NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,91

said it.

Some people called her Airhead Easton, but I’d come to understand how damn smart she was. She knew the rules of the game as well as anyone. She knew she could shut down the interview in a heartbeat.

But she didn’t. I wondered if she thought that asking for an attorney would make her look guilty. Or maybe she didn’t want to have to deal with TMZ and the gossip-rag headlines screaming “Erin Lawyers Up.” And then I looked at the smirk on her face, and I knew.

She was dicking with us.

She didn’t think this was a fight she could lose.

“I can’t tell you if you need a lawyer,” I said, “but it’s totally within your rights to contact one.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, “but I think I can clear up the misconception, and we can tie this up in a bow for your boss, just like you wanted.”

Another smirk. The Ping-Pong match had now become a game of cat and mouse, and Erin was positive that she was the cat.

“Please,” I said. “Clear it up for us.”

“That’s not me in the picture with Dodd,” she said. “I know it looks like me. But a lot of women try to look like me. And a few of them are so good at it that they make a fabulous living doing shows and corporate events and all kinds of private parties. Trump has impersonators, Elvis has impersonators, and so do I.”

And just like that, she was as famous as the president of the United States and the king of rock and roll. Nicely done. Except for one small detail.

“So it might be you or it might not be you,” I said. “Knowing you have all these impersonators would certainly create reasonable doubt in my mind.”

“Exactly,” she purred.

“Good thing you had that chip under your skin,” Kylie said. “That ought to help us sort it out.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Detective, but I thought I heard you say the picture was taken a few weeks before the wedding.”

“May twenty-seventh, to be exact,” Kylie said.

“Unfortunately, the chip stopped working weeks before that, so I’m afraid we’re right back to reasonable doubt.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “It turns out someone made a mistake. The chip didn’t stop working. It just stopped transmitting data. The GPS kept a record of your every move right up until the day you had Bobby cut it out of your arm.”

“We took the liberty of downloading your itinerary,” Kylie said, producing the report from TARU. “If you look at May twenty-seventh, you’ll see that LyfeTracker has you in Pelham Bay Park at the exact moment the NYPD cameras picked up you and Bobby Dodd working out how to murder your mother-in-law.”

Erin bolted up. “I had nothing to do with Veronica’s death! That was all Bobby’s idea.”

“Bullshit!” Kylie said, pounding the table for effect. “Do you expect anyone to believe that you teamed up with a maniac just to get a mere twenty-five million dollars in ransom? I don’t buy it, my partner doesn’t buy it, and I guarantee you a jury won’t buy it. You had your eye on Veronica’s money from the get-go.”

“Not true,” Erin said, slumping back into her chair. “Not true.”

“Then why would you have yourself kidnapped?”

“You wouldn’t understand. This Red cop shit sounds good on paper—a big fancy police force that caters to the high-rollers. But then it falls apart because you’re all nickel-and-dime players. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”

“Enlighten us.”

“I’ve been world-fucking-famous for twenty years, but I’ve got a clock on me, and it’s ticking louder and louder. It’s saying, ‘Erin, your fan base is aging out, the new fans have found a dozen younger idols, and your TV show is about to tank.’ I’m not an actress. I’m not a performer. I’m a personality. I’m a brand, and my brand was starting to circle the drain.

“I’ve seen it happen to other women, and it’s not pretty. One day you’re an A-list superstar with money pouring in and then all of a sudden you’re a face in the where-are-they-now montage on BuzzFeed. The money’s not coming in anymore, but it never stops going out, and I could see myself in five years doing game shows, showing up with my tits half out at insurance conventions in Vegas, and starring in cosmetics infomercials aimed at a bunch of desperate women who think their lives would be better if they looked like me.

“My career was on life support. And then