They were a blur of uniforms: policemen, firefighters, security guard, men in coveralls with oval name patches on their chests. I stopped and stared at them, but they were all staring past me, into the elevator.

I turned. Lucy Carter-Jones was sprawled in the corner of the car. Her eyes were open inside raccoon circles of mascara, and she had a hole in her left cheek so neat it looked like someone had taken a paper punch to her face. On the wall above her was a splatter of blood and gore, and on the floor beside her was the gun, a snub-nosed revolver in a matte black finish.

I felt sick, and then I was sick. I doubled over and heaved out a stream of yellow bile all over the gleaming marble floor.

Two men lunged at me from either side, and they hoisted me up, their hands tight on my elbows and wrists. My toes dragged the floor as they propelled me across the lobby and through a glass door into an empty office. It was furnished only with a metal desk and a chair and a coat rack hung heavy with winter coats. I looked around for my own coat before I remembered it was back there, on the floor of the elevator, near the gun.

I looked down. My suit jacket started out that day as a solid boring beige; now it was leopard-print, or cheetah, or some other predator splattered with the blood of its kill. The sight of it made me want to vomit again. I tore frantically at the buttons, and the two men jumped to restrain me until they saw what I was doing. They helped me remove the jacket, and one of them bore it away as the other pressed me down into the chair.

“My coat,” I said. “My things.” I tried to remember what else I’d left behind. My briefcase. My purse.

“They’re being secured,” he said.

The first man returned and handed me a plastic cup of water. He wore the uniform of a police officer. I turned to the other man and saw that he did, too. The cup trembled in my hand, and the water sloshed from side to side like waves lapping at a dock. I gulped a mouthful and swirled it around my teeth and spat it back into the cup. My hands were shaking badly. I stared at them, then at my fingernails. They were torn and ragged, and I remembered how I’d dug my fingertips into the crack between the elevator doors, how hard I’d pulled and strained to open them. I’d broken every nail, and the door never budged.

“What happened?” one officer asked, while the other said, “What’s your name?”

A different uniform came through the door. This one was a firefighter, and he stayed only long enough to shake his head.

One of the officers stepped out into the lobby. I twisted around to watch through the glass door as he spoke into his shoulder-mounted radio. My brain wasn’t working right. It took until that moment for me to realize what the firefighter’s head shake meant. With a gasp, I spun to the remaining cop. “She’s dead?”