Simon ignores her and crouches, uses his sleeve to protect his hand as he yanks open the cupboard door beneath the kitchen sink. Everyone keeps their dishwashing gloves under the sink, and Cevolatti is no exception: Simon grabs the gloves, turns them right side out and pulls them on before returning to Nomi and the body.
He leans to get a closer look at what’s been done to Cevolatti’s face and chest and tongue, waving flies away. Then he steps carefully around to the rear of the body and takes a knee to examine the hands where they’re tied at the back.
“That’s clean,” he mutters to himself. “But the front of him isn’t the same. It’s inconsistent.”
“We need to get out of here,” Nomi whispers. “Ineed to get out of here.”
“One more second,” Simon whispers back. He examines the stubby collection of digits on the floor, picks one up to check, places it back where he found it.
“Noone, for fuck’s sake!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Noone.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
They go out the same way they came in—Nomi uses her sleeve to close the front door so it’s unlatched the way they found it—before they clatter down the stairs. Once they’re out, past the seafood shop, Nomi makes serious strides down the block until she reaches the mouth of an alley a little distance away from Cevolatti’s tenement. Then she ducks around the corner of the alley entrance.
Simon finds her, one hand against the brick wall, heaving up her most recent meal into the drain near an open dumpster.
“Ah fuck.” She spits, wipes her eyes with her forearm. “God.”
Simon takes his gloved hands out of his trench coat pockets, peels off the gloves and throws them in the dumpster before taking her elbow. “Are you dizzy?”
“Yes,” she groans. “No. Dammit—I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“Are you gonna fall? Do you want to sit?”
“No, I don’t want tosit.” She hawks and spits again, yanks her elbow away, rounding on him. Her eyes are very wide, red rimmed. “What thefuck, Simon. We just saw a dead body—how are you not fazed by that?”
“I lived with a doctor for five years. I work in a slaughterhouse.” Those reasons make the most sense, anyway. “Didn’t you get used to seeing dead bodies when you were a cop?”
“Not likethat. However long you’ve been on the force, you don’t get used to seeing people who’ve had their tongue and eyelidshacked off—Jesus Christ.” Her face is ruddy. “And what was the deal with the dishwashing gloves? Were you doing a goddamnexamination? They fucking tortured him!”
“Yes, they did torture him.” Simon puts his hands in his pockets. “They.More than one person went to work on him. More than one person was there.”
Nomi smears her palms down her jeans, wipes her face with the hem of her T-shirt. “How can you know that?”
“The fingers—they were clean. Clean cuts, right between the middle and proximal phalanges. From the angles, I’d say they used bolt cutters. Whoever did that knew exactly what they were doing, it was professional work.”
Her face screws up. “How can you—”
“Again, I work in a slaughterhouse. I know the difference between a hack job and a pro cut.” He steps back to give her space. “I didn’t see a set of bolt cutters in the apartment, did you? Someone brought that, and the ropes to tie him with. Someone prepared, efficient, professional. They came to question him, like we did, except they were using stronger means of persuasion.”
Nomi exhales, regaining composure. “Okay. But if they wanted to ask him questions, why cut out his tongue?”
“That wasn’t clean, it wasn’t ... elegant.” He shakes his head in distaste. “It was just vindictive.”
“It wasn’telegant?” Nomi is looking at him like she’s never seen him before.
“No. It was messy—angry. The tongue and the eyelids and the chest wounds were done with a knife, a sharp one. Maybe from his own kitchen, which they took away and dumped later—there wasn’t a knifein the sink or on the floor nearby. But someone else was in that room, someone who was very unhappy with Ricki Cevolatti.”
“Jesus.” Nomi puts both hands behind her head, elbows out, before dropping her arms and turning around. “Okay, fine. It’s fucked, but it’s fine.”
“Now what do we do?”
She grimaces, spits once more before walking back toward the street. “Well first, I need to wash my mouth. And we need to move. I want to get as far away from this mess as I can before I call it in.”
