Private Beijing

Chapter 58

Justine’s phone rang at 8:27 a.m. and she woke feeling half stunned from a dreamless and all too brief sleep. She answered the call.

“Hello.”

“Miss Smith,” Detective Salazar said. “If you bring her down to the precinct, I can get Mrs. Lucas five minutes with her husband.”

“We’re on our way,” Justine said, running her hand over her face as she rose from the chair.

She hung up and crossed the room to rouse Alison.

After Angel had been flown away by helicopter yesterday, Salazar had arranged for an ambulance to take Alison to Presbyterian Hospital, and Justine had gone with her. A uniformed female police officer, a specialist in violence against women, had taken Alison’s statement while she was waiting for the results of medical tests. Justine had been relived to discover Angel hadn’t been overtly violent toward her during her ordeal locked in one of the bedrooms of the run-down house, though she had been manhandled when he’d snatched her off the street.

She had finally been discharged at 3 a.m. but couldn’t stand the idea of going home while Rafael was being held in custody, so Justine had taken her to the New York Edition and shared her own hotel room.

Justine had sat in an armchair and watched Alison toss and turn in bed. She was deeply distressed, but it was hard to tell whether she was more traumatized by the abduction or by her husband’s incarceration. It had been around 6 a.m. when Alison finally fell into a deep sleep, which allowed Justine to drift off too.

Ten minutes after waking, after a change of clothes, they were in a cab heading for the Twentieth Precinct. Justine had given Alison a green T-shirt and blue jeans, which clashed with the high heels she’d been wearing when she had been abducted. They were bright silver, embellished with sequins and tiny crystals. Lovely with the silver cocktail dress she had been wearing for her night out with friends, but impractical for daytime.

“I’m not sure I can do this,” she said when the cab pulled up outside the precinct after fifteen minutes fighting the morning traffic.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Justine responded. “Your husband did what he thought was right, remember.”

She found the words hard to utter because she felt they somehow betrayed the memory of Lewis, and Jessie, too, who was still hospitalized as a result of Rafael’s actions. But Alison was an innocent in all this and she deserved some comfort.

They went into the precinct. Salazar was waiting in the quiet lobby.

“Good morning, Miss Smith, Mrs. Lucas,” he said. “Follow me.”

He used a key card and punched a code into an alphanumeric pad to get through the lobby security door into the operations area. Justine and Alison followed him past offices into a plain corridor that led to the holding cells and interview rooms.

There were four doors to Justine’s right, each leading to an interview room. To her left was a double door that gave access to the cells.

“He’s in here,” Detective Salazar said, stopping outside the second door.

Alison took a deep breath, closed her glistening eyes to compose herself, and then nodded.

Salazar opened the door and she stepped inside.

Justine saw Rafael try to rise from his chair, but his hands were cuffed to an anchor on the table in front of him.

Justine couldn’t see Alison’s face, but she saw her shudder and tears filled Rafael’s eyes.

Salazar closed the door but Justine could still see the couple through the observation window. Alison sat opposite her husband, although it seemed to Justine that she had partly collapsed, as if her legs had given out on her as she sank into the chair.

“What a mess,” Salazar remarked. Justine nodded. “We’re still figuring out what to charge him with because he was under duress. The DA will make a recommendation.”

Justine was deeply conflicted. Rafael had been put in an awful position by a man who was a proven killer. He’d made some bad choices but wasn’t an inherently bad man, nor a willing accomplice. She didn’t envy the people who had to unpick the legal points here and felt nothing but sympathy for Alison. She was another of Angel’s victims and would have to live with the consequences of his evil actions for the rest of her life.

Justine simply hoped Secretary Carver’s people would break him and then decide on the best way for him to be punished.