Airtight by David Rosenfelt Page B

apparently ended quite a while before his death. Steven’s phone records showed calls from Ms. Schmitz with some frequency, calls that continued pretty much until the time I shot him. So she was someone we needed to talk to.
    Laura worked as a waitress at the Plaza Diner in Fort Lee. Emmit and I stopped at the cash register in the front, where the manager was handling the register. When I flashed my badge and told him we needed to talk to Laura, he pointed to a woman behind the counter.
    “Laura, these guys are here to see you.”
    She looked up, saw us, and quickly left the counter area, through an open door to the back. Emmit and I took off in pursuit.
    It wasn’t a long pursuit. Laura was standing in a corridor, adjacent to the kitchen, staring at the floor and looking angry.
    “You son of a bitch,” she said to me when we reached her. “You son of a bitch.”
    “I’m sorry, Laura. I know Steven was your friend.”
    “He was a beautiful person. And you shot him like an animal.”
    “It was not something I wanted to happen,” I said.
    She shook her head sadly. “You and me both.”
    “We just have to ask you a few questions.”
    “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
    “Laura, don’t make this harder than it has to be. If you won’t answer the questions here, then you’ll have to go down to the station with us. You could be there a very long time.”
    She seemed to consider this, but didn’t say anything. I took it as an invitation to continue. There was an open office off the corridor, and I suggested we go in there. She didn’t answer, but went into the office, and Emmit and I followed.
    “Laura, do you know where Steven was on Friday night, just before midnight?”
    “He was home.”
    “You saw him there?” I asked.
    “No, but I spoke to him on the phone at about seven o’clock.”
    “What did he say?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “You don’t remember?”
    “He wasn’t making much sense,” she said, then added grudgingly, “He was using.”
    “Did he say what he was planning to do later that night?” Emmit asked.
    She frowned at the question, as if she considered it stupid. “He wasn’t planning anything. When he got like that, he didn’t go out. He stayed in his apartment and wasted his life.” Then she looked at me. “Until you ended it.”
    “But you can’t say for sure that he stayed home that night?”
    She wouldn’t give in. “I’m sure.”
    “Did he sound angry?”
    “The only person Steven Gallagher was ever angry at was himself,” she said.
    “Can you give us the names of some of his other friends? Maybe people who saw him or spoke to him that night?”
    “I was his only friend, besides his brother. And I wasn’t there for him.”
    “Do you know where his brother is?” I asked.
    “No.”
    “Have you seen him in the last couple of days?”
    She nodded. “The night before last, but I haven’t seen him since.”
    I asked if she had an address for him, but she said that she didn’t, and I believed her. Then I asked her if she had anything else to say.
    She did.
    “The idea that Steven Gallagher found out where that judge lived, that he even remembered the judge’s name, is ridiculous. The idea that he went to his house that night is even dumber. The idea that he killed him is beyond stupid. And the fact that you murdered Steven Gallagher means you are going to rot in hell.”
    As interrogations go, that one was not great.

 
    Bryan Somers couldn’t wait three hours to check e-mail.
    He made it to two hours and fifteen minutes, and turned on the computer, simultaneously vowing to himself to wait the full three hours next time. This was extra important, he said, because it would reveal whether Luke was getting the messages.
    When the machine powered on, the first thing he looked at was the percentage of power remaining, displayed in an icon near the top. It said “96%,” which pleased Bryan. He had been afraid that the simple acts of turning the