“The balcony,” Neesa said. “The rooms in that old wing, the first floor was only a few feet above the ground. There was a stepladder stuck behind the ice machine, so the engineering guys could use it to fix lights and stuff. He told me to climb up that and he’d let me in through the sliding-glass door. So I wouldn’t be on the security cameras, ’cause there weren’t that many in the old wing.”

Gotcha, Drue silently mouthed.

“Huh?” Neesa leaned back in the chair, glassy-eyed, open-mouthed.

“Nothing,” Drue said. “Why did Herman call you?”

“To clean up the mess he’d made,” Neesa said scornfully. “And help him get the body outta there.”

“That’s awful,” Drue said, meaning it.

“Yeah. You know, it’s been two years, and I think maybe I got me some of that, what do they call it, after you been in combat?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder?”

“That’s it,” Neesa said. She held both hands in front of her. “See this? My hands are shaking real bad, ’cause we been talking about it.”

“How do you hide a body in a hotel room?” Drue asked. She could hear the oven timer ticking away.

“He put her in the big cleaning cart Jaz had brought when she came up to the room. Then, he had me put on this hat she always wore, like, pulled down over my face so couldn’t nobody watching the security cameras tell it was me instead of her, then I took it on down to the laundry room. He was supposed to take that cart out of there, and do something, but before he could get there, one of the other girls, Lutrisha, she came in there and started dumping out the dirty sheets, and that’s when she found the body.”

Neesa picked up the wineglass. It was empty. “And then all hell broke loose,” she said.

“I can’t believe this creep Byars got away with killing Jazmin,” Drue said, her indignation sincere. “Didn’t the police or anybody else ask you about any of this stuff? Are they that clueless?”

“I talked to the cops, I didn’t tell ’em anything. Some private investigator dude came to the dry cleaners where I was working, asked me a couple questions about Jaz, but hell, I’m not that stupid. After that, I went off the grid, big-time.”

She sighed and peered down at the test strip of hair. “Yeah. This looks real good for the first go-round. It ain’t all the way platinum, but I think I could come back next week and take it to the next level.”

“Next week?” Drue glanced over at the hair on the paper towel. It was a pale orange.