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, Suzanne pressed a hand to her mouth. “I swear, I didn’t think, didn’t really think about what we’d said that night. I didn’t think of any of that, and Ned started staying out again, and we started fighting again. I told myself I was going to leave him this time, that I was stronger now. Because of Ava.”
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.” Suzanne pressed her fingers to her eyes. “That’s when everything fell apart. The kids were in school. I was going to do the marketing. I always do the marketing on Monday morning, so I was walking to the market, and she came up beside me. She said: ‘Keep walking, Suzanne. Keep walking and don’t say anything yet.’ We walked another three blocks, I think, then we crossed and walked another two or three. She had a car, and we got in. When I asked where we were going, she said somewhere we could talk. I told her I had to do the marketing, and she started to drive. And she started to tell me.”
As Suzanne’s breath began to wheeze, Baxter nudged the water toward her. “What did she tell you, Suzanne?”
“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 Suzanne drank, and mopped more useless tears. “I need the details.”
“Oh, God.” Blubbering, Suzanne covered her face. “Oh, God. I can’t.”
Brutally cold in face, voice, manner, Eve shoved Suzanne’s hands down. “You will. Here’s one thing Ava’s right about. It’s too late. Give me the details.”
Staring at Eve, trembling, Suzanne began. “She-she watched him for a few nights. Followed him into bars, watched him drink, watched him pick up women. Studied him is what she said, learned his habits and routines-his territory. She said his territory. And-and she rented rooms in a couple of the places he used for sex, and mapped them out. Preparation, she said. Preparation was key. She said she made herself look like a whore because that’s what he liked. That’s what most men liked. Please, can I have some more water?”
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 Suzanne lifted it to drink. “They went to one of the places she’d mapped out. And when they were upstairs, he grabbed at her breasts, and she let him, let him touch her. But she told him she needed the bathroom first. And in the bathroom she put on a suit like doctors wear, and she sealed her hands, too, then got the knife. She called out for Ned to turn around. Turn around and close your eyes, she said to him. She had a big surprise for him.
“I’m sorry, I-I spilled water on the table.”
“Finish it,” Eve ordered.
“God.” As if to hold herself in place, Suzanne crossed her arms tight over her own torso. “She said he did what she told him, like a good boy, and she came out, came out and she used the knife. She said he made the funniest noises, and grabbed at his throat like he had an itch there. How his eyes got so big, how he tried to talk. How he fell, and the way the blood just gushed out. How he just lay there and she…God. She cut it off, cut his penis off. A sym-a symbol. She put everything back in the bag she had, and when she knew he was good and dead, she went out by the fire escape. She walked for blocks and blocks. She said she felt like she could’ve flown, but she walked to where she’d left her car.”
“What did she do with the bag, Suzanne?” Eve asked. “Did she tell you?”
“The bag?”
“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.”