“Make a list of everyone you can think of. We’ll work from there.” She rose when the door opened.
Peabody came in all but carrying a pale and shaking Zana.
“Zana. Honey.” Bobby sprang off the bed, leaped to his wife’s side, caught her in his arms. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. A man. I don’t know.” Sobbing now, she threw her arms around Bobby’s neck. “Oh, Bobby.”
“Found her a block east,” Peabody told Eve. “Looked lost, shaken up. She said a man grabbed her, forced her into a building.”
“My God, Zana, honey. Did he hurt you?”
“He had a knife. He said he’d cut me if I screamed or tried to run. I was so scared. I said he could have my purse. I told him to take it.
“I don’t know. I don’t think… Oh, Bobby, he said he killed your mama.”
Eve waded through the next flood of tears, muscled Zana away from Bobby. “Sit down. Stop crying. You’re not hurt.”
“I think he—” With a trembling hand, she reached down the small of her back.
“Take off the coat.” Eve noted the small hole in the red cloth, and the tear in the sweater Zana wore under it. There were a few spots of blood. “Superficial,” Eve said, then pulled up the sweater, examined the shallow cut.
“He stabbed you?” Horrified, Bobby slapped at Eve’s hands to get a look for himself.
“It’s a scratch,” Eve said.
“I don’t feel very well.”
When Zana’s eyes started to roll back, Eve grabbed her and shook. “You’re not going to faint. You’re going to sit down, and you’re going to tell me what happened.” She pushed Zana into a chair, then shoved the woman’s head between her knees. The thin silver dangles at her ears swung like bell clappers.
“Breathe. Peabody.”
“On it.” Already prepared, Peabody came out of the bathroom with a damp washcloth. “It really is a scratch,” she said gently to Bobby. “A little antiseptic wouldn’t hurt.”
“In my travel kit. It’s already packed.” Zana’s voice was weak and wavery. “In my little travel kit in the suitcase. God, can we go home? Can’t we just go home?”
“You’re going to make a statement. On record,” Eve said and showed Zana the recorder. “You got up, went out to get coffee.”
“I feel a little sick to my stomach.”
“No, you don’t,” Eve said brutally. “You left the hotel.”
“I… I wanted to be able to offer you something when you got here. And Bobby’s hardly eaten a thing since… I thought I’d just run out, pick up a few things before he woke up. We didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Okay, you went downstairs.”
“I went down, and I said good morning to the desk clerk. I know he’s a droid, but still. And I went outside. It looked like a nice day, cool though. So I started buttoning up my coat as I walked. Then… he was just there. He had his arm around me so fast, and I could feel the point of the knife. He said if I screamed he’d ram it right into me. Just to walk, keep walking, look down, down at my feet and keep walking. I was so scared. Can I have some water?”
“I’ll get it.” Peabody moved into the kitchenette.
“He walked really fast, and I was afraid I’d trip. Then he’d kill me right there.” Her eyes went glassy again.
“Focus. Concentrate,” Eve snapped. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Zana shivered, hugged herself. “I said, ‘You can have my purse.’ But he didn’t say anything. I was afraid to look up. I thought maybe I should run, but he was strong, and I was too afraid. Then he pushed open this door. It was a bar, I think. It was dark and there was nobody there, but it smelled like a bar, you know. Thank you.”
She took the water in both hands, and still it slopped over the rim as she brought it to her lips. “I can’t stop shaking. I thought he was going to rape me and kill me, and I couldn’t do anything. But he told me to sit down, so I did, and keep my hands on the table, so I did. He said he wanted the money, and I told him to take my purse. Just take it. He said he wanted the full two million, or he’d do to me what he did to Trudy. But he’d cut me up so nobody’d even recognize me when he was finished.”
Tears streamed down her face, sparkled on her lashes. “I said, ‘You killed Mama Tru, you killed her?’ He said he’d do worse to me, and to Bobby, if we didn’t get him the money. Two million dollars. We don’t have two million dollars, Bobby. I told him, my God, where are we going to get that kind of money? He said, ‘Ask the cop.’ And he gave me what he said was a numbered account. He made me say it back, over and over, and said if I screwed it up, if I forgot the number, he’d come find me, and he’d carve it into my ass. That’s what he said. 505748711094463. 505748711094463. 505—”
“Okay, we got it. Keep going.”
“He said for me to just sit there. ‘You sit there, little bitch,’ that’s what he said.” She swiped at her wet cheeks. “ ‘You sit there for fifteen minutes. You come out before then, I’ll kill you.’ And he left me there. I just sat there in the dark. Afraid to get up, afraid he’d come back. I just sat until the time was up. I didn’t know where I was when I came out. I was all turned around. It was so noisy. I started to run, but my legs wouldn’t run, and I couldn’t find my way back. Then the detective came, and she helped me.
“I left my purse. I must’ve left my purse. Or maybe he took it. I didn’t get the coffee.”
She dissolved into tears again. Eve gave her a full minute of them, then pushed. “What did he look like, Zana?”
“I don’t know. Not really. I hardly got a look. He was wearing a hat, like a ski hat, and sunshades. He was tall. I think. He had on black jeans and black boots. I kept looking down, like he said, and I saw his boots. They had laces, and they were scuffed at the toes. I kept looking at his boots. He had big feet.”
“How big?”
“Bigger than Bobby’s. A little bit bigger, I think.”
“What color was his skin?”
“I hardly saw. White, I think. He wore black gloves. But I think he was white. I only got a glimpse, and when he took me inside, it was dark. He stayed behind me the whole time, and it was dark.”
“Facial hair, any scars, marks, tattoos?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“His voice? Any accent?”
“He talked down in his throat, low down. I don’t know.” She looked piteously at Bobby. “I was so scared.”
Eve pressed a little more, but the details were getting hazier.
“I’m going to have you escorted to your new location, and I’m going to put a uniformed guard on you. If you remember anything else, however slight, I want you to contact me.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this. Why would he kill Mama Tru? Why would he think we could give him so much money ? ”
Eve looked over at Bobby. Then she signalled for Peabody to arrange for the escort. “Bobby will tell you what we know.”
chapter 10
TO EXPEDITE THE TRANSFER, EVE PERSONALLY escorted Bobby and Zana to their new location. She assigned two uniforms to canvass for the location Zana said she’d been taken, fanning out in a four-block radius from the original hotel. Rather than search the vacated room herself, she left it to Peabody and the sweepers before heading to the morgue.
At her request, Morris had Trudy waiting.
Nothing, Eve thought as she looked down at the body. There was still nothing inside her. No pity, no anger.
“What can you tell me?” Eve asked.
“Facial and bodily injuries sustained twenty-four to thirty-six hours before the head wounds. We’ll get to them shortly.” Morris handed her a pair of microgoggles, gestured. “Have a look here.”
She stepped to the slab with him, bent to study the fatal injuries.
“Some ridges. And these circular or half-circular patterns.”
“Good eye. Now let me bump it up for you.” He brought the section of the skull onto his screen, magnified.
Eve shoved the goggles to the top of her head. “You said you found fibers in the head wound.”
“Waiting for the labs on that.”