Strangers In Death

She bowed her head, then shoved at the hair that fell over her face. “I don’t know anymore. But I put it away. I forgot about it. Almost all the time. Then things got a little better for a while with Ned. I saw Ava at the offices one day, and I told her how things were better. She smiled at me, and she said they’d get better yet.” On a choked sob, Suza

Her breath came in two quick hitches. “I felt stronger, because of Ava, and what she’d given me. How she’d made me feel about myself. And then Detective Baxter came with Officer Trueheart, and they said Ned was dead. They said he’d gone into a hotel room with an LC, and he was dead. I never thought about Ava and what we’d said that night, way back in August. I thought it was just as they’d told me. He’d picked up the wrong kind of woman.”

“When did she contact you after that?”

“A few days later.” Suza

As Suza

“She said she’d fulfilled the part of the bargain we’d made, and asked how I felt now that I was free. I couldn’t even talk for a minute. She was different-um, I don’t know how to explain. She laughed, but it was different from before. It scared me. She scared me. I started to cry.”

What else is new, Eve thought, you weak, whiny, worthless excuse for a human being.

“I started to say I hadn’t meant any of it. Not really. But it was too late-that’s what she said. It was too late for any second thoughts, any regrets. It was done. Now it was my turn. She kept driving, not even looking at me. She told me how she’d killed Ned.”

Eve waited while Suza

“Oh, God.” Blubbering, Suza

Brutally cold in face, voice, ma

Staring at Eve, trembling, Suza

Baxter rose to fill the cup.

“She stalked him,” Eve prompted.

“I guess. I guess. She said she went up to him while he was drinking, told him he looked like he knew how to party. She sat with him awhile-not too long, she said because she didn’t want anyone to pay attention to her. She put her hand between his legs, rubbed. She said he came along with her like an idiot dog. That’s what she called him.”

The water in the cup Baxter gave her sloshed, dripped over the rim as Suza

“I’m sorry, I-I spilled water on the table.”

“Finish it,” Eve ordered.

“God.” As if to hold herself in place, Suza

“What did she do with the bag, Suza

“The bag?”

“With the knife in it.”

“I feel sick.”

“What did she do with the bag?”

Suza

“Where?”

“I don’t know. While she was walking to her car.”

“Where was her car?”

“I don’t know. Blocks away. Uptown, I think she said. Blocks away from where she killed Ned because the cops weren’t going to look for a street whore so far away. She drove home, and she took a long bath with a glass of cognac, and she slept like a baby.”

Her face gray now, Suza

“I’m so tired now.”

“Dallas,” Baxter began, “maybe we should-”

Eve only shook her head to cut him off. “What did Ava do after you were sick?”

“After, she drove away from there, around the back where the big trucks are, and she told me what had to happen next. What I had to do. I said I couldn’t, but she said if I didn’t, she’d do to me what she’d done to Ned, and then she’d do it to my kids. My kids. No one would believe me if I told them. Who did I think I was? I was nobody, and she was an important and respected woman. They’d lock me up if I tried to tell them, unless she killed me first. She knew where my kids went to school, where they played, where they slept. I’d better remember that.”

There was a dreamy quality in Suza

“And I was better off, she said. Couldn’t I see how much better off I was now? What she’d done for me? She said I had to wait. A couple of months would be best. She would get me a remote, and the passcode. She would explain exactly what I had to do and how I had to do it. She gave me a ’link. I wasn’t to use it for anything. She would contact me on it when it was time. And she’d be watching me. And my kids. She told me what I was going to do, how easy it would be. If I messed it up, she had the recording, and she’d send it to the police. Or maybe I’d just have a tragic accident one day, me and the kids. She told me I should be grateful. She’d given me a fresh start. Now I had to pay for it. I had to stick to my part of the deal.”

“Take us through it.”

“It had to be late at night. After midnight, but before one. I’d use the remote to shut down the security, then I’d use the passcode and go inside. I-I had to seal up first. Straight up the stairs, to the bedroom. The door would be closed, and he’d be sleeping facing the door. He’d have taken a sleeping pill because she’d replaced his nightly vitamins with them. I had to…I had to take off his pajamas, use the rope-the rope she told me to buy-on his wrists and his ankles. I was supposed to give him a dose of male sex enhancer, and…God, put the rings on him, and some of the lotion. Set out the toys. He’d wake up some, and that was good. I’d see what it was like. It would make it better for all of us. Then I was to put the rope around his neck, tighten it. Watch, watch until I knew he was dead.”