LITMIR.BIZ

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the input being processed by your visual cortex.’

      ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I think if my brain’s doing anything, it’s trying to forget what I just saw. That shit should be illegal.’

      ‘It’s called threading,’ Ellie said.

      They watched as an Indian woman with smooth dark skin and burgundy-stained lips moved her head back and forth, using the grip of her teeth and the movement of her head to maneuver a thread across the face of a young blond woman seated on the other side of the glass window.

      ‘She’s using a thread to pull that woman’s eyebrows out?’

      ‘It’s called threading,’ Ellie repeated.

      ‘Should be called torture. What the fuck are we doing here?’

      ‘You could use a little tidying up around there,’ Ellie said, reaching for his brow line.

      Rogan swatted her hand away.

      ‘This is Perfect Arches,’ she said. ‘It’s Thursday, ten after four. You don’t remember?’

      ‘If you’ve some personal woman business to take care of, Hatcher, you really didn’t need to drag me along.’

      ‘Perfect Arches? Thursday at four p.m.? Kristen Woods?’

      ‘Kristen Woods is Sparks’s assistant.’

      ‘The timeline, Rogan. When we first tried to track down Woods about the timeline, she was out of the office. She said she’s got a standing appointment every Thursday at four p.m. to have her eyebrows threaded. I asked her –’

      Rogan snapped his fingers. ‘You asked her where. Then you went on and on about how perfect her eyebrows were. I was tempted to reach down and check my anatomy to make sure I was still a man, the two of you blathering like that in front of me.’

      ‘I was bonding. Like the way you talk up sports to every doorman we ever need information out of ? Pretending you’re a Mets fan? So I pretended to care about eyebrow plucking. Kristen loves me.’

      ‘So if Kristen loves you so much, why are we bombarding her at this dungeon of torture?’

      ‘If we want to see Kristen without popping into the Sparks building, this is the place to do it. Look, there she is.’

      Rogan followed the line of Ellie’s fingertip and spotted a woman with straight strawberry blond hair down to her shoulders, leaning back in a salon chair, another Indian woman working her magic with a string of thread above her.

      ‘She dyed her hair,’ he observed.

      ‘Did she?’

      ‘Yeah. It didn’t have any red in it before. It was more your color.’

      Ellie dropped her gaze. ‘You might want to check that anatomy after all, girlfriend.’

      Rogan flexed his bicep and gave it a little kiss. ‘One hundred percent Afro-American Manly Man, sweetheart. Don’t you forget it.’

      He tapped her with the back of his hand. ‘Heads up,’ he said, his tone more serious.

      Inside the salon, Kristen Woods checked her eyebrows in a handheld mirror, nodded her approval, and then walked to the front desk to pay.

      ‘You ask me, the money should be going the other direction,’ Rogan muttered.

      Woods nearly ran into them as she exited the salon, and then turned back as a glimmer of recognition crossed her face.

      ‘Ellie Hatcher, from the NYPD. My partner, J. J. Rogan.’

      ‘Yeah, sure, I remember. I hear you and my boss had quite the run-in yesterday in court.’

      Ellie was glad to see that the rapport she’d previously developed with Kristen had not been affected. ‘Mr. Sparks shares those sorts of colorful details with you, does he?’

      ‘Are you kidding? He doesn’t tell me squat. I heard him yelling about it in his office yesterday. I think I got the gist.’

      ‘I’m sure your boss was heartbroken by my brief period of incarceration.’

      ‘Uh, yeah, if what you mean is that it only lasted a day. Sorry, you probably aren’t laughing about this yet.’

      ‘Would you be? I couldn’t even keep my own underwear with me.’

      ‘Eeewww.’

      Rogan tapped one heel, his gaze affixed upward.

      They both took the hint, and Kristen changed the subject. ‘You’re wrong about him, you know.’

      ‘Wrong about what?’ Ellie asked.

      ‘About Sparks. He can be a prick in his own way, but he’s actually a decent person. There’s no way he’d kill anyone.’

      Ellie smiled. Everyone was capable of killing someone. It was just a question of whom, and under what circumstances. But the last thing she wanted was to advertise their agenda to Sparks’s personal assistant.

      ‘Really,’ Ellie assured her, ‘he’s not a suspect. I tried explaining it to the judge. The whole thing got blown out of proportion.’

      ‘“What if Sparks did it?” A cartoon showing him behind bars? It’s kind of funny, I guess, but you’re wrong. I swear.’

      ‘It was just doodling. Totally unprofessional, but not at all a reflection of where we are in this investigation. Your boss is not a suspect.’

      ‘Right. And that’s why you tracked me down here, where Sam wouldn’t know? But you know what? I don’t care. When cops ask questions, I answer. And if Sam asks me point-blank whether you came to me, I’m not going to lie to him either.’

      ‘No one’s asking you to lie, Kristen.’

      ‘Yeah, okay, but whatever. He’s not going to ask. I’m sure that was your intention in coming here instead of the office. I was just saying, there’s no way he’d hurt Robo, if that happens to be what you’re thinking. So go ahead and ask whatever you want. I’ve got no problems with you guys.’

      She was about as straightforward a witness as two detectives could ask for. Loyal to her boss, but not so loyal that she’d want to lie.

      ‘We’re going back to the very beginning,’ Ellie said. ‘Making sure we didn’t miss anything. We wanted to talk to you again about Mancini reserving the apartment for that night.’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘So the way you explained it to us, you keep a calendar for the 212?’

      ‘Right. Sam offers the penthouse to various business associates when they come to town. More impressive than a hotel. I keep track of it all so I can make sure the maid service comes and cleans up after guests, changes the linens – that kind of thing. And that requires knowing when people are there and for how long.’

      ‘And then Sparks lets employees use the place, too?’

      ‘Yeah. Not a lot, but, you know, it’s the occasional little perk. I told you, he’s not the evil shit you think he is. Everyone knows not to take it for granted.’

      ‘And who’s everyone?’ Rogan asked.

      ‘Not corporate employees, but more of just the personal staff. Me, the bodyguards – I mean, protection specialists,’ she said, smiling. ‘I think he even lent it to his contractor once.’

      ‘And none of these people has a key, right?’ Ellie was pretending that she needed to hear all of this information again.

      ‘No one keeps a key. There’s a coded key compartment that hangs from the apartment door. You flip the digits around to match the code. The box pops open, and the apartment key’s inside. One of my responsibilities after someone stays is to reset the code.’

      The

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