Crash Into Me - L.A. Fiore Page 0,4
place would have been tossed. I strolled around the living room. It was pretty lived-in for someone who was only here temporarily. “He corroborated the salon appointment, but we’ll call and confirm she was there and establish the timeline. When was she meeting Frank?” I asked.
Zac checked his notebook. “12:30pm.”
“So she pampers herself at the salon. Goes to tea at the Plaza, spends part of her evening at the reception and ends her night with a run.” At least her last day had been a good one.
“Her laptop is here, files,” Zac said, using his pen to lift the cover on the top file. “We need the team to process this like yesterday.” He reached for his phone to get an ETA.
“I’ll call the salon to confirm when she was there, and then I say, we hunt down this Frank Harris,” I suggested.
“Works for me.”
The Daily Examiner office was actually an apartment in a walkup in Queens. There were boxes of papers lining the walls; the windows hadn’t been cleaned in a while. A desk sat in the middle of the room, an old laptop on it. Frank Harris was in his forties, looking like a throwback to Woodstock. His hair was long and greasy, his glasses sliding off his nose. How did a man like this afford to take Samantha James to The Plaza for tea? One thing that was clear, whatever Frank’s involvement, his shock at hearing that Samantha was dead was genuine. What I found curious was that I saw fear, too.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, as he paced in front of his desk. “I just talked with her yesterday.”
“Where were you from eight to ten last night?” Zac asked.
“At home.”
“Can anyone verify that?” I asked.
Frank clued in when his eyes went wide. “You think I hurt Samantha?”
“You were one of the last people to see her. We need to rule you out, so can anyone confirm your whereabouts?” I asked again.
“Yeah, my neighbor. She came over, and we watched a movie.”
“Name?” Zac demanded, pulling out his notepad.
“Emily Duncan. Lives across the hall, apartment ten.”
“Why the interest in Samantha?” Zac asked.
Frank stood and paced, not that he got far with all the boxes. For an online publication, he sure kept a lot of paper.
“Her boss,” Frank said.
Zac didn’t hide his surprise when he questioned, “Milton Teller? Why are you interested in Milton Teller?”
Frank stopped pacing and looked at us like we’d just beamed down from a spaceship. “Katrina Dent.”
The name seemed vaguely familiar.
“Who’s that?” Zac asked.
“You don’t know…” Frank started to pace again. “Katrina Dent, the movie star.” He stopped pacing. “None of this is ringing any bells?”
Zac and I shared a look. “Why are you interested in her?” I asked.
“Because she’s dead.”
Were we dealing with a potential serial killer? “When did this happen?” Zac had his pen to the paper.
“1989.”
That was when Frank lost me. It took effort to hide my exasperation. I was all for conspiracy theories; I had a few of my own, but there was a fine line, and I suspected Frank, here, was on the wrong side of that line.
Zac was more patient. “Katrina Dent was murdered?”
“It was ruled a suicide, but I believe she was murdered.”
And that’s where he lost Zac.
While Zac rolled his eyes, I sought confirmation to my suspicions. “And Milton represented Katrina at the time of her death?”
“Yes,” Frank said, then added, “I hoped that Samantha knew more about it, working for Milton. It was really big news back then.”
“Did she?”
He hesitated, before he said, “No.”
He wasn’t telling us everything.
“Why do you think Katrina Dent was murdered?” Zac asked.
“Because she was terrified of razors. Had a bad experience as a kid,” he said, waiting for us to connect the dots.
“And she was found—” I started, but he finished.
“Slit wrists. There are countless ways to kill yourself, ways that are more effective than slitting your wrists.” He moved to one of the boxes, rummaged through it and pulled out some crime scene photos.
“How the hell do you have those?” Zac demanded.
“Case is closed, so the reports and photos are public record. Look,” he said, but I already was. Katrina Dent looked like a movie star, even in the final picture of her life. Pretty and young, a life cut short way too soon. “There’s no hesitation and the cuts were deep. Someone afraid of razors would have needed a few tries.”
He made a good point, but then, in my experience, when