“There were three of them inside, right?” Gil prompted her. She nodded and he continued. “We have one in custody, and you gavedescriptions of the other two to the police earlier. Since you’ve had time to think about it, do you remember seeing any of them anywhere before? Was there anything memorable about them? A tattoo, a birthmark, a scar?”
Ivy closed her eyes. Did Gil remember how good her memory was? Probably not. When she was a child, few understood she had a memory close to what people thought of as photographic. “They all wore ski masks. The tallest was close to six-four, and he was white with green eyes and freckles. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a redhead. His lashes were red, and he had freckles on his eyelids. He wore gloves, but the skin on his forearm was also heavily freckled, and the hair on his arms may have been red. He’s the one who stunned me.”
“Stunned you?” Gil spoke like he had something lodged in his throat.
“Yes. I saw it but not in time to react. When I came to, I was tied to a chair in my kitchen. The tall guy never got close to me again. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he signed up for torture.”
Morris scoffed, but Gil didn’t spare him a glance. “Why do you say that?”
“Body language. He was miserable. He left the room, and he may have thrown up when they burned my thumb. I think he expected me to give them what they wanted with no drama.”
Ivy refused to look at Morris and spoke directly to Gil, but that didn’t mean she didn’t notice that Morris picked up his pen and started writing.
“We’ll come back to that,” Gil said. “Can you describe the other two men?”
“One was around six feet and abnormally skinny. I suspect he’s an addict. He scratched his arms a lot, and he was the most fidgety of the trio. He had brown eyes, and they weren’t always focused.He wasn’t high, but he may have scrambled too many brain cells to be fully cognizant. With that said, I think he knows more than the tall guy. I think the tall guy was muscle. I don’t know what the twitchy guy’s purpose was, but my guess is he was promised drugs or money if he participated, because he did whatever he was told.”
Ivy was trying to hold it together, but in a minute this retelling was going to get messy.
“Tell me about the third man.” Gil didn’t phrase it as a question, but she still felt it was a request, not a demand. It was small but also huge. She’d had so many demands today. It was soothing to feel like she had some control over what she shared.
She appreciated that he didn’t describe the man as the one she shot, but simply as the third man.
“Was there anything specific you noticed about him?”
They had the man in custody, so Gil didn’t need a physical description. But she closed her eyes and focused on her memories. He was the shortest and heaviest of the three. Maybe five-eight and pushing three hundred pounds. Brown eyes, pudgy hands, bushy eyebrows. But they could see all of that for themselves. “He was the oldest, probably by twenty years. Maybe more.”
“What specifically did you observe that makes you say that?” Gil asked.
“His voice was gruffer, more mature. And the lines around his eyes were deeper, more wrinkled and furrowed than laugh lines.”
Gil nodded at her explanation, and she continued. “He needed the other men because everything he did to me seemed to zap him of his physical energy. He was breathing hard, almost gasping for air. It made me wonder if he used oxygen.”
Morris continued to take notes. If it was possible to write angrily, that’s how he was doing it. But he must have decided to let Gil ask the questions, because he kept quiet. At least for now.
“That’s great, Ivy. Do you need a break?”
Morris muttered, “Oh, for crying out loud.”
Ivy was tempted to say she needed a break for no reason other than to annoy Morris further, but the sooner this was over, the sooner she could leave this place, so she resisted. “No.”
“Can you tell us what they wanted? As specifically as you can remember it.”
“The guy you have in custody, he backhanded me twice before he asked for anything. Then he told me he needed my admin user ID and password, as well as my personal user ID and password. I asked him why. He asked me if I had a death wish. I said no, but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would go to all this trouble to get into my computer. He asked me if I thought this was a joke. Did I think someone was pulling an elaborate hoax. I said no.”
Ivy stared at her fingers. “He broke my pinky. Just grabbed my hand and broke it.”
Morris stopped writing.
Gil swallowed hard.
She tried to remember everything. “I think I screamed. I’m not sure. That part is fuzzy. I was in a lot of pain.” Maybe pain blurred memory, even a memory like hers.
Gil’s mouth opened, then closed, then he swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “He broke your finger to prove to you he wasn’t a joke.”
“I believe so. Then he went to the bathroom.”
“He did what?” This came from Morris.
