Pembleton blinked. Maybe this girl was telling the truth after all. How else could she know that the bullet didn't exit Mahoney's body? Unless she read the coroner's report. Which was impossible. That information was not given to the public. But she may have known somebody who worked in the morgue who made her a copy of the report. This was still an iffy situation.
He glanced over his shoulder at the mirror in the far wall as though he could see Kellerman and other detectives standing there.
He took a deep breath and looked back at Rachel. His voice was firm as he said, "Tell me exactly what you saw."
Rachel took a breath herself, then started. "I was feeling particularly lazy that day. I didn't get dressed even after lunch. I just lay in my bed and looked out the window. I think maybe I was feeling sorry for myself that I'd missed the application deadlines, but whatever. I heard sirens outside and saw that it wasn't ambulances but cop cars. My first and only thought was that they were there for Luther Mahoney. So I trained my binoculars on his window—"
"Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt, Rachel, but could you explain how is it that you live across the street from Mahoney if you live on Eagle Terrace and he lives on Spruce Street?"
"Sure. Spruce Street is the front entrance of his building. His apartment is in the back of the complex, facing my street."
So far her story added up. It didn't mean she was telling the truth, but it didn't mean that he couldn't find anything to use to easily expose the contradictions in her story and prove that she was lying. It meant that he'd have to work a different angle.
Pembleton nodded for Rachel to go on.
"Like I said, I trained my binoculars on his window. The drapes were wide open. Which I thought meant that I was wrong, that this had nothing to do with him, because if say the cops were coming to bust up some kind of drug deal going on, Luther Mahoney would have closed his drapes, because he's really smart that way. I never once saw him doing anything. If I ever saw a bunch of men walking in with grim expressions on their faces and carrying big bags, I knew it was a drug thing, and I knew I'd be shut out within minutes. Oh, but how I hoped one day he'd be stupid and leave the drapes open so I could see what being a drug lord was really like. You know, so I could use it in my story somehow."
Pembleton almost laughed. They all wished the same thing as this girl did—that Mahoney wouldn't have been so damned smart. But at least he could take consolation that it wasn't like this girl had seen Mahoney do something that all of the cops doing countless hours of surveillance hadn't.