Читать книгу No Way Back: Part 3 of 3 - Andrew Gross, Andrew Gross - Страница 6

“Do you know the name Curtis Kitchner?” I asked him.

“Kitchner? If I recall, he was the guy who was killed in New York up in that room?”

“That’s correct.”

He shrugged. “Then only what I’ve heard on the news.”

“Mr. Bachman, I did an incredibly foolish thing. I ended up in someone’s hotel room I had no right being in. I’d never done anything like that before in my life. But nothing happened up there … and I’ve had nothing to do with the murders I’m being implicated in. I was actually in the bathroom, preparing to leave, when I heard someone else come into the room.”

Bachman said, “I’m listening …”

Harried, I explained the whole thing to him. Hruseff. Curtis. How the agent killed him right in front of my eyes, and the second gun fell across the bed to me. “This person was a Homeland Security agent, Mr. Bachman. And I watched him kill Curtis. Not in a shoot-out. Not under any threat, or in self-defense as it’s been alleged. But in cold blood. Right in front of my eyes. Right there on the bed.”

Bachman shook his head in puzzlement at me. “Why?”

“That I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Curtis was a journalist. He was working on something that implicated the U.S. government in a shooting in Mexico. Look, I found something he wrote on the subject …” I reached inside my pocket and took out a copy of the article. “I’m certain he found out something to do with the Mexican drug trade. Something he shouldn’t have.”

“You said this other person in the room was a Homeland Security agent. He identified himself?”

“No. Afterward, I looked through his pockets and found his ID. And if he was an agent, he damn well wasn’t up there for any good. He was only there to kill Curtis, Mr. Bachman.”

The lawyer nodded, taking it in. We heard a car door slam, and a man who had parked nearby walked up to the elevator. Bachman smiled briefly, uttering, “Morning,” as I looked away. The elevator opened and the man stepped in. Then Bachman turned back to me. “The problem is, Ms. Gould, two other people ended up dead.”

I told him the rest. How I picked up the gun, knowing that the killer would come for me in the bathroom. How I identified myself and still the guy just raised his weapon. “Yes, I shot him. He was preparing to shoot me.”

“And then you just ran?”

I told him how I ran from the room and how the guy’s partner tried to silence me too. Then I told him how Dave died as well. I went through the whole thing. “Not in the kitchen. Not by my hand. They shot him! I left that gun on the bed back in that hotel room, Mr. Bachman. I swear!”

He kept looking at me with this lawyerly, evaluating stare. I had no idea if he actually believed me. But I kept going.

“I tried to turn myself in. You heard what happened at Grand Central the other day. I wasn’t trying to run away. They’re trying to silence me, Mr. Bachman. For what I saw. A close friend was trying to work out my arrest, and he ended up being shot too. That’s why I can’t turn myself in. Not until I find out why they’re trying to kill me.”

“So how do I fit in?” he asked. “Assuming I even believe all this. You said I was the only person who could help you.”

I reached inside my jeans and pulled out Curtis’s BlackBerry.

“I took this from Curtis’s hotel room when I ran. It belonged to him.” I pushed the power button and then scrolled through Curtis’s pictures. “This is the last one he took. Just a couple of days before he died.”

I held it out and watched Bachman’s eyes go wide. He stared at the photo of Lauritzia Velez.