Duchaine shook her head. “The flare-ups can be, but not the disease itself.”
“You were feeling stressed yesterday?”
The fashion icon nodded. “I had a ridiculous amount of design work due.”
“Nothing to do with finances?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think about finances. That was Paula’s job. And Ari’s.”
In the observation booth, Bree said, “Don’t let her have a pass on that.”
As if hearing her through the mirror, Detective Salazar said, “You do grasp your financial situation, though, correct?”
The fashion icon looked at her attorney. “What’s she asking?”
French looked at Salazar, seeming puzzled. “What financial situation is that?”
The detective rubbed her belly before saying, “By several accounts, your company has experienced a seventeen percent decline in revenues in the aftermath of a massive expansion of your retail arm. Your company now carries a crushing debt load. You have balloon payments on over four hundred million dollars, which you are personally on the hook for, coming due in less than ninety days. Do you understand, Frances?”
It was the first time Salazar had addressed Duchaine by her first name. The fashion mogul tried to act imperious. “I don’t have the foggiest what you’re talking about, Detective … whatever your name is.”
“With all due respect, Frances, you are either a liar or a fool.”
Her attorney stood. “That’s enough.”
“Not by a long shot, Counselor,” Salazar said firmly. “Sit down or we’ll start looking into your role in all of this.”
“My role in all of what?” French demanded.
“A criminal enterprise inside Duchaine Inc. that’s engaged in human trafficking here in the city and over state lines to underpin the company’s and Frances’s rotting finances. Those are city, state, and federal offenses, Counselor, with extreme penalties.”
CHAPTER 55
KATRINA FRENCH LOST MOST of her color and sank back into her seat.
“What?” the attorney said and glanced at Frances Duchaine, who seemed equally shocked.
Detective Thompson, who had been silent for several minutes, sat forward and jabbed a finger at Frances Duchaine. “Tell her.”
“Tell her what?” the fashion icon demanded.
“That you lured young women and men to New York with promises of careers in modeling and fashion,” he said. “Then you hoodwinked them into debt and gave them one way out—prostitution. All so you could go on making pretty dresses.”
Duchaine had recoiled from the assault and looked to her attorney for support. “Katrina, I honestly have no idea what this is about.”
In the observation booth, Bree said, “Sure you do.”
In the interrogation room, Thompson said, “Don’t lie, Ms. Duchaine. There are lawsuits over this that were sealed. I’ve interviewed young women and men who were caught up in your web. I believe them.”
Salazar said, “We’re searching Paula Watkins’s computers, Ari Bernstein’s computers, and the computers of everyone who died last night. We have also been granted a warrant to look at your personal and corporate computers, Frances. We’re going to find evidence you were involved.”
Duchaine lashed out. “You will not! I had nothing to do with whatever you are alleging. Nothing!”
“C’mon, Ms. Duchaine,” Detective Thompson said wearily. “You had to have known what last night was about. The after-party? Paula’s sex-slave auction?”
“What after-party?” she said, sounding bewildered. “What auction? No. Paula would never be involved in such a thing.”
“Well, we believe she was involved up to her eyeballs,” Salazar said. “Why else would she invite Russian and Irish mob bosses to her home? Why invite a sheikh known to traffic in underage sex slaves?”
In the observation booth, Bree shifted, thinking that last bit was a stretch.
But it got through to Duchaine, who looked rattled. “They were there?”
Thompson said, “They were, and they died. Maybe they got Paula killed. Maybe the whole sordid party and the sordid people involved got Paula and Ari and nine other people murdered by professionals.”
Duchaine’s attorney said, “I think we’ve heard enough. Ms. Duchaine says she had no knowledge of this crazy scheme you allege happened and she’s confident you’ll find no evidence of—”
Detective Salazar spoke right over the lawyer. “We think Paula crossed someone, Frances. Someone dangerous. Someone ruthless.”
Duchaine seemed to shrink a little. “Like who?”
“Maybe a rival crime boss,” Thompson said. “Maybe a Middle Eastern government.”
He let that hang a moment before adding, “Or maybe someone less obvious. Maybe someone who thought things had gone too far. Someone who decided to end the sex ring and stop the slave auction before it could happen.”
Bree could feel a crackling tension in the short silence that followed.
Then Salazar leaned forward in her chair and said, “Someone who wasn’t at the party. Someone like you, Frances. Are you behind the killings? Did you order them?”
Katrina French threw an arm across Duchaine’s chest and said, “Don’t answer that question, Frances. Don’t answer any of their questions. We are done here.”
CHAPTER 56
Washington, DC
ALTHOUGH SAMPSON AND I had been impressed by Thomas Tull’s calm, collected answers to our tougher questions, we’d given him a hard no on being a fly on the wall.
He’d wanted to know if we’d mind him asking the DC police chief, and we’d told him to go right ahead. Afterward, we spoke with Chief Michaels, who said he thought the exposure might be good for the department, especially if we caught the Family Man killer. But when we explained why Tull was a suspect, he agreed that until we cleared the writer, he would get no access whatsoever.
Which was why that Thursday evening we were hunkered down in an unmarked squad car up the street from the town house in Georgetown that Tull had leased.
A late-model midnight-blue Audi RS 7 was parked in front of the town house’s green door. The building was dark but for a single light shining in a second-floor window.
“How long are we going to give it?” Sampson asked.
It was a pleasant spring night. We had the windows open. I said, “Ordinarily, I’d be down for midnight at least, but Bree texted that she’s on her way back from New York. I’d like to see her before she goes to sleep.”
“And Willow’s babysitter can only stay till ten thirty,” Sampson said. “So, ten?”
“Ten it is,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later, a fit woman in her forties with short dark hair walked up to Tull’s place; she was wearing a worn leather jacket, jeans, and cowboy boots, and she carried a heavy messenger bag over one shoulder.
She dug in the bag, retrieved a large manila envelope, put it in Tull’s mail slot, and continued on. She passed us without looking our way and disappeared around the corner.
“Who’s she?” Sampson asked.
“No clue.”
A few moments later, the light in Tull’s second-story window went out.