Felix said, “The girl’s name was Grace. Grace Hunter.”
Peralta asked more questions in his familiar deep voice. Each time, Felix gave a short, precise answer. He held a smart black portfolio but it remained unopened. Grace Hunter was twenty-three. He gave her date of birth and Social Security number, both of which we would need for records searches. She had died on April twenty-second, a little more than two weeks previously. The police had ruled it a suicide.
Peralta took notes. I studied Felix Smith and couldn’t shake a feeling of discomfort.
He looked around thirty and his hair was dark and cut short, pushing down on a low forehead. Sitting straight with his hands palms-down on his thighs, his body conveyed strength and self-possession. But he had a nose that looked as if it had been mashed in multiple fights, pocked skin that had ingested too much sun which gave the impression of a flash burn, and the remains of bruises around unsettling, old yellow eyes. Even with his head immobile, those eyes restlessly swept the room.
Joseph Stalin had yellow eyes.
I guessed that his driver’s license identified them as hazel.
He wasn’t as big as Peralta, but he was plenty big. His head was large, about the same width as the muscled-up neck that held it. His hands were large and hard, with big knuckles, and underneath the suit his plank-like shoulders looked capable of violence. The brawler’s face and body didn’t go with the tailored suit and the high-shine, pricey shoes. Unless he was somebody’s muscle.
But maybe I was being jumpy, paranoid. Peralta kept telling me that.
My agitation kicked up a notch when he said where the girl had died: San Diego. I wanted to start nervously shaking my right leg, playing drums with my hands, or leave the room. After the first jump, I made my leg stay still.
“They say she jumped off a balcony. It was from the nineteenth floor of a condo.” His voice was steady, one note above a monotone. Peralta waited several seconds before going on.
“And you don’t believe that…”
“No.”
Peralta wrote down the address where it happened. It was downtown, near the beautiful Santa Fe railroad station.
“Who is she to you?” It was the first time I had spoken besides the introductions after he walked in the door.
The cat’s eyes focused on me. After a pause: “my sister.”
“Why not Grace Smith?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed and he assessed me, finding me wanting. “She had a different last name.”
I suppose it made sense. Lindsey and Robin had different last names, different fathers. Maybe Felix and Grace’s mother remarried. Maybe Grace had been married. I persuaded myself I was being overly suspicious.