Page 21 of Nothing Left

"Who's going to hurt you?" Wyatt demanded.

He shrugged, pressing his lips together.

“If you explain what’s going on, we can guarantee it will stay confidential,” she promised him. “If it’s someone else you’re scared of, we won’t say that the information came from you.”

Enzo's demeanor now relaxed slightly, and Juliette knew they were getting closer to the truth. "Look, this must please stay between us," he said.

"Go on?" Juliette asked.

"When we were in the club." His voice was trembling badly now, quivering as he spoke. "I got some drugs for us."

"Yes," Juliette said. She felt suddenly hesitant. After being hopeful this man knew something, the drugs angle seemed to be veering things onto the wrong track. But maybe she was just being pessimistic.

"The person I got them from, he is famous in the neighborhood, Enzo continued, his voice unsteady. “He is a well-known dealer, he operates in nightclubs, he has people working for him."

A trickle of sweat ran down Enzo's cheek, and he lifted his cuffed hands to wipe it away with his wrist.

"I got a phone call this afternoon from the dealer," he said miserably. "He had heard about all of this and knew he had sold to me. He said that if I mentioned his name if I talked about him at all to the police, there would be huge trouble. That he would find me and hurt me."

Juliette nodded. The reason for the headlong, panicked run was now becoming clear.

"I believed him. So I decided it would be safest to leave town, even though the police had asked me to stay. I was scared. I don't want this dealer to hurt me."

And just like that, Juliette's last hopes came crashing down. Enzo was a frightened man, but there was a reason for his fear, and the reason was that a local drug dealer, looking to protect his own business, had told him to stay quiet and threatened him if he talked to the police.

Now, all she could hope for was that Enzo might have seen or heard something while at the apartment.

"I want to know what happened after the nightclub," Juliette said. "What happened when you went back with the two women and Diego?"

"We all went back to that place where Heather and Samantha stayed. I was very drunk. I think Samantha was probably the most sober. She did not like tequila, that was the reason. She wanted us all to go to bed, but the others were too out of control. In the end, I slept on the couch in the living room. I guess I was hoping that maybe Samantha would come, find me, spend some time with me, you know? I liked her a lot. But I was so drunk! I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, it was light, and someone was screaming. Then, I woke up and was scared. I felt paranoid, and I ran out of the house."

Another drunk testimony. Another memory gap.

Even though Enzo seemed to believe he was innocent, they couldn't rule him out at this point until they had more evidence, or else they had found a stronger suspect.

"I'm going to hold you in custody for tonight," Juliette said firmly. "You're clearly a flight risk, and we haven't yet proven your version or your innocence."

She nodded to Wyatt, who immediately walked out and got on the phone to organize this.

"When will I be cleared?" Enzo asked. All the fight had gone out of him, and he looked exhausted and scared.

"If and when we can confirm that someone else was the killer, then everyone else under suspicion is cleared," Juliette said.

Wyatt walked back in, and they helped Enzo out of the chair. His legs were shaking. She thought he'd be better off in jail for the night, given the drug dealer's threats.

The problem was that they had now reached the end of the day. It was after ten p.m., and they had no further suspects. Tomorrow morning, they could speak to Heather again, and they could widen the net, perhaps asking the neighbors or other people in the apartment if they had seen or heard anything.

It was too late to start with that now. That meant Juliette would have the hard job of reporting her lack of success back to Ebury. She knew, with the international spotlight shining on them, that this would be a disappointing outcome.

She waited for the police to arrive, and as soon as they knocked on the door, Wyatt handed Enzo over to them, explaining that he was a suspect who needed to be held for another few days or until he could be released. Meanwhile, feeling leaden about what she had to do, Juliette walked out of the small room and made the call that she was dreading.

"Juliette." Ebury’s voice was brisk and sharp. She imagined him sitting at the desk in the Manhattan office she knew so well, a compact, wiry, athletic man with an understated demeanor that concealed a forceful and dynamic character. "What news?"

She took a deep breath. "Okay. First things first, we’ve done our best to improve Heather’s safety. We've used all our clout to try to persuade the prison manager to move her into solitary. She's at risk from the other inmates. There's a lot of aggression toward her. She's had threats made against her, and I believe they're serious enough to merit that."

"Good," Ebury said. "I'm glad you've tried to ensure that. We’ve managed to book a flight for her father tomorrow, so I'll tell him that in the meantime, and I hope it will set his mind at rest. And how about progress on the case?"

Juliette hesitated for a moment before speaking. "We're still following leads, but we haven't found anything concrete yet. We've spoken to both the men who were in the apartment that night. They are not fully cleared, but they also are not yet formal suspects. Everyone was very drunk, and nobody could remember clearly what happened. The forensic tests on the clothing will also be important, but those will probably only be done by Monday," she said regretfully.

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