“Where was the surgeon?” I said. “Who did the operation on the femur?”
“Gainesville.”
My mind formed a triangle between Shilo, Gainesville, and Lideca. No theory emerged. I struggled to remember a case where we had learned so much in three days yet still had no leads on a killer. Each question led to more questions.
Shooter shut off the engine. We walked inside and tapped a bell at the counter.
The lobby was small. Sixty square feet, furnished with a gray love seat and a watercooler with a stack of nine pointy cups atop it. Underthe glass counter were policies and procedures, printed on paper that had yellowed over time.
Shooter smiled at me, tapping on the counter. “Lotta rules for a place called Any Way U Like It.”
A woman emerged from the back. “Afternoon,” she said.
She was blond and plain, with a small nose and wavy hair cut short off her shoulders, like a young boy. Shooter glanced over, deferring to me.
“My name is Gardner Camden,” I said, showing her my badge. “This is my colleague Joanne Harris. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Okay?” the woman said, a question more than an answer.
“We’ve discovered the body of a dead woman in Shilo, Florida,” I said. “She had a surgical pin in her right leg from a jump she’d made. An attempted suicide off a second-story balcony.”
I paused, studying the woman’s reaction. Her throat distended, and her pupils shrank to two and a half millimeters. She placed her hands behind her back, I suspected to keep a tremble out of view.
“The surgeon identified the pin as belonging to Mavreen Isiah,” I continued. “Except—that’s you, right?”
The woman said nothing, and I counted nineteen seconds since she’d visibly breathed.
Her eyes darted past us then, out to the street.
“What you may be experiencing right now is a fight-or-flight reaction,” Shooter said. “But we’re not here to arrest you… as long as you can help us.”
I looked from Shooter to the woman. We could ask for her real name. Threaten her. But I wanted to get a reaction that might break the case open. I pulled the composite sketch from a folder in my satchel and laid it on the counter.
“Do you know this man?”
The woman’s eyes locked onto the photo, and her face drained of color. “No?”
Again, the answer came out as a question. Shooter cocked her head, leaning her body low enough to make eye contact with the woman, who was staring at the ground.
“Ma’am, we believe the woman whose body we found was killed by the man in this sketch.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face, and she breathed through her nose, her chest rising and falling. Gasping, she wiped at the streaks of makeup with the back of her hand.
“She’s my sister,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Amber.”
“Amber Isiah?”
She nodded.
“And you know this man?” Shooter said, her voice soft.
“I saw him once,” Amber said. “But I don’t know his name.”
“Amber,” I said, “let’s start back at the beginning. Explain to us why you’re working here under your sister’s name.”
