The Wrong Man - Kate White Page 0,22

after her wallet, too. But maybe he’d been after something more, something she wasn’t even aware of.

I have nothing for you, she wanted to scream.

She laid her coat on her roller bag and walked the length of the window, trying to quell her thoughts. She was leaping way too ahead of things. There was no proof yet that Healy had even been murdered. His business trip could have very well been to Miami and this was all a bizarre coincidence. But these assurances did nothing to ease her distress.

It took Molinari a few minutes to pull up the car, a dark Ford Taurus. She leaned across the seat and eased the passenger door open for Kit.

“You doing okay?” Molinari asked as she maneuvered out of the parking lot. Though the AC was now blasting, the car was hot as hell inside from sitting in the sun and Kit wished she could rip off her sweaty leggings and heave them out the window.

“It’s just hard to make sense of it,” she said. “But I remembered a couple of things you need to be aware of.”

She related Healy’s mention of a business trip, and her memory of handing over her business card that day at Ithaka.

“I thought you said you hadn’t given him a card,” Molinari declared.

“Well, I hadn’t given Healy a card,” Kit said, wishing it hadn’t come out so defensively. She didn’t want to seem in any way suspicious. “But I gave one to that Mr. Ungaro, the security chief I mentioned to you on the phone. And maybe he passed it on to Matt Healy.”

“We’ll need contact information for him and Healy’s boss.”

“I just have their names and the main number for Ithaka, but I’ll give you that.”

“It could be that Healy’s business dealings were in Miami and his death is a standard hit and run,” Molinari said, reiterating Kit’s own thought. “But it’s the kind of coincidence I don’t like. When you spoke to Healy, did he ever indicate he might try to track down the person who’d stolen his wallet?”

“No, not at all. Needless to say, he was upset about the possibility of his identity being stolen, but he made a big point of wanting me to talk to Ungaro, like it would be the security chief’s responsibility to look into it—not his.”

“And this meeting was Friday, you said?”

“Uh huh. At noon.”

“Let’s finish discussing this at the office,” she said. “I’d like my partner to join us for the interview, and it’s important for me to get some notes down.”

That would make the experience so official, Kit thought anxiously. She told herself that she would have to summon a way to chill. If she acted flustered, the cops might suspect that her nerves were due to the fact that she was concealing the truth.

The drive to the station took about ten minutes. They rode in silence, past endless white buildings that seemed to pulse in the bright sunlight. Minutes later, as they stepped off the elevator onto Molinari’s floor, Kit couldn’t shake the false sense that she was guilty of something.

Molinari offered her a chair in a bullpen area of desks, all belonging, Kit assumed, to detectives—several talking on their phones, others typing or confabbing with colleagues. The mix was about thirty percent female. Kit was introduced to Molinari’s partner, Detective Todd, who had just ended a call. He was nice looking, maybe late thirties, wearing a short-sleeved white linen shirt. He seemed like the kind of guy who coached kids’ soccer on the weekends.

“What can I get you to drink?” Todd asked. “Coffee?”

“Just water, thanks,” she said. As he rose to fetch it, she suddenly felt overwhelmed with fatigue.

“Give me a sec, too, will you?” Molinari asked. She crossed the room and spoke quietly to an older man at the far end. Probably, Kit figured, a boss who was eager for an update. She glanced worriedly at her watch. If she wasn’t out of there in thirty minutes, she would surely miss her flight.

The two detectives returned almost simultaneously. After handing Kit a plastic glass of water, Todd perched on the edge of his own desk and Molinari sat at hers, typing notes on the computer. She asked Kit to start from the very beginning and describe X as best as she could and anything that he said or did that might be pertinent.

She shared everything she recalled about X personally, including his supposed plan to head to Miami. She mentioned the dinner, just as she

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