Born in Death (In Death 23)

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Peabody’s setting up an interview room. Lounge is too public for this. She was in bad shape when I took her initial statement. She mention if her sister was involved with anyone?”

“Ah, yeah. Had a guy—money manager, broker, something like that. Serious, I think, maybe engaged. Can’t say that I paid much attention to that. I wasn’t after the sister, you know?”

“You catch the wit, Baxter?”

“Nah.” He smiled a little. “Like I said, she’s a nice woman.”

Which translated to they hadn’t slept together, and made it less sticky to have him in on the interview. “Okay, let me get Peabody working the ’link. We’ll take the wit.”

Eve let Baxter walk into Interview ahead of her, studied Palma’s tear-splotched face when the woman looked over. She blinked a few times as if trying to process new information, then a series of emotions streaked over her face. Recognition, relief, dismay, and finally the grief settled on it again.

“Bax. Oh, God.” She held out both her hands, so when he crossed to the table, he took them in his.

“Palma, I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do. Nat. My sister, somebody killed her. I don’t know what to do.”

“We’re going to help you.”

“She never hurt anybody. Bax, she never hurt anybody in her whole life. Her face…”

“This is hard. The hardest thing. But you can help us help her.”

“Okay. Okay, but you can stay, right? He can stay?” she asked Eve.

“Sure. What I’m going to do is turn the recorder on, and ask you some questions.”

“You don’t think that I…You don’t think that I hurt her?”

“Nobody thinks that, Palma.” Baxter gave her hand a quick squeeze. “We have to ask questions. The more we know, the faster we can find the person who did this.”

“You’re going to find them.” She said it slowly, as if that, too, had to process. Then she closed her eyes for a moment. “You’ll find them. I’ll tell you everything I can.”

Eve engaged the recorder, read in the necessary data. “You landed in New York early this morning, is that correct?”

/> “Yes, on the Vegas run. We got in around two, clocked out, I don’t know, about twenty minutes later maybe. That’s about right. Then Mae—she had the run with me—we stopped at the bar in the airport for a glass of wine. Unwind a little. We shared a cab into the city. I dropped her first. She keeps a place with a couple other attendants, over on the East Side. Then I went on to Nat’s.”

She stopped, took a breath, then a sip from the plastic cup of water on the table. “I paid off the cab, and started in. Had my key out, and I know Nat’s code. But the lock was broken. It happens sometimes, so I didn’t think that much about it. Not then. But when I got to her apartment, her lock—she told me she’d put in a new lock—that was broken, too. I had this little jump in my belly. But I thought, I don’t know, I told myself she hadn’t gotten the lock installed right.”

“Did you notice anything off when you went inside—the living area’s first,” Eve said.

“I didn’t really pay attention. I put the security chain on—she’d have left that off for me. And I left my overnight bag there by the door because I thought I’d just peek in, make sure everything was okay. But it wasn’t.”

Tears trembled, spilled again, but she kept going. “She was on the floor, and there was blood, and the room was—it was like there’d been a fight. Broken glass from her perfume bottles and the little bowls she liked to collect. She was on the floor. The pink rugs. I was with her when she bought them. They were soft, like a cat. She couldn’t have pets. The rugs were soft. I’m sorry.”

“You’re doing fine,” Baxter told her. “You’re doing just fine.”

“I ran. I think—it’s all blurry. Did I scream? I think I screamed her name and I ran and I tried to lift her up, to shake her awake, even though I knew…I didn’t want her to be dead. Her face was bruised and bloody, and her eyes. I knew she was dead. There was tape around her hands.”

As if she’d just remembered, she sent Eve a shocked look. “Oh, God, her hands, her ankles. They were taped.” Palma pressed a trembling hand to her mouth. “I needed to call for help, but I got sick before I could get out, get my ’link out of my bag, I got sick. Then I ran out. I couldn’t stay in there, so I ran out and called nine-one-one, and I sat down on the steps. I should’ve gone back in, stayed with her. I shouldn’t have left her alone like that.”

“You did exactly the right thing.” Baxter picked up the water cup, handed it to her again. “Exactly the right thing.”

“Did she tell you anyone was bothering her?” Eve asked.

“No, but something was bothering her. I could tell. She looked upset when I talked to her earlier, but when I asked what was wrong, she said it was nothing to worry about. She just had a lot on her mind.”

“She was seeing someone? A man?”