The Stranger
Page 58

Johanna smiled. “So that’s how you want to play it.”
“I’m not playing it any way. I just want to know—”
“Why we are asking. We will get to that.” She pointed to the photograph. “Do you know her, yes or no?”
“We’ve never met.”
“Oh wow,” Johanna Griffin said.
“What?”
“Now you’re going to play semantics games with us? Do you know who she is, yes or no?”
“I think I do.”
“Super, terrific. Who is she?”
“You don’t know?”
“This isn’t about what we know, Adam. And really, I don’t have time, so let’s cut to it. Her name is Ingrid Prisby. You paid John Bonner, a parking attendant at an American Legion Hall, two hundred dollars to give you her license plate number. You had that number traced by a retired police detective named Michael Rinsky. Do you want to tell us why you did all that?”
Adam said nothing.
“What’s your connection to Ingrid Prisby?”
“No connection,” he said carefully. “I just wanted to ask her something.”
“Ask her what?”
Adam felt his head spin.
“Adam?”
It didn’t escape his notice that she had moved from calling him Mr. Price to the more informal Adam. He glanced toward the corner. Len Gilman had his arms folded. His face was impassive.
“I was hoping she could help me with a confidential matter.”
“Forget confidential, Adam.” She reached into her briefcase again and produced another photograph. “Do you know this woman?”
She put down a picture of a smiling woman who looked to be about Johanna Griffin’s age. Adam shook his head.
“No, I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t recognize her.”
“Her name is Heidi Dann.” Johanna Griffin’s voice was a little off now. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
“No.”
Johanna locked eyes with him. “Be sure, Adam.”
“I am. I don’t know this woman. I don’t recognize her name.”
“Where’s your wife?”
The sudden change of topics threw him.
“Adam?”
“What does my wife have to do with any of this?”
“You’re full of questions, aren’t you?” There was steel in her voice now. “That’s getting really annoying. I understand that your wife is suspected of stealing a lot of money.”
Adam glanced back toward Len. Still impassive. “Is that what this is about? False allegations?”
“Where is she?”
Adam considered his next move carefully. “She’s traveling.”
“Where?”
“She didn’t say. What the hell is going on here?”
“I want to know—”
“I don’t really care what you want to know. Am I under arrest?”
“No.”
“So I can get up and go at any time, correct?”
Johanna Griffin glared at him. “That is right, yes.”
“Just so we’re clear, Chief Griffin.”
“We are.”
Adam sat up a little straighter, trying to press the advantage. “And now you’re asking me about my wife. So either tell me what’s going on right now or . . .”
Johanna Griffin took out another photograph.
She slid the photograph across the table without saying a word. Adam froze. He stared down at the photograph. No one moved. No one spoke. Adam felt his world teeter. He tried to right himself, tried to speak.
“Is this . . . ?”
“Ingrid Prisby?” Johanna finished for him. “Yes, Adam, that’s Ingrid Prisby, the woman you might know.”
Adam was having trouble breathing.
“According to the coroner, the cause of death was a bullet to the brain. But before that, what you’re seeing there? In case you’re wondering, we believe that the killer did that to her with a box cutter. We don’t know how long she suffered.”
Adam couldn’t look away.
Johanna Griffin produced another photograph. “Heidi Dann was shot in the kneecap first. We don’t know how long the killer tortured her either, but eventually, the same thing. A bullet to the brain.”
Adam managed to swallow. “And you think . . . ?”
“We don’t know what to think. We want to know what you know about this.”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Really? Let me run down the chronology for you, then. Ingrid Prisby of Austin, Texas, flew into Newark airport from Houston. She stayed for one night alone at the Courtyard Marriott by the airport. While here, she rented a car and drove to the American Legion Hall in Cedarfield. There was a man in the car with her. That man talked to you inside the American Legion Hall. We don’t know what was said, but we do know that sometime later, you paid off a parking attendant to get her license plate and presumably you tracked the two of them down. Meanwhile, Ingrid drove that same rental car all the way to Beachwood, Ohio, where she had a conversation with this woman.”
With a shaking hand, with something that looked like barely controlled rage, Johanna Griffin put her finger on the photograph of Heidi Dann.
“Sometime after that, this woman, Heidi Dann, was shot in the kneecap and then in the head. In her own home. Not long after—we are still putting the timetable together, but sometime between twelve and twenty-four hours later—Ingrid Prisby was mutilated and murdered in a motel room in Columbia, New Jersey, right near the Delaware Water Gap.”
She sat back.
“So how do you fit in, Adam?”
“You can’t possibly . . .”
But they did.
Adam needed time. He needed to get his head together and think it through and try to figure out what to do here.
“Does this have anything to do with your marriage?” Johanna Griffin asked.
He looked up. “What?”
“Len tells me you and Corinne had some difficulties a few years back.”
Adam’s eyes snapped to the corner. “Len?”
“Those were the rumors, Adam.”
“So police work involves gossip?”
“Not just gossip,” Johanna continued. “Who is Kristin Hoy?”
“What? She’s my wife’s close friend.”
“And yours too, right? You two have been in communication a lot lately.”
“Because—” He stopped himself.