“Save her?”
“He was holding her. He had a knife.”
“We saw the knife,” Paulson volunteered. “Beside the body.”
Tolson said, “So, you wanted distance from him as you hit him. But you, Azita, were in the man’s grip. There’s no blood on you. How is that?”
“There was.” She shuddered. “I showered. I changed clothes.”
“I see. Where are the clothes you were wearing?”
“In the garbage. My mother took them.”
“We’re going to need them,” Paulson said kindly. “You can’t do that. You can’t make those decisions. They’re evidence. Out back?”
The mother glanced at her husband, then nodded.
“I’ll tell the techs to get them,” Paulson said, again very gently.
Tolson asked, “How long before you called us?”
“Right away.”
“But the shower? Your daughter had a shower?”
“Maybe I sat with her for a few minutes to calm her, I don’t remember. There’s a shower in the basement. She used that.”
“The change of clothes?”
“My wife brought her fresh clothes.”
“We need to go to your living room and reenact. You should show us where you were at each point. But first, did you know the young man? Any of you?”
They all said no.
“Are you sure? Did you all look at him?”
“We didn’t let Javeed or my mother-in-law go down to look, but my wife and I saw him. He was not familiar.”
“Azita?”
“Please, no.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know him.”
“Did the man speak? What did he say to you?”
She hesitated.
“Azita?” her father prompted.
“He said, ‘I need jewels, money, cash, lots of cash, now.’ I said, ‘I can get you a little cash.’ But I made a noise. He hit me. He said, ‘Shut up or I’ll kill you.’ He pulled a knife. I kept talking, telling him we had some cash on hand, not much, but that I would find him something else of value. Then my father came down. The surprise made him... the man... turn from me. Then he turned back because... I don’t know, maybe he was going to stab me. My father hit him.”
“How many times?”
“Two.”
“Please promise me,” Yousef Samadi said suddenly, “that you will keep this out of the papers and the news.”
Tolson paused and looked at him, surprised. “There is no way I can do that. We have freedom of the press.”
“Please. Keep my daughter out of it. She’s young. She’s still in high school. Don’t you understand that? Please.”
“I’ll do my best on that end.”
The father sighed heavily.
They went into the living room and played out the scenario the girl had described — sleep, sound of break-in, scream, words of threat, knife pulled, father arrives, hit to the head. They played it a couple of times while the techs worked in the basement room. Azita did it beautifully. She turned like a dancer, got up off the sofa like a princess awaking from sleep in a Disney film.
After they’d seen the act, Tolson went outside to talk to the news folks who had gathered and were sitting in open cars, smoking and chatting amongst themselves. Paulson stood in the doorway. Tolson said simply, “The apparent situation is that an intruder broke into the basement of this home. The owner who was upstairs alleges that he was alerted by a sound. He went downstairs. The man made threats to his family. The owner hit the man and the blow killed him. The intruder is as yet unidentified. We are working on an identification and checking all aspects of the case.”
Tolson and Paulson went back inside. “We’ll probably be here until about dawn,” they told the family.
“Why?”
“Everything takes time. The techs need time. Also, we’ll need to get DNA and fingerprints from you.”
“From us?”
“Yes.”
“Is this normal?” Samadi asked. He drew himself up. “Is this because we are Iranian?”
“Not because you are Iranian. It’s normal practice. We need to corroborate your account so you don’t get in trouble. Please don’t worry,” Paulson said in his honey voice. “This will soon be in the past.”
The atmosphere softened a bit after that. The grandmother yawned and slept in a chair. The family made toast, but then started to forage for larger items of food from the fridge. “What can I prepare for you?” the mother asked the detectives.
The partners managed to refuse her offer of food and drink, but they sent a patrol cop to Ritter’s to pick up middle-of-the-night sandwiches for themselves and the techs.
After they finished taking DNA swabs and fingerprints, they allowed the family to go to bed, all except Yousef, who more than agreed to be the point person. “I don’t sleep much anyway,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“Arthritis, gout, business worries.”
“I’m curious. Why did you choose Schenley Farms?” Paulson asked. “I mean, of all the places in the city. Foreign visitors seem to like living in the suburbs.”
“My wife teaches at CMU.”
“She’s a professor?” Paulson didn’t hide his surprise very well.
“Yes. Fairly famous.”
“What subject?”
“Business.”
There. They’d made a gaff. Assumed the wife was a stay-at-home because she looked a certain polite way and didn’t mouth off.
The next day they got an ID on the intruder. He was Jacob Wilson. He’d been in trouble before, for drugs. He’d lived in the Hill District. They went to see his mother and delivered the bad news.
She took it like a soldier, very strong. She provided pictures of Jacob, and when the cops could see his face and the structure of his very fine skull, they saw he’d been an extremely good-looking guy. He’d been twenty-three years old. His mother said, “I knew he had some trouble awhile back. He went to meetings. He got clean twice. He... must have backslid, I guess. I didn’t think so, but I guess he did. If I tell you he was a good kid, you won’t believe me, but he was. He was an addict but not a criminal. He was an innocent boy, all his life. An innocent.”
“Who were some of his friends?” Paulson asked. “We’d like to talk to them.”
Lila Wilson, not crying, but clearly in a deep sadness that took her voice down to a whisper, gave the names of two young men who might have seen her son in recent weeks.
The detectives went to their car. They sat for a moment.
“Nice lady,” Tolson said.
“Why are we still looking into this?”
“Tie up the ends. Be sure.”
“Right. Right. Here’s what I’m thinking. If I met Azita when I was younger...”
“She might like them older.”
“Younger than I am now... You know what I mean.”
“Right. That’s why we’re looking.”
Wilson’s friends were not that easy to track down. Finally, the detectives caught up with one of them, Pierre Smith, who told them where the second friend, Joe Sandusky, could probably be found. Pierre, looking at the pictures of first Yousef, then of Javeed, then of Azita, said no, he’d never seen them or heard of them. “Wouldn’t mind knowing the girl,” he said wide-eyed.
The other friend, Joe Sandusky, didn’t recognize the photos either. When asked about his friend, he said it was a terrible tragedy and that he didn’t believe the crap about Jacob breaking into a house. “Maybe he had a hookup with the chick. He liked women.”
“How would we find out if he knew her?”
“Beats me.”
“Tell us where the hangout was. Where he bought stuff. Where he might have met her.”