time later, two female patrol cops stepped off the elevator.
“Someone’s injured?” one of them said.
“We—we thought she might still be alive, but she isn’t,” Kit said, her voice catching. She pointed to the door down the hall. “She’s in the stairwell. Her name’s Avery. Avery Howe.”
“And you are?” one of the cops asked.
“Kit Finn. I have an interior design firm here. She came for an appointment last night and never made it home.”
“Okay, we’re going to send for detectives,” she replied. “Someone will be with you shortly.”
Kit backed over the threshold into the entranceway but kept the door ajar. She watched the two cops slip into the stairwell. What seemed like only moments later, an EMS crew arrived, and disappeared into the stairwell, too. There’s no one for them to save, Kit thought bleakly. About fifteen minutes afterward, the buzzer rang again and this time it was detectives. By now her stomach was in knots.
“I’m Detective Burke,” one of the two suited men said, when she greeted them at the door. He was white, mid-forties, with a slim, chiseled face and shaved head. He gestured toward a younger-looking black man whose thin mustache seemed almost fake, like something you’d glue on for a play. “This is my partner, Detective Wingate.”
Kit nodded and quickly explained what had happened. Burke’s gaze lingered on her face, unsettling her.
“Why don’t you step back inside,” he said finally. “We’ll have questions for you in a few minutes.”
Kit retreated back into the office, where she filled Dara in. She made them each a cup of tea and then joined her assistant at the table. Dara hadn’t made much progress on the list of what to transport from the office, so Kit scribbled items down, forcing herself to concentrate. She had her phone next to her and she kept checking the screen, willing it to ring. She needed to talk to Baby, and to Kelman. Oddly, even the office phones were silent.
Twenty minutes later, she heard a rap at the door. Kit jumped up and swung it open. Detective Burke stood there, alone this time. The stairwell door had been propped open and she could hear the sound of commotion coming from the floor below, a blend of voices and shoes scraping on cement.
“You said this is your office?” Burke asked, glancing over Kit’s shoulder at the setup.
“Yes, though my apartment’s next door.”
She stepped out of the way so he could enter and then introduced Dara, who had risen from the table.
“So which of you found the body?” Burke asked. His voice was totally flat, emotionless. Kit warned herself to be on guard.
“We found her together,” Kit said. “Avery’s assistant had called to say she was missing, that no one had heard from her since she was dropped off here last night. We were going out to make inquiries in the neighborhood, but before we got on the elevator, we heard a phone ringing from the stairwell. And that’s how we found her. I should tell you that I touched her hand. Her, um, left hand. I was trying to see if she was still alive.”
Burke glanced over at Dara.
“What’s your role here, Ms. Taylor?”
“I’m Kit’s assistant.”
“And were you both here last night when the victim left?” he asked.
Kit saw Dara swallow hard before answering, and it wasn’t hard to grasp why. Burke was the kind of cop, Kit thought, who could make you feel like you’d robbed an armored truck an hour earlier and had just been stopped for questioning at a roadblock.
“No,” Dara told him. “I’d left a few minutes before.”
“It was just me here at the time,” Kit said, and Burke returned his gaze to her. One of his eyes was slightly drooped and hooded more than the other, making it seem as if he was squinting from a waft of smoke, or maybe suspicion.
“My partner and I need to interview you each separately,” he announced. “So Ms. Taylor, why don’t you sit tight for a few minutes? Is there another room where I could speak to you privately, Ms. Finn?”
“Yes, we can talk in my apartment.”
He accompanied her through the doorway, directing her without saying a word toward the couch in her living area. There was an energy around him that was almost palpable, like something muscling her. Be careful, she warned herself again. She couldn’t let him drive the conversation anywhere near Miami or Garrett Kelman.
They were barely seated when his partner, Wingate, entered the room and took the other armchair across