Law of Attraction (37 page)

They went back into the courthouse and parted ways. As Anna walked back to the Papering Room, she played their conversation over in her head. It made her see Nick in a completely different light. She wondered if she’d been too hasty to write him off. Maybe there was
more substance to him than she’d given him credit for. She wondered if it was possible that she and Nick might be able to have a happy ending after all. She still wore a small smile as she walked back into the Papering Room.

“Hey.” Dan handed her a few sheets of paper as she came through the door. “This came in over the fax while you were out.”

“Thanks.” She sat down at her desk to look at the papers, although part of her mind was still back on the patio with Nick.

The guy at Verizon had faxed over the list of every telephone call Green had made or received in the month of August. Anna ran her index finger down the numbers until she got to August 16. There was an incoming call from a pay phone at 10:38 p.m., just as Green said. The next incoming call was at 11:26 p.m. According to Green, that was the second call he had received from Laprea on the night of her murder. Anna looked at the telephone number—and stopped breathing.

She recognized the number. She knew it by heart.

36

A
nna closed her eyes, hearing the busy afternoon in the Papering Room continue around her. The tapping of computer keys, the whoosh of the copier, the voices of cops explaining last night’s arrests. Eventually, the blood came back to her brain and the twinkling behind her eyelids dissipated. She opened her eyes.

Green had said Laprea called him twice the night she died, first from a pay phone and then from somewhere else. But he was hardly a reliable source; he hid the truth from them before. He could be lying now. His story just didn’t make sense.

Because the second call to Green’s cell phone came from Nick’s home phone.

Why would Laprea have been at Nick’s house that night? Did D’marco take her there? Nick and Laprea lived on opposite sides of town; Laprea and D’marco were seen in Anacostia the night she died; her body was found there. How could she have called Officer Green from Nick’s apartment?

Even if Green were lying,
someone
called his phone from Nick’s home that night. The telephone record didn’t lie. But why would Nick call Green?

Her first instinct was to call Nick. There had to be a simple explanation. She fished her phone out of her purse and scrolled down to his name. She paused with her thumb poised over the Send button. This was a criminal investigation. She couldn’t just call and ask what was up. Nick had been D’marco’s defense attorney; now it appeared he was also a witness.

She hung up and stared at the Verizon printout again. It wasn’t going to give her any more insights. She needed more information, and she knew where to get it.

She stood up and grabbed her purse.

“Dan, I need to call on your goodwill again. I have to leave. I’m sorry.”

“No problem.” Dan looked concerned as she walked out of the Papering Room. “You okay, Anna?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Anna went up the escalator, rushed out the front doors, and caught a passing cab.

“Adams-Morgan,” she told the driver. “Eighteenth Street.”

As she rode to Adams-Morgan, more and more outlandish scenarios played out in her head. What if D’marco went to Nick’s apartment and Laprea followed him there? What if D’marco had kidnapped Laprea and taken her to Nick’s apartment? Could D’marco have killed Laprea at Nick’s building? Is that why Nick stayed on the case for so long—because he was a witness? Had he been trying to protect himself?

Anna pointed the cabbie to the newest, most expensive building on 18th Street. She handed him some bills, took a deep breath, and walked up to the front door.

The receptionist buzzed her in to Nick’s building. The lobby felt familiar and yet foreign, like when she’d visited her elementary school as an adult. She had forgotten how shining and modern the place was. The black granite floor, the towering steel sculpture, the floor-to-ceiling windows, all gleaming under carefully placed track lighting, were a contrast to her usual territory of basement apartment and basement government office.

Anna’s clicking heels echoed through the desolate lobby as she walked toward the reception desk. There was Tyler, looking as male-modelish as ever in his all-black outfit, sitting behind his stone and glass command center.

Anna assured herself that the young millionaires who lived here were at work. They wouldn’t start flooding back again until after five o’clock, and there was no way Nick would arrive before then. She had an hour. She hoped.

“Well, hello, Anna!” Tyler looked up from his
Us Weekly
magazine with delight. “Long time, no see! How’ve you been?”

“Okay, thanks. How are you?” She remembered that last time they spoke, Tyler had just moved in with his boyfriend. “How’s . . . Brandon?”

“Great! We just bought a condo in Logan Circle; we’re renovating.”

He held up a handful of colorful paint chips. Anna pointed at a wasabi green swatch.

“Nice,” she murmured.

“Thanks. For the kitchen, I think. Nick’s not back from work yet. Do you want to wait for him here?”

“Actually, I know he’s not here. I was hoping
you
could help me.”

Tyler looked at her quizzically.

“I don’t know how much Nick told you about why we broke up.” Anna waited for him to reply, but Tyler shook his head. She lowered her voice and looked at the ground. “There was another woman.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Men can be pigs.”

“I know. But we’re trying to work things out. Maybe we can. But I have to know. That’s why I need your help.”

Anna leaned farther over the counter and looked at the switches, lighted buttons, and bank of televisions showing footage from the security cameras set up around the building. She could see what was happening at the front door, the garden, and roof deck. She could see herself in the lobby leaning over Tyler’s desk. She glanced up at the receptionist.

“Tyler, are there tapes of what the security cameras are filming?”

“It’s all stored on the computer. This is the best security system money can buy.” He answered proudly before he understood what she was asking for. “Oh no, Anna, I can’t do that.”

She wished she’d thought to bring a subpoena with her.

“Please, Tyler,” she said. “You’re the only one who can help. I need to know if she came here.”

Tyler shook his head—but started typing into the computer. “I’m going to regret this. Do you know the dates when you want to look?”

“Saturday, August sixteenth. Evening.”

Tyler started scrolling through a page of files, oblivious to the sound of Anna’s heart hammering against her rib cage. “It’ll take a couple of minutes,” Tyler said, typing some more.

To calm herself, Anna walked to the back of the lobby, where a wall of glass looked out over the Japanese garden. She watched the water flow down the little waterfall into the quiet pool below. Orange, black, and white koi swam in lazy figure eights below the canopy of a Japanese maple. The peaceful scene was a sharp contrast to the sensation that her chest was being wrung out like a dishcloth.

“This stuff only stays on the system six or seven months,” Tyler warned. “It could have been overwritten by now. Whenever the memory gets full, the system recycles—wait.” He stopped. “I’ve got it. You’re lucky. Nine more days, and this’ll be gone.”

She hurried back to the desk and stood behind Tyler’s chair, where she could see the plasma screen over his shoulder. The big screen was split into quarters, each showing a different scene: lobby, garden, roof deck, and outside the front door. He hit Play, and the four pictures began moving simultaneously. The images were sharper than the grainy black-and-white screen shots police typically retrieved from convenience store cameras.

Anna watched a couple have a beer on the roof deck and people walk through the lobby—seven months ago. A time stamp in the bottom corner read 18:30. “Say when,” Tyler said, hitting Fast-forward. The action sped up, five times actual speed. People scurried in and out of the lobby with bags of takeout food, like lines of ants bringing home crumbs from a picnic. Anna watched the video of the lobby carefully; there was nothing remarkable for a while. Finally, Anna saw a familiar figure.

“Stop!” she cried. Tyler rewound the footage and hit Play again. The time stamp read 20:09 as Nick walked out of the elevator and exited through the front door, alone. Anna motioned for Tyler to fast-forward some more. At 20:38, Nick reappeared carrying a Chipotle takeout bag. Anna recalled that she was at her book club the night Laprea was killed. Nick had apparently stayed in with a burrito.

“There you go. He was flying solo.” Tyler smiled at Anna, hoping this would satisfy her.

“Can you keep going? I think there might be something later.”

Tyler frowned but hit Fast-forward again. The video moved through 21:00, 22:00, 23:00. Now the residents going in and out were dressed up for a Saturday night on the town: the women in high-heeled sandals and slinky tops, the men in carefully untucked Armani shirts.

Even though she’d been expecting it, it was still a shock to see the familiar figure walk up to the front door. The time stamp read 23:17.

“Stop,” Anna said shakily. “Rewind. There.” She pointed at the quadrant of the screen. “Is there sound? Can you play it?”

Tyler hit a few buttons and maximized the quadrant that showed the front door. The picture filled up the entire screen. He started the action again, now with muffled sound.

Anna watched in horror as Laprea Johnson stormed up to the front door of Nick’s building. Anna recognized the petite figure, the long, quivering braids, and the black pants and shiny shirt Laprea was wearing—the same clothes she had on when her body was found
behind D’marco’s house.

Laprea was obviously upset. She tossed her hair back and forth in agitation, and was sniffling like a girl who’d been crying her heart out. She was hyped up on anger and pain, teetering on the brink of hysteria.

“Hey!” Laprea yelled, pulling on the lobby door. “Can somebody let me in? Hello?”

“Is there a receptionist working that late?” Anna asked without taking her eyes off the screen.

“No. There’s no one after ten p.m. Visitors have to call directly up to the resident’s unit.”

No one answered Laprea, and she turned around, leaned back against the door, and let out long choking sobs of pain and frustration. To Anna, the woman’s convulsions seemed to last for hours, but the time stamp showed just a few seconds. Finally, Laprea straightened up, put her hands on her hips, and looked around her. She walked toward the intercom and studied it. Now she was facing the camera, and Anna could see that Laprea had dark bruises around both eyes. One was swollen completely shut.

Laprea read the instructions engraved in the intercom system, then punched in a few numbers. The intercom rang several times.

Don’t, Anna thought, grinding her teeth so hard they made a dull squeaky sound. Oh God, Nick, don’t answer. Just let her walk away.

The line was picked up with a click.

“Hello?” Nick answered through the intercom.

“Mr. Wagner? It’s Laprea Johnson. I’m at your front door and I gotta talk to you.”

Nick’s response was staticky, something about making an appointment at his office. Laprea stared at the intercom in disbelief.

“Appointment?” Laprea raised her voice. “You never needed no appointment to come to
my
house!”

A few seconds went by before Nick’s voice responded. Anna could make out the words “very busy now” and “another time.”

“Hell no.” Laprea leaned down and spoke deliberately into the machine. Her voice dropped several decibels, and her softer speech was more ominous than her yelling. “D’marco just beat me up again, Mr. Wagner. I got black eyes and a split lip and I don’t know what else. But you know what? I don’t even blame him. I blame you.” Laprea’s voice started to rise again. “You said if I lied for him, this wouldn’t happen again. Now I find out I can’t even press charges, ’cause nobody’s
gonna listen to me no more. So now
you
gonna listen to me, and you gonna do something about this.” She paused, then played her trump card. “Or I’m gonna report that you told me to lie for D’marco.”

Oh, Nick, Anna thought. What did you do?

The intercom buzzed. Laprea yanked the door open and stalked into the building, her hair swinging with the beat of her angry footsteps. Tyler clicked a few buttons and the four-way screen appeared again. They watched Laprea storm through the lobby and into the elevator. The time stamp read 23:21 when the elevator doors slid shut. Whatever happened after that was off camera.

Tyler looked back at Anna, his eyes full of puzzlement and sympathy. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that it wasn’t good. Anna realized that she was squeezing Tyler’s chair so hard that her fingernails had cut four little crescents into the black leather. She let go and forced her hands to relax at her sides.

“Tyler,” she managed to say, “can you tell if they left the building that night?”

“Anna,” he said miserably.

“Please.”

He paused a moment, then fast-forwarded through the rest of the night. People came and went through the lobby, but there was no sign of Laprea, D’marco, or Nick.

“That doesn’t mean she spent the night,” Tyler explained. “They could have left through the garage.”

“Is that recorded?”

“I can’t tell when somebody leaves the garage in a car. The weight of the car opens the gate automatically. But I can tell when people come in. You need a key card.” He opened another screen, full of columns of numbers, and scrolled down through the entries. “Here we go.” Tyler pointed to the screen. “Nick swiped his card to get back into the garage at four fifteen.”

“In the morning.”

“Yes.”

Anna felt nauseous. The walls of the building felt like they were closing in on her. She had to get out of here. Thanking Tyler through clenched teeth, she strode to the front door.