to the FBI,” he reported. “I’ll call my contact there first thing Monday.”
By Sunday she had two more calls from Kelman, one with a voice message and one without. She dreaded the thought of listening to them, but Naylor had told her to do it and she was running out of time.
She started with the very first one Kelman had left on Thursday night, after admitting to his involvement with Sasha. It was a second plea for her to give him five minutes, a promise that his explanation would put everything in perspective. Yeah, right, she thought.
The next message, she could see, was far longer. She tapped the play arrow.
“Kit, even if you refuse to call me back, I need you to understand what really happened,” he said. He claimed that he’d had a very brief fling with Sasha not long after his break-up with the Australian. They’d spent no more than three nights together, but she had become fixated on him and had begun implying to people that they were seriously dating. He thought there might be something wrong with her.
“Remember,” he added, “when I told you that I had become disenchanted at Ithaka, that it no longer seemed like the right fit for me. She was a major factor in that.”
Oh, that’s clever, Kit thought. He’s using the Alex (“I-won’t-be-ignored, Dan”) Forrest defense, from that movie, Fatal Attraction.
His voice sounded much different in the voicemail message he’d left today: flat and emotionless, almost cold.
“This is my last call, Kit. You won’t hear from me again. But I’ve done what I promised I would. I thought you should know.”
Did that mean he’d gone to the authorities finally? It sounded like that. But how could she be sure?
Nat Naylor texted her at nine the next morning, saying he would be speaking to his contact shortly and would circle back after that. While the phone was still in her hands, it rang again, a number she didn’t recognize.
“Ms. Finn,” the male caller said when she identified herself. “This is Special Agent Frank Taft from the FBI. How are you doing today?”
“Um, I’m fine,” she said, confused. There was no way Nat could have made the call already.
“We’ve been informed that you have information you want to share with us. I’d like to arrange for you to come in today and talk to us about it.”
“You spoke to my attorney?”
A pause.
“No, I did not. You can bring an attorney if you like, but it’s not necessary.”
“But who told you about me? We were planning to call today ourselves.”
“I’m not at liberty to say at this moment.”
But she knew without a doubt. It had been Kelman.
chapter 21
So he’d done what he’d promised. He’d gone to the U.S. Attorney’s office—and they had clearly instructed him to speak to the FBI as well. She explained to the agent that things were already in motion for her to make a statement, hopefully that day, and she would have her attorney call him momentarily. She phoned Naylor back and shared the latest development. In the end, the meeting was set for three o’clock.
When it was time to go, Kit resorted to the diving-into-a-cab method she had relied on twice before, instructing the driver to leave her at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. As the city whizzed by, she tried not to fixate on the interview ahead, knowing that, per Nat, it was best not to sound rehearsed. But she couldn’t keep her mind off Kelman. On the phone, Nat had warned her that they couldn’t rely on the fact that Kelman had told the FBI the same exact story he’d shared with her; there might be landmines she couldn’t anticipate. But due to the fact that he’d gone on Friday, as promised, she sensed that he hadn’t hung her out to dry in any way.
Crowds of people crisscrossed the plaza, and she looked behind her several times as she dashed across it. It was gusty out again today and the wind whipped strands of hair around her face.
Due to security measures, it took her at least ten minutes to make it from the lobby to the designated meeting room on the fifteenth floor. Naylor was already there in the company of two agents. The room was sparsely furnished—nothing more than a table with chairs beneath a portrait of the FBI director. Naylor introduced her to the two agents, who both rose from their seats. One was Taft, the man she’d spoken to on the phone, and