Everyone who’d been in the club or the parking lot, except those crafty enough to escape ahead of the team in blue, had been herded into the building. A minute before, I’d been too cold, but the club atmosphere, hot, nearly airless, made me ill. I started to sweat, and fought a rising tide of nausea.
The club staff, including my cousin Petra, were huddled by the bar. After a moment, when I decided I wasn’t going to vomit, I shoved my way through the crowd to Petra’s side.
“Vic, what happened?” Petra’s blue eyes were wide with fear. “You’re covered with blood.”
I looked down and saw Nadia’s blood on my jeans and sweater, on my hands. My scalp crawled: maybe her blood was in my hair.
“Someone shot a woman as she left the club,” I said.
“Was it—who was it?”
“I heard her called ‘Nadia,’” I said slowly, fixing Petra with a hard stare. “I don’t know if that’s her name, and I don’t know her last name. If the cops, or a reporter, ask you questions about what happened tonight, you can answer only truthfully about things you actually know and saw. You shouldn’t answer questions about things that are just guesses, because that could mislead the cops.”
“It would be best if you don’t consult the other witnesses,” a voice said.
A female officer had fought through the shouting, texting, Twittering chaos to appear at my side.
Under the club lights, I could see her face, narrow, with pronounced cheekbones, and lank black hair cut so short the ends only just appeared below her cap rim. I read her badge: E. Milkova. E. Milkova didn’t look much older than my cousin, too young to be a cop, too young to be telling me what to do. But—she had the badge. I let her guide me to the small stage at the back of the club, which the police had roped off with crime scene tape so they could use it for interrogations. She lifted the tape so I could crawl under, then dragged a couple of chairs from the nearest table. I reached a hand out and took one of them from her.
I was in that numb place you inhabit after you’ve been part of violence and death. It was hard to focus on Milkova’s questions. I gave her my name. I told her I’d heard gunshots and run to see what the problem was. I told her I didn’t know the dead woman.
“But you knew her name,” Milkova said.
“That was just from hearing someone call her ‘Nadia.’ I don’t know her last name.”
“Most people run away from gunshots.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You ran toward them.”
I still didn’t say anything, and she frowned at me. “Why?”
“Why, which?” I said.
“Why did you run toward danger?”
When I was younger and more insouciant, I would have quoted the great Philip Marlowe and said, “Trouble is my business,” but tonight I was cold and apprehensive. “I don’t know.”
“Did you see anyone in the club threaten Nadia tonight?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t seen anyone threaten her tonight. Earlier, that was another story, but my years as a public defender had taught me to answer only the question asked.
“Did you come here tonight because you thought there would be an attack on someone?”
“It’s a club. I came because I wanted to see the acts.”
“You’re a private investigator. They tell me you’ve been involved in a lot of high-profile investigations.”
Someone had ID’d me to the police. I wondered if it was the club’s owner, out of malice. “Thank you,” I said.
Milkova pushed her short hair back behind her ears, a nervous gesture—she wasn’t sure how to proceed. “But don’t you think it’s a strange coincidence, you being here the night someone got shot?”
“Cops have days off. Even doctors. And PIs have been known to take them, too.” I didn’t want to throw Petra to the wolves, and that’s what would happen if I said anything about wanting to keep an eye on my cousin’s workplace.
No one had bothered to turn off the Body Artist’s computer, and the plasma screens on the stage kept flashing images of flowers and jungle animals. It made a disturbing backdrop to the interrogation.
“Vic, what are you doing here?”
I looked around and saw Terry Finchley, a detective I’ve known for a long time. “Terry! I might ask you the same question.”
Finchley’s been out of the field for five or six years now, on the personal staff of my dad’s old protégé, Captain Bobby Mallory. I was surprised to see the Finch at an active homicide investigation.
He gave a wry smile. “Captain thought it was time I got my hands dirty again. And if you’re anything to judge by, they’re going to get mighty dirty indeed on this investigation.”
I looked again at my stained hands. I was beginning to feel twitchy, covered in Nadia’s blood. Terry climbed the shallow step to the stage and told Milkova to get him a chair.
“What have you learned, Liz?” Finchley asked Officer Milkova. So the E stood for Elizabeth.
“She’s not cooperating, sir. She won’t say how she knew the vic or why she was here, or anything.”