the surface, someone who genuinely wants to help me. “I understand you’re hiding from your husband?”

“I am.”

“I’m not here to get you into trouble, Mrs. Cook. But Eva was helping me, and I need to know what happened to her. What she told you.”

“Nothing true,” I say. “None of it was real.”

He looks out the window as a black town car glides into the spot next to his sedan. “I think your ride is here.”

We stand and I open the door.

“Claire Cook?” the driver asks. He’s large, in his midtwenties, squeezed into a dark suit with sleeves that just barely cover a tattoo circling up his right wrist. In his ears are those giant circles, stretching enormous holes in his earlobes.

Berkeley. Where everyone is just a little bit weirder than you are.

As he loads my bag into the trunk, I notice his gaze land on Agent Castro’s gun beneath his coat. He looks away and slams the trunk closed, stepping away from the rest of our conversation.

Agent Castro turns to me. “Good luck,” he says, shaking my hand. “If possible, I’d like to touch base again before you leave town. Assuming you go back to New York.”

“Sure,” I say, looking toward the busy street, cars and buses blowing past the motel. “Though what happens next depends on the next few hours. How much trouble I’ll be in for what I did, and whether anyone will believe what I have to say.”

“If your husband was involved in what happened to Maggie Moretti, it won’t matter if they believe you or not. The evidence will back you up.”

I tear my eyes away from the street and look at him. “You don’t know the Cook family very well if you think they won’t fight. The rules are different for people like them.”

I wait for Agent Castro to tell me I’m wrong, but he doesn’t. Even he knows that the power of money can make all kinds of problems disappear.

Finally, he says, “A little advice? Get on the air as soon as possible. Your husband can’t touch you if the whole world knows you’re alive.”