chair would show something about what had taken place. “This is where they found her?”
Muse nodded. “The needle was on the floor. She was passed out, totally unresponsive. The only prints on the needle are hers.”
Myron looked out through the arch. In the distance, the Manhattan skyline beckoned. The water was still. The sky was purple and gray. He closed his eyes and traveled back two nights ago. When the wind whipped across the balcony, Myron could almost hear Suzze’s words:
But not this time. This time, per Lex’s request, he had backed off, hadn’t he? He had finished up her favor-they knew who posted “Not His,” they knew where Lex was-and Myron had chosen to butt out, to leave Suzze on her own.
Myron kept his eyes on the skyline. “You said a guy with a Spanish accent made the nine-one-one call?”
“Yes. He used one of their portable phones. It was on the floor downstairs. Probably dropped it when he was running out. We checked it for prints, but everything is pretty smeared up on it. We have Lex’s and Suzze’s and that’s about it. When the paramedics got here, the door was still open. They came in and found her up here.”
Myron jammed his hands into his pockets. The breeze hit his face. “You realize that your theory about an illegal immigrant or maintenance worker makes no sense.”
“Why not?”
“A janitor or whatever walks by, happens to see-what?-the door ajar, comes all the way into the apartment, and then, I guess, goes out on the roof?”
Muse thought about that. “You have a point.”
“It is much more likely that the person who called was here with her when she shot up.”
“So?”
“What do you mean, so?”
“Like I said before, I’m in this for the crime, not curiosity. If she was shooting up with a friend and if he or she ran, I’m really not up for prosecuting that. If it was her drug dealer, okay, maybe if I can find the person and then prove he sold her the drugs, but really, that’s not what I’m trying to find out.”
“I was with her the night before, Muse.”
“I know.”
“I was right here on this very roof. She was troubled, but she wasn’t suicidal.”
“So you told me,” Muse said. “But think about it-troubled but not suicidal. That’s a pretty fine distinction. And for the record, I never said she was suicidal. But she was troubled, right? That could have led to her falling off the wagon-and maybe she just fell too hard.”
The wind kicked up again. Suzze’s voice-was this the last thing she said to him?-came with it:
“And here’s another thing to think about,” Muse said. “If this was a murder, it was pretty much the dumbest one I’ve ever seen. Let’s say you wanted Suzze dead. Let’s say you could even somehow get her to take the heroin on her own without physical force. Maybe you put a gun against her head, whatever. You with me?”
“Go on.”
“Well, if you want to kill her, why not just kill her? Why call nine-one-one and take the chance that she’d be alive when they got here? For that matter, with the amount of drugs she took, why not lead her under that arch and get her to fall off? Either way, what you do
“I do,” Myron said.
“Am I making sense?”
“You are.”
“Do you have anything that disputes what I said?”
“Not a thing,” Myron said, trying to sort it through in his head. “So if you’re right, she probably contacted her dealer yesterday. Any clues on who it was?”
“Not yet, no. We know that she took a drive yesterday. There was an E-ZPass hit on the Garden State Parkway near Route Two-eighty. She could have headed to Newark.”
Myron considered that. “Did you check her car?”
“Her car? No. Why?”
“Do you mind if I check it?”
“Do you have keys?”
“I do.”
She shook her head. “Agents. Go ahead. I have to get back to work.”
“One more question, Muse.”
Muse just waited.
“Why are you showing me all this after I pulled the attorneyclient card last night?”
“Because right now I have no case anyway,” she said. “And because if somehow I’m missing something-if somehow this was a murder-it doesn’t matter who you’re supposed to defend. You cared about Suzze. You wouldn’t just let her killer walk.”
They headed down the elevator in silence. Muse got off at ground level. Myron went down to the garage. He hit the remote control and listened for the beep. Suzze drove a Mercedes S63 AMG. He opened it and slipped into the driver’s seat. He got a whiff of some wildflower perfume and it made him think of Suzze. He opened the glove compartment and found the registration, insurance card, and the car manual. He searched under the seats for-he wasn’t sure what, really. Clues. All he found was loose change and two pens. Sherlock Holmes probably could have used them to figure out exactly where Suzze had gone, but Myron couldn’t.
He turned the car on, started up the dashboard GPS. He hit “previous destinations” and saw a list of spots Suzze had plugged in for directions. Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out. The most recent destination was in Kasselton, New Jersey. Hmm. In order to get there, you’d have to take the Garden State Parkway past Exit 146 per the E-ZPass records.
The second-to-last input was an intersection in Edison, New Jersey. Myron pulled out his BlackBerry and started typing in the addresses listed. When he finished he e-mailed them to Esperanza. She could look them up online, figure out whether any of them were important. There were no dates next to inputs, so for all Myron knew, Suzze had visited these places months ago and rarely used the GPS.
Still all signs pointed to the fact that Suzze visited Kasselton recently, maybe even the day of her death. It might be worth a quick visit.
20
The address in Kasselton was a four-store strip mall anchored by a Kings Supermarket. The other three storefronts housed a Renato’s Pizzeria, a make-your-own ice cream parlor called SnowCap, and an old- school barbershop dubbed “Sal and Shorty Joe’s Hair-Clipping,” complete with the classic red-and-white pole out front.
So why had Suzze come out here?
There were, of course, supermarkets and ice cream parlors and pizzerias far closer to her home and somehow Myron doubted that either Sal or Shorty Joe did Suzze’s hair. So why drive out this way? Myron stood there and waited for the answer to come to him. Two minutes passed. The answer did not arrive, so Myron decided to give it a nudge.
He started with the Kings Supermarket. Not sure what else to do, he flashed a picture of Suzze T around and asked whether anyone had seen her. Working old-school. Like Sal and Shorty Joe. A few people recognized Suzze from her tennis days. A few had seen her on the news last night and assumed Myron was a cop, an assumption he did little to correct. In the end though, no one had seen her in the supermarket.
Strike one.
Myron headed back outside. He looked out at the parking lot. Best odds? Suzze had driven here for a drug buy. Drug dealers, especially in suburbia, used public lots all the time. You park your cars side by side, open front
