“Ma’am.” She was late thirties, Zack estimated. Probably pretty when her lip wasn’t split and her brown eyes weren’t blackened. “I need you to come with me. I’ll take you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor.” She curled into herself. Zack noted shallow cuts on her arms, gifts from flying glass. “What’s going to happen to Joe?”

“We’ll talk about that. Can you tell me your name?”

“Diane, Diane McCoy.”

“Let me help you up, Ms. McCoy.”

Diane McCoy sat hunched in a chair with an ice bag held to her left eye. She continued to refuse medical assistance. After offering her a cup of coffee, Zack pulled his own chair from behind his desk, hoping the move would put her more at ease.

“Ms. McCoy, I want to help you.”

“I’m okay. We’ll pay for the damages. You just have the rental agency make up a list and we’ll pay for it.”

“That’s something we’ll need to see to. I want you to tell me what happened.”

“We just had a fight, that’s all. People do. You didn’t need to lock Joe up. If there’s a fine, we’ll pay it.”

“Ms. McCoy, you’re sitting there with your lip bleeding, your eye black, and cuts and bruises all over your arms. Your husband assaulted you.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?”

“I asked for it.”

Even as Ripley let out a vicious stream of air across the room, Zack leveled a warning glance. “You asked him to hit you, Ms. McCoy? To knock you down, to bloody your lip?”

“I aggravated him. He’s under a lot of pressure.” The words tumbled out, slurred a bit from her swollen lip. “This is supposed to be a vacation, and I shouldn’t’ve nagged at him that way.”

She must have sensed Ripley’s furious disapproval as she turned her head, stared defiantly. “Joe works hard, fifty weeks a year. The least I can do is leave him alone on his vacation.”

“It seems to me,” Ripley countered, “the least he could do is keep from punching you in the face on your vacation.”

“Ripley, get Ms. McCoy a glass of water.” And shut up. He didn’t have to say the last with his mouth, when his expression said it so clearly. “What started the trouble, Ms. McCoy?”

“I guess I got up on the wrong side of the bed. Joe was up late, drinking. A man’s entitled to sit in front of the TV with a few beers on his vacation. He left the place a mess—beer cans, spilled chips all over the rug. It irritated me, and I started on him the minute he was awake. If I’d shut up when he told me to, none of this would’ve happened.”