Free Catch a Falling Knife by Alan Cook Page B

notebook. “You were the ladies that Elise’s roommate saw.”
    “Donna? We saw her but we didn’t speak to her.”
    “Okay, I need to sort all this out.”
    He looked tired. I wondered if he had been up since midnight. He asked several questions of Tess, and then realizing that he had exhausted her fund of information, he turned back to me and said, “You’re the one I need to talk to. But I want to talk to you alone.”
    “I have some chores to do, anyway,” Tess said. She got up, painfully, as her feet hurt her when she stood after she had been sitting for a while. Then she hobbled out the door.
    I invited Detective Johnson to sit down again, and this time he did. I asked him if he wanted a drink. He said he drank coke. Fortunately, I had bought some cokes for Mark so I got him a can along with a glass with ice in it. Then I sat down on the other end of the sofa. Detective Johnson looked young and I suspected his experience was limited so I decided to help him as much as I could.
    “Do you want me to tell you about my whole day, yesterday?” I asked. “It all has some connection to Elise.”
    He agreed with that approach. I started by telling him that Tess and I had gone to Eric Hoffman’s home.
    “Why did you want to talk to Mr. Hoffman?” he asked.
    “It’s complicated to explain,” I said, “so bear with me.” First I told him about Mr. Hoffman’s website. He acted as if he hadn’t known about it before and he scribbled notes as I talked. Then I said, “I assume you know that Elise had filed a charge of sexual harassment against Mark Pappas. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be looking for Mark.”
    Detective Johnson nodded and I continued, “I think that Elise may have been working as a stripper nights at Club Cavalier.”
    “You just told me her father posted license plate numbers on the Internet for Club Cavalier, as well as other strip joints.”
    “I know.” I told him about the tip I had received from Donna on the Shooting Star and how Albert and I had gone to see her. He took copious notes. “I thought if I could prove that Elise was the Shooting Star, that fact would help Mark’s case, somehow. So I hoped that Mr. Hoffman had connected one of the license plates to somebody who could be connected to Elise. Because, you see, I didn’t know at the time I went to see Mr. Hoffman that he was Elise’s father. In fact, I didn’t even know her name.”
    It took us ten minutes to sort that out. It became more and more obvious and Detective Johnson was suffering from sleep deprivation and was having trouble comprehending what I told him. His eye twitched on a regular basis. To help him out I took Tess’ pad—she had left it on the table—and on a blank sheet of paper I made a timeline showing what I had known when. After a while I think he got it.
    “All right,” he said, finally, “I understand why you went to see Mr. Hoffman. When you discovered that Elise was his daughter, did you discuss the harassment case with him?”
    “No, because I wasn’t sure he knew about it.”
    Detective Johnson thought for a minute. “Of course, he was all broken up about Elise’s murder, but when I mentioned the harassment charge to him and his wife after Donna told me about it, they seemed puzzled. I’ll bet they didn’t know about it. Did you mention the Shooting Star to him?”
    “Heavens, no. I’m sure he hadn’t heard about that.”
    “Yeah. It appears that Elise hid a few things from her folks. So why did he give you Elise’s address?”
    “I’m afraid I lied to him.” I told the detective about the organization to save girls from becoming strippers. I hoped he didn’t think that because I had lied about one thing I would lie about others.
    He didn’t interrupt and after taking some more notes he said, “So after you left Mr. Hoffman’s house you went to Elise’s apartment.”
    “We ate lunch first. And when we got to the apartment nobody was there.”
    “How long did you