me talk to my client.’
He handed the phone back to Lafaye who sat down now, her face pale, her worried aide hovering nearby as the plane boarded.
‘Please don’t do this. You don’t know how important this dinner is.’
She pleaded and Raveneau asked, ‘Do you want to come downtown and tell us what happened? Your lawyer can meet us there.’
The warning about unattended luggage drowned out what she said next. The United Seattle flight finished loading and a gate near them streamed passengers unloading.
‘If we had more information it might look different, but I’m afraid where things stand right now, we’re very close to charging you,’ he said.
‘Do that and you may ruin your career, Inspector.’
‘I don’t need your help to ruin it.’
He came close to saying, you went to Alex Jurika’s apartment and she lied to you, and the next night you killed her. Almost said it, but held back, and she seemed to read his mind.
‘You know very well I didn’t kill her.’
‘We know that you’ve been lying to us. That much we’ve figured out, and that’s what we’re operating off right now, and you’re gambling you can back us down and that you’ve got the juice to keep us from pressuring you. Maybe you’re right, then again, maybe you’re not. This is our offer. Security here at the airport is under SFPD, so if you want we can go to a room and you can tell us the truth, and maybe we can work this out and you still catch a flight. Otherwise, your lawyer can meet us at Bryant. It’s your call.’
She didn’t make that call for a long minute, and after she did they led her to the airport security office, got her a chair, and shut the door. In that room she finally gave it up.
‘I didn’t go to her apartment for a drink the Wednesday before she was killed. I went because she was a thief and a liar and I needed to talk alone with her. And I don’t care that she’s dead. Good riddance, and as to the bitch who sold me her identity, Erin Quinn, she was a friend of Jurika’s and she’s been extorting me with Jurika’s help for too many years.’
‘You’ve paid Erin Quinn money.’
‘You need to carry your notebook more often. I’ve been telling you that Quinn has extorted me. Those payments were made through Jurika. I’ve paid her more money every year since the foundation became more successful. At first it was another twenty thousand. She said she hadn’t been given enough for her identity and then it was more, and so forth.’
‘And why didn’t you go—’
‘To the police and tell them I’d bought someone’s identity and there are places where I travel under a false passport, and that I’ve paid money to keep the woman whose true name is Erin Quinn quiet. The mistake I made was paying anything in the first place, but at the time I thought the alternate identity would have very negative repercussions. Besides, Quinn let me know through Jurika that she considered her identity stolen and that’s what she was going to go out with. Jurika, of course, would deny having ever sold it to me. How do you think my board of directors would react to that in this age we live in, where no one has the patience any more to wait for the truth?’
She paused, then added, ‘The day I met Jurika at her apartment she asked for another twenty-five thousand. I stalled and hired a private investigator.’
‘Give us a name and a way to reach this investigator,’ la Rosa said, and Lafaye pulled a card from her purse as Raveneau asked, ‘Why did you lie about what happened on the boat?’
‘I told you the God’s truth.’
‘Stoltz knew when to be at Lake Merced.’
‘I set up a meeting through Jurika. I was to meet Quinn there, pay her the twenty-five thousand, and the private investigator was going to follow her when she left, and then with the help of the authorities we were going to go after her. But I was in the hospital. I didn’t make it to the meeting.’
‘Was the investigator there?’
‘Yes.’
Raveneau studied her a moment and then stepped out of the room with la Rosa.
‘Let’s get her to call the investigator and we’ll go talk to him. She can go on to Seattle with the understanding this isn’t over.’
La Rosa’s answer was, ‘If we do that we may never get the answer.’
‘I’ll try her one