Over Her Dead Body (5 page)

I pushed the door to Mona’s office fully open. She was lying on the floor just in front of her desk, face-up, dressed in black pants and top, her arms and legs twitching violently as if she had touched a high-voltage wire. Gurgling noises were coming from her mouth. And both brown eyes, even the one that never looked straight, were rolled back in her head.

CHAPTER 3

F
or a few seconds I just stood there. I felt paralyzed with both fear and uncertainty. Seizures . . . seizures? I thought, searching that section of my brain that may have committed itself during a first-aid course back in high school. I knew that doctors used to think that a person having a seizure was in danger of swallowing his tongue and that you were supposed to try to hold the tongue down—without getting your hand chomped off. But I was pretty sure that the only recommendation nowadays was that you protect the person from hurting himself and get medical attention fast.

Mona’s head lay about an inch or two from the heavy wooden leg of her desk, and her body was being jounced in that direction by the spasms. I took three quick strides toward her, knelt down, and slipped my right hand under her head. I noticed immediately that the hair around her face was soaked with blood. Peering through the dark, wet strands, I spotted a huge, ugly gash on her left temple.

My heart wasn’t just racing now; it was leaping all over the place. I’d covered seriously injured people as a newspaper reporter and I’d come across dead bodies in cases I’d investigated, yet I’d never grown used to being up close and personal with violence. Clearly, someone had attacked both Mona and the cleaning lady. Still squatting, I tugged Mona’s body gently so her head wasn’t so close to the desk leg. Then I swung around on my heels and stared anxiously out into the vestibule. The cleaning lady was the only one there.

“Mona? Mona, can you hear me?” I said, turning back to her. Her eyes continued to bounce around at the top of the sockets, and her left arm involuntarily pummeled my thigh. She was clearly not conscious of anything going on around her.

I stood up, hurried behind her desk, and dialed 911. I explained to the operator that two women had been attacked and were injured, at least one seriously. She told me to stay on the line, but I explained that the best I could do was set down the phone because I needed to check on one of the people who’d been attacked.

I rushed back out to the vestibule, where the cleaning lady was now struggling to her feet. She was younger than I’d realized—probably only in her mid-thirties.

“What happened?” I asked, putting my arm around her. There was a bloody smear on her face now, as if she’d dabbed at her wound with her glove and then touched her face. “Who did this to you?”

“My head,” she muttered. “It hurts.” She had a Russian or Eastern European accent.

“I know—you have a head injury. But I’ve called for an ambulance and they should be here soon. Why don’t you sit down over here.”

I guided her over to the desk of one of Mona’s two assistants and eased her into the chair.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

She hesitated for a moment, and I wondered if she might be suffering from memory loss.

“Katya,” she said haltingly. “Katya Vitaliev.”

“Katya, I want to find some ice for your head, but first I’m going to call for more help, okay?”

A sheet of phone extensions was pinned above the assistant’s desk, and my eyes ran to the bottom of the sheet, where I found the number for the lobby.

“Who am I speaking to?” I asked as soon as someone picked up.

“This is Bob.”

“This is Bailey Weggins on sixteen in the
Buzz
office. Someone has attacked two women up here. I’ve already called 911. The person who did it has probably already left the building, but you should try to prevent anyone from leaving until the police get here.”

“All right, all right. I’m going to send somebody right up there.”

I set down the phone and considered how I could obtain ice for Katya’s head. The kitchenette was on the far side of the floor, and I was nervous not only about leaving her and Mona, but also about encountering the assailant. What if some kind of lunatic was wandering the floor? I realized that Mona must have a refrigerator. I glanced around the space and noticed a minifridge over by the other assistant’s desk. I flung open the door. The freezer compartment was tiny, but it held a small tray of ice covered with about six months’ worth of freezer burn. I popped the cubes into some paper towels and hurried back toward Katya.

“Here, can you manage to hold this against your head?” I asked. “It’ll help control the bleeding.”

“Yes, I will hold it.” She accepted the makeshift ice pack with her bloodied yellow glove and touched it carefully to the back of her head. From the location of her wound, it appeared she’d been struck from behind. I wondered if she had even seen her attacker.

I glanced back into Mona’s office. She was still twitching with seizures. I didn’t dare do anything to
her
wound.

“What happened, Katya?” I asked again. “Did you see who did this to you?”

“I—I did not see him,” she said, shaking her head. “I did not see anything.”

“Were you attacked out here?” I asked.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I start to go into the office. I saw her—the editor, Mrs. Hodges—on the floor. I start to go to her, to see if I can help. Then someone hit me. They—they were behind the door, I think.”

“And then you came out here?”

“Yes. I was okay at first, but then . . . then I start to feel—dizzy.” She pronounced it
deezy.

“Do you have any idea how long you were kneeling out here?”

“I don’t know. A little while, I think.”

That meant the attack had probably occurred just prior to the time I’d been rifling through Robby’s desk drawers—or perhaps even during that time. If that was the case, the assailant hadn’t left by the main entrance because I would have seen him. He must have snuck down one of the stairwells—
or
had exited through the door on this floor that led to the
Track
offices.

“Okay, sit tight for a second,” I told her. I rushed back into Mona’s office. Mona’s body was still twitching, but less than it had before. Her head was now drooping to the left. I wished there were something I could
do.

From behind me I heard a commotion, and I stepped outside the office again. Lights suddenly flooded the bullpen, and I saw one of the building security guards running in our direction. A look of panic had formed on Katya’s face.

“It’s just the building guard,” I told her. I stepped outside the vestibule into the aisle.

The guy was no more than twenty-five, a skinny Pakistani who looked terrified, as if up until this point the worst thing he’d encountered in his job was people sneaking out of the building with boxes of file folders.

“Where are they?” he yelled at me. “What happened?”

Before I could even answer, we heard more noise. Charging down the hall behind him were four EMS workers and two New York City uniformed cops and behind them one of the big burly security guys who’d been on duty outside the
Track
party. It looked as if he had hitched a ride to see what the excitement was. This was the first indication of just how much of a circus this was going to become.

The group reached the vestibule and came to an abrupt stop, staring at me expectantly. One of the patrol cops was a woman, thirty or so, African American, and the other was a white guy who seemed pretty green.

I pointed over toward Katya, explaining that she had been attacked and that there was a more seriously injured victim inside the office, the editor of the magazine. The security guard was told by the female cop to return to the reception area and make certain no one entered or left the
Buzz
offices. She also dispatched the young cop to make a sweep of the floor. Three of the EMS crew hustled into Mona’s office, followed by the female cop, and the other went over to Katya. He examined the scalp wound and immediately took her blood pressure. A minute later the cop emerged from the office, speaking into her walkie-talkie. She signed off, pulled a chair up to Katya, and began asking her questions, taking the answers down on a pad inside a thick black leather holder. Katya told her the same thing she’d told me, though by now she seemed slightly more coherent.

When it was clear she’d extracted all she could out of Katya—which wasn’t much—the cop turned her attention to me.

“You found the victims?” she asked after she’d jotted down my name and address and determined that I worked at
Buzz.

“Yes. Just before eight-thirty I heard some moaning and then I saw Katya kneeling down with her hands on her head. As I was trying to help her, I noticed the overturned chair in the editor’s office and looked inside. That’s when I saw Mona—”

“You were working
this
late tonight?”

“Sort of. I was on business outside of the office all day and I came by to pick up some work in my in-box.”

I didn’t like being less than truthful with a cop, but I’d made a decision a few minutes ago to leave Robby out of any explanation I offered about my presence here tonight. I was worried that I’d get him into trouble if I mentioned the secret mission he’d assigned me. Besides, I really
had
picked up work from my in-box.

“Did you see anyone else here?”

“No, not a soul,” I said, shaking my head. “Though there are plenty of people over at the party.”

She pointed to the art department, the area directly beyond Mona’s vestibule, and told me to take a seat there. Detectives, she said, would want to speak to me after they arrived.

I picked up my purse from the floor, walked over to the associate art director’s station, and plunked down in his chair. Attached to his bulletin board was a huge tabloid headline that read,
NAKED SAMURAI SLASHER,
and the desk was scattered with magazines, books, packs of gum, and a set of chattering teeth. I’d barely expelled my breath when four guys—two more patrol cops and what I assumed were two detectives—came charging down the aisle. They glanced over at me but made a beeline toward the patrol cop and the crime scene. Seconds later two of the EMS workers headed out with Mona on a stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face. They were moving fast, one guy holding an IV line. Mona no longer appeared to be twitching uncontrollably.

Moments later another stretcher was wheeled by, this one with Katya on it. She was twisting her head back and forth, and I saw one of the EMS crew lean closer and say something in her ear, perhaps to comfort her.

For the next five or ten minutes I waited, keeping my eye on the police activity and trying in my mind to make sense of what had happened tonight. Who could have possibly done this to Mona, and
why
? There was a chance, I supposed, that some sort of maniac or druggie had slipped into the offices and come prowling around looking for money. He may have popped into her office not expecting to find anyone and been startled when he discovered her. Perhaps she screamed or threatened to call security and he struck her on the head to silence her. As he was about to flee, he heard the cleaning lady come down the hall with her cart. He hid behind the door. As she pushed it open, he struck her, too.

But there was extra security in the building tonight, and the roving druggie theory didn’t make nearly as much sense as another explanation: that someone Mona knew had done this to her. Someone who had learned that she was going to be in her office late on Tuesday—a rare occurrence—and had come by looking for her. Perhaps he’d had no intention of hurting her, but they’d had a confrontation and things had escalated. And there was an excellent chance that the person was someone who worked at
Buzz.

I glanced across the area to the row of windows. There were already paparazzi down below, and before long there would be even more press. This was a big fat juicy story, and everyone would be covering it.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of activity at the far end of the floor. A man I recognized as Mona’s husband, Carl, came barreling down the aisle along the pod, a wigged-out expression on his face and the tail of his jacket flapping like a flag. On his heels was a patrol cop I hadn’t seen before. Before Carl reached Mona’s office, one of the detectives stepped around from the vestibule and stood in his path. The detective spoke to him, and I heard him say the words St. Luke’s—the name of a hospital in midtown where they must have taken Mona. A second later, Mona’s husband turned on his heels and left with the cop in tow. He was obviously now heading to the hospital. I assumed the officer had been told to take him there.

Only a few minutes later the two detectives strode over toward me, along with the female patrol cop. She told them my name and then retreated as they pulled out desk chairs and sat down.

The alpha male appeared to be the taller and bigger of the two, a six-foot-two guy, probably mid-forties, with receding pale brown hair, thick cheeks, and those glasses they make now without any frames so that sometimes you can’t even tell they’re there. His partner was short and chubby, maybe a little older, with a silver streak like a racing stripe along the side of his black brown hair.

“Miss Weggins?” the alpha male said, half question, half statement, as he glanced at a page of his notebook.

“Yes.”

“We appreciate your sticking around. I’m Detective Randy Tate, and this is Detective McCarthy.”

I nodded. I felt nervous, the way I always did when conversing with cops. “Of course,” I said.

“I know you told the officer what happened, but take us through it again, will you?”

I retold my story, starting with the part about hearing moans and skipping over how I happened to be at
Buzz
in the first place. I didn’t want to lie again if I didn’t have to.

“One thing I should tell you,” I added. “I moved Mona’s body a couple of inches—away from the desk. I know you’re supposed to be careful about touching things in situations like this, but she was having a seizure and I was afraid she might knock her head against the leg of the desk. Do you know how she is, by the way?”

“We don’t have any word yet,” he said, sounding as if he wouldn’t tell me even if they did. “Did the victim say anything to you?”

“Nothing. She was shaking badly, in some kind of convulsions. I did speak to the other victim—the cleaning lady. She told me that the person must have been behind the door when she entered the office. She said she never saw who hit her.”