In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [50]
“I’m sorry I’m not being very helpful,” she apologized nervously. “It’s just that I’m not sure what I really saw—and what I think I saw.”
“Just give it your best, ma’am,” he replied. “I’ll try to fill in the rest.”
So Mel scanned the separate images carefully. Yes, that was exactly the way his forehead had looked, exactly like a pit bull, kind of brutal, half hiding his eyes. Narrow eyes, she thought, but that could have been from the glare. No, she didn’t know the color. And so it went on.
She gasped when he finally showed her the finished composite. It was the killer. She gulped back the nausea, twisted her clammy hands nervously, bit her lip to stop the tears that she wasn’t sure were tears of fear or of joy, because at least now they had someone to hunt for.
“It may not be exact,” she said, still worried that she had gotten it wrong. “I mean, I think this is who I saw.”
“Good enough, ma’am. We’ll run it through the national computer, see what we come up with.”
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, edging out the door. “Thank you so much.”
She wanted out of there so badly, she almost made a run for it, but Camelia hadn’t finished with her yet. Next she had to sit in another gray windowless room, listening while an expert played various tapes for her, all of men speaking with foreign accents. The coffee in the paper cup tasted like it had been sitting in the machine for a week, and even the Krispy Kreme doughnut offered by Camelia couldn’t tempt her.
They must have been on the thirtieth tape, her head was whirling and she knew she had lost it, when suddenly a voice rang a bell. A smooth voice, but with that low guttural sound, throaty, harsh . . .
“That’s it.” She was out of her chair, excited. “That’s exactly the way he sounded. Oh, thank God, I’ve finally gotten something right.”
“Ukrainian,” the expert informed them. “From the Caucasus region, near the Black Sea. A lot of real bad guys drifted into that area, got out of Russia via the Bosporus and Turkey, took on new identities, came into the U.S. as political refugees along with the decent folk.”
“Terrific,” Camelia said. “We’ll add it to the file, see what comes up.”
And then they were out of there, walking along in the sunshine, breathing the fumes that in New York passed for fresh air, sighing with relief as they headed back to Vincent Fifth to pick up Mel’s duffel, and then on to the airport.
Camelia had already seen Ed’s home; he had personally gone through the place with a finetooth comb and found nothing. At least nothing personal that could lead him to a killer, or even to a motive for killing. He waited downstairs in the lobby for Mel, thinking that the only scrap of a motive so far was the fight over buying the expensive Fifth Avenue airspace. His team was working on that but so far had failed to penetrate the myriad layers of corporate identities that masked the real buyer. The investigations now involved the state police and the FBI, and, given time, he knew they would come up with the answer.
The elevator pinged and Mel emerged, pink-cheeked from having just washed her face to clean off the smoke and smell of an alien world, unsmiling because she was about to leave Ed, and with an anxious look in those whiskey browns that brought out the protective animal in Camelia.
She strode toward him on those ridiculous heels, towering over him as she slipped her arm through his. “Let’s go,” she said determinedly.
And they were off to the airport in Camelia’s police car, a Crown Vic, hustling through the thick traffic to make the afternoon flight to Nashville.
31
Mel slept on the plane, then slept through the long drive to Hainsville in the rented Ford Explorer, curled up on the backseat with her head pillowed in her arms and Camelia’s jacket slung over her for warmth.
“Didn’t you ever think of bringing socks, or a sweater? Y’know, something warm?” Camelia said, astonished that she had shown up, bare-legged, in the tank top and black leather jacket. “This ain’t California, y’know what