Tourist Trap (Rebecca Schwartz #3) (A Rebecca Schwartz Mystery) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

Charlie Fish? What do you mean, ‘So’? I said a man just called me and said he’s the Trapper. It’s your story—don’t you even care?”
    “Anybody might have called you—or maybe nobody did. Or maybe you caused the bridge accident to make it look like your client’s innocent and now you’re claiming you got a call from the Trapper. It’s happened before, I hear.”
    “You’re being insulting.”
    “I’m just saying how am I supposed to believe you? Did you tape the conversation?”
    “No, I—”
    “Well, if you haven’t got a tape, what have you got?”
    I hung up on him. He was a warty little brat, but he had a point—how was I going to get anyone to believe me? And where the hell was Rob when I needed him? I dialed him at home and still got no answer. Then I went to see Liz Hughes, hoping like hell she hadn’t left for lunch yet.
    Her office, shared with another lawyer, was one of the closet-sized cubicles our public servants are forced to inhabit—if they were unionized, there’d be a strike over working conditions. It was hardly bigger than mine.
    Liz was wearing a peach-colored wool suit with beige blouse. I was wearing the same suit in black, with a white blouse—I’d been so worried about Dad that morning I hadn’t even noticed.
    She gave me an ironic smile. “I like your outfit.”
    “Half price at Neiman-Marcus.”
    “Pretty classy. I got mine at the Emporium.”
    I couldn’t believe it. We were talking about clothes. How to extricate myself from inanities and get down to business? But Liz did it. “You seem upset,” she said.
    I noticed she hadn’t asked me to sit, but I felt too weak to stand any longer. I flopped into the one rigid wooden chair she had for visitors.
    She said: “I hope your father’s okay.”
    “My father.” I’d forgotten about him. “I haven’t heard yet. I had another kind of excitement. The Trapper called.”
    She raised an eyebrow.
    “Someone called me and whispered. He said he caused the accident on the bridge.”
    “I guess you have to expect those kinds of calls.” She was trying to be nice, but she wanted me in her office like she wanted a scorpion in her shoe.
    “He said he threw a rock at someone’s windshield.” I explained exactly how he said he’d done it. She took careful notes, looking very efficient. “And then he said he wanted a million dollars to stop.”
    “Did he say how he wanted the money delivered.”
    “No. He said he’d call back. ” I wasn’t about to tell her he’d told me to get it into the paper.
    She smiled very politely. “It sounds like a nut call, don’t you think?”
    “Liz, he told me how he did it.”
    “It’s already been on the radio.”
    I was speechless. And furious with Charlie Fish for not telling me. “I didn’t know. But, listen, if that’s how it happened, then
somebody
did it—how do you know it wasn’t my caller?”
    She shrugged, and I could see by the way her shoulders strained against the light wool that she paid regular visits to a gym. She had time for a husband and two kids, too—Superwoman in a peach suit. “It might have been your caller. Don’t you think you should file a police report?”
    “I will, of course. But won’t you at least entertain the notion that maybe you’ve got the wrong man?”
    “That would be pretty hard on my morale.”
    “Liz, I know who the Trapper is.”
    “Rebecca, listen. This is an important case to both of us. We’ve both got to try it tomorrow. I don’t mean to be rude, but if I listen to this I’m going to have to get up two hours early to meditate tomorrow: I really can’t afford to have you throw off my equilibrium at this point.”
    “You think this is some kind of ploy?”
    “I have no doubt you’re sincere. But I’m equally convinced we have the right man. That’s the way it has to be or I wouldn’t be trying the case.”
    If I were Superwoman, I’d have rudely stayed exactly where I was, pouring out the whole story—to throw her precious equilibrium off, if for no other reason. But there was something about the imperious way she spoke that stopped me cold. I wasn’t a little bit intimidated, I was out of my depth. I’m ashamed to say I let her get away with it.
    Filing the police report was no picnic, either. I thought I could just go down to the first floor of the Hall of Justice and tell my story at Southern Station. But the young patrolman I talked to would have none of it. He excused himself for a