Mistress

Chapter 31

Ellis returns to the interrogation room with a thin file containing glossy photographs. “Crime scene shots,” he says. “And a few witness statements. I might have forgotten to give every copy to the feds.”

I recoil as he drops the file down on the table and a few photographs spill out. I’m not really in the mood to see photos of Diana’s crushed face and body. “Anything from the witness statements?” I ask.

“Not much.” Ellis shakes his head. “Except that the first people to attend to the victim were also the first ones to leave.”

I think back before I realize he’s talking, in part, about me.

“Two women got to her first,” Ellis recites from memory. “They were parked in some kind of a blue compact car by the building. They apparently reached her, and it seemed like they were checking her vitals, that kind of thing. But they got in their car and left before the ambulance arrived.”

I remember the first part of that, the two women getting out of the car. What happened to them afterward I have no idea.

Ellis looks squarely at me. “Then there was a man who was talking with some people across the street about his motorcycle. He was second to reach the victim. After a few minutes, he staggered back into the street and puked his guts out. Then he jumped on his motorcycle and left before the authorities arrived.” Ellis shrugs his shoulders. “Any idea who rides a 2009 Triumph America with…let me see…” He looks down at some notes and then back up at me. “Metzeler ME80 tires?”

“No-880s,” I say, correcting him.

“Right. ME880s.” He smirks at me.

“Apparently those witnesses knew their motorcycles,” I say.

“So did the guy who owned the bike. They said he was a real nice guy. Real friendly.”

“Handsome, too,” I add.

“Yeah, they said he looked like…Skeet…Ulrich, whoever that is.”

I let that wash over me. This is, to say the least, an unwelcome development. Skeet Ulrich? Diana said I looked like Johnny Depp. I mean, I loved Skeet in the original Scream and thought they should have kept him on that new Law &` Order series, but Depp was Donnie freakin’ Brasco, for God’s sake. In one week I go from Johnny Depp to Skeet Ulrich? What’s next-Ralph Macchio?

“I had nothing to do with her death,” I say. “But yeah, I was there. I already told you that before you showed me the witness statement.”

“So you did, so you did.” Ellis shrugs. “Well, maybe if the CIA hadn’t ordered me and my colleagues to back off this investigation, I might sit you down for questioning. But seeing as how I’ve been taken off the case and all…”

Ellis is a good egg. Like a moth to a flame, my eyes move back down toward the photos of Diana lying crushed and broken. I can’t look. I can’t not look. A photo from above; her auburn hair, which she’d colored only a month earlier, cascading across her face. Her left leg askew, the long, smooth limb, her fashionable suede leather low-heeled shoe perfectly set on her foot, ironically enough, though I imagine she would be glad to know she died in a decent pair-

I step backward, my pulse suddenly surging with adrenaline.

“I know it’s hard,” says Ellis. “You must have cared about her.”

I manage to nod and mumble something incoherent as I excuse myself and head back out to the parking lot. Yeah, I cared about Diana.

Or maybe I shouldn’t use the past tense. Maybe I should use the present tense.

Because Diana has a butterfly tattoo above her left ankle, and the dead woman in that photo doesn’t.