with a clatter, then a scream followed by a crash and a horribly gut-sickening thump—like the sound of a body slamming into a wall. Adrenaline speared through her blood. Lozza tugged up her pants. She was already wearing a T-shirt. She hurried to the door with the phone pressed to her ear. “Where are you, Ellie? What’s going on?”
More thumping. Glass shattering. Muffled sounds.
Lozza found shoes, took her weapon from the safe, checked and loaded it, stuffed it into a holster, and hurried out to her vehicle with the phone still to her ear. She heard nothing more.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, she fired up her engine, put the phone on speaker, and set it in the cup holder. She drove fast for the bridge that would take her over the river. From there she’d cut down to Bonny River Drive. A kangaroo, eyes bright, stopped dead in the middle of the road. She swerved, heart hammering. She had no idea if Ellie had called from her home, but guessed she had because of the printer noises. Perhaps she was back on meds and had passed out. But it had sounded a lot worse.
THE MURDER TRIAL
Now, February. Supreme Court, New South Wales.
A woman with thick auburn hair tumbling to her shoulders takes the stand.
I know very well who she is.
Her testimony will turn jurors against me. My heart beats fast. Lorrington’s team looks tense. This woman is the reason the police came to my door in riot gear. Lorrington is going to have to work hard to swing this back around.
“Can you state your full name and place of residence for the court?” asks Ms. Konikova, the birdlike Crown prosecutor.
“Dana Bainbridge. I live in Vancouver, BC, in Canada.”
The jurors shift in their seats. Some sit up straighter. In my peripheral vision I see the same happen in the court gallery. Everyone is prepped for a climax. All are fully vested in the battle of these narratives. They’re ready for an end.
“Ms. Bainbridge,” says Konikova, “Do you recall receiving a phone call around eleven a.m. Vancouver time on November nineteen just over a year ago?”
Dana leaned toward the mike. “I do.”
“That’s a long time ago—why do you remember that phone call specifically?”
I feel Dana’s attention being pulled to me in the dock. Like the others, she’s probably been advised not to look. And she doesn’t. She keeps her eyes firmly on the prosecutor, clears her throat, and says, “Because it was from her—from Ellie. And it stuck in my mind because it would have been close to four a.m. her time the next day. I thought she might be in trouble, and it jolted me.”
“What did she want?”
“She asked if I remembered a photograph of us that the barman at the Mallard Lounge had taken on her father’s birthday.”
“The Mallard Lounge is where?”
“In the Hartley Plaza Hotel on the Vancouver waterfront. The hotel is named for her father—it was one of his development projects.”
“And what was happening at the Hartley Plaza when you were there?”
“The AGORA convention. It’s an event hosted annually by the Hartley Group, which is Ellie’s father’s company.”
I’m going to throw up. I watch Lorrington’s profile intently. His jaw is tight. He knows what’s coming now.
“What is the AGORA convention?”
Dana is nervous. She reaches for her glass of water with a trembling hand, sips, and says, “Ellie referred to it as a sort of ‘pitch-fest’ or speed-dating event designed to introduce investors to people who need equity financing for various projects, mostly development projects, real estate, that kind of thing.”
The prosecutor consults her notes. “And the patrons in the Mallard Lounge that night, were they part of the AGORA convention, too?”
“A lot of them looked like they were. Business attire, conference name tags, that sort of thing.”
“So all people hungry for money?”
“Objection.” Lorrington rises. “Leading the witness.”
“I’ll rephrase,” says Konikova. “What was the primary goal of most of the hotel occupants that night?”
“Well, people seeking money. Or to loan or invest it and make a profit from it.”
“And why were you and Ellie there?”
She clears her throat. “Ellie had come off a bad dinner with her father when I happened to call her. She suggested I come over, and I was keen to join her for a night on the town. I met her in the Mallard, where she’d had dinner, and we drank a lot more. Then we asked the barman to take some photos of the two of us together.”