“With the knife in it.”
“I feel sick.”
“What did she do with the bag?”
Suzanne cringed. “In a recycler.”
“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, Suzanne looked back at Eve. “I haven’t slept. I don’t think I’ve had an hour’s real sleep since that day. She’d stopped the car. A rest stop off the Turnpike. We were in New Jersey now. I don’t remember how we got there. I wasn’t crying anymore. I got sick. It made her mad, but I couldn’t help it. She let me open the door, and I threw up in the parking lot.
“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 Suzanne’s voice now, as if the reliving of it had put her into a trance.
“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.”
She drank again, three small sips. “I was supposed to take it off after, the rope, but leave it there. Then go down, through the house, through the kitchen, and take the security tapes. That would make it look like I’d been there before, that it was all an accident—like it was his own fault. I was supposed to walk out, turn everything back on—the security, then walk all the way to the subway on Fifth.”
“What about the ’link, the discs?”
“She was to contact me on it at two. It was supposed to be done by two, but it wasn’t. I couldn’t…Then she called, and she was so angry. So I did it. I did what she said, except I couldn’t stand the idea of him knowing, and I used the medication I’d gotten from the doctor to help me sleep, and I couldn’t watch him die, so I ran out.”
“Where’s the ’link, the discs, the remote?”
“I was supposed to put them in a recycler on Fifth. But I forgot. I can’t even remember getting on the subway, but I must have because I was home. I didn’t remember about them until the next day, after my kids came home from school. They stayed at a friend’s the night before, because I couldn’t leave them alone. And I guess I always knew I’d do what she told me. I was afraid to put them in a recycler near the house. I was afraid to keep them in the house. I didn’t know what to do. I shoved the bag in the closet because I couldn’t think.”
“Do you still have them?”
“I was going to take them to the park today, where the kids practice. I was going to put them in the recycler there. But you came.”
Eve signaled Baxter, who rose and strode out of the room. “Detective Baxter has left Interview. Has she contacted you again, Suzanne?”
“No, not since that night—that morning. It’s like a dream. I was walking, walking—after—and she called on the ’link. She said: ‘Well?’ And I said I’d done it. And she said, ‘Good girl.’ That’s all. ‘Good girl,’ like I’d finished my chores. I killed him. I know he was a monster, but I think she’s one, too.”
“You think?”
“What’s going to happen now? Can you tell me what’s going to happen now?”
“We’re going to go back over the details. What kind of vehicle did she drive?”
“A black one.”