Every Kind of Wicked. Lisa Black

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      Maggie tempered this optimism. “They have a gift shop. Her being a library patron doesn’t narrow your suspect pool much.”

      Riley said. “Sure it does. I haven’t had a library card in thirty years.”

      “That, young man,” Maggie told him, “is nothing to be proud of.”

      “Maybe so. Can you print me her picture?”

      “No color,” the boss of A to Z said. His fascination with Forensic Specialist Gardiner didn’t mean he would be providing ink and paper to anyone who asked. He was a businessman, after all.

      Maggie clicked the Print button, then selected a few other stills of the woman and the victim to save to the USB drive.

      The green bar eventually reached its apex and, after another polite pretend sip of the coffee, she retracted the USB drive and thanked the boss of A to Z with a smile that made him forgive her the theft of a piece of copy paper. He bid her adieu with deep and obvious regret.

      Riley asked his standard ending question: Was there anything else Ralph could possibly tell them about Evan Harding? Had he seemed worried? Stressed?

      “No, and no. He was my easy employee. The guy I have on days—well, you can see he still isn’t here. Every day it’s a different excuse; the bus broke down, his stepson sick, the dog ran away. Sheesh. But Evan, a model. Customers like him, I like him, his girlfriend not have kids that get sick. No problems.”

      “What girlfriend?” Jack asked, hoping the comment had not been rhetorical.

      “Skinny little thing, cute enough. Almost as pretty as that girl that was here. What was her name?”

      The cops waited, then realized that he wasn’t asking himself what Evan’s girlfriend’s name was, he was asking them what Maggie’s name was. Jack’s tone sharpened by a few strokes of the whetstone. “You’ve seen Evan Harding’s girlfriend?”

      “Yeah. She comes in here sometimes, stops by to say hi to him. They say sweet nothings through the plexiglass. I don’t let people in the back unless I’m paying them to be here. I don’t let my guys screw around on the clock, no holding customers up, but she was okay, never stayed long. Hi, how’s it going, and she’s back outside.”

      “What does she look like?”

      Ralph grew solemn under their intense stares. “Black hair, maybe to here, straight. About so high. Maybe a hundred pounds, hundred-twenty. White skin. Not much breasts.”

      After that they could think of nothing else to do but thank him for his time and leave.

      Outside on the sidewalk, again, the frosty air felt good for the first few minutes after the near-sauna of the A to Z offices, a sop to Jack’s blossoming irritation. “Girlfriend lied to us from start to finish. She sent us to the movie theater purely to screw us over.”

      Riley agreed, not even complaining about the short hike back to their car. “If we hadn’t noticed the name on those stubs, hadn’t grasped at that straw, our victim would have stayed a ghost. Why? What’s she hiding?”

      “I suggest we go and ask her.” Jack snapped open the car door with a bit more force than necessary. They drove the three city blocks, and promptly realized it would have been faster to walk by the time they located the entrance to the parking facility, got their ticket, and found a space. But this let them enter the building from the side and avoid the too-watchful girl at the building office. Jack had gotten away with retaining the victim’s key card, and used it after a series of knocks went unanswered. Perhaps bursting in on Shanaya Thomas could be considered an unauthorized entry, but Jack had the strong feeling it wasn’t going to matter.

      They entered the room.

      No, it wasn’t going to matter.

      Because Shanaya Thomas wasn’t there. Neither were her clothes, her makeup, the photo of herself and Evan Harding.

      “She bolted,” Riley said in amazement, as if no other suspect or witness had ever done that to him before. “Why?”

      “We find that out, we’ll probably find out why Evan Harding is dead.”

      Chapter 7

      Friday, 9: 50 a.m.

      With a sauerkraut dog happily swirling in his stomach, Rick Gardiner approached a trim two-story building on West 29th. The victim’s apartment sat over a tea shop, and scents of jasmine and muffins wafted out to the street. Three bundled-up workers moved along the flat roof. One dropped a sheet of tar paper or melded shingles, Rick couldn’t tell, off the end of the building to a dumpster on the ground below. It appeared to land smack in the center, the noise of impact increased by the vibration of the dumpster’s walls.

      “Who the hell gets a new roof in the winter?” Rick mused aloud.

      “Someone whose ceiling leaks melted snow?”

      “Those guys have got to be colder than a witch’s tit.”

      Will opened the front entry door. It led them through a narrow hallway between the tea shop and a hair salon. “Just think, next time we have to cuff a guy with breath like a garbage can or chat up some punk or respond to a decomp, you can think, Damn glad I’m not a roofer.”

      Rick had no intention of conceding toughest job status. “Don’t know. They probably make more money.”

      A stairwell took them to the second floor. His partner, Will, had long been one of those health nuts, the kind that always wants to take the stairs instead of the elevator, even up to five or six flights. He often abandoned Rick in lobbies, and more annoyingly, still beat him to whatever floor they sought. But Rick didn’t argue in dinky places with what might be questionable maintenance. The last thing he wanted to do was get stuck in an elevator until he was starving or dying of thirst or needing to pee, waiting on some pretty boy fireman dying to try out his ax for rescue.

      They found the relevant door and knocked. The victim hadn’t had any keys on him, and they wanted to try the simple approach before hunting up a building super and convincing him or her to open the door for them.

      It paid off. The bright spot of the peephole darkened, and a woman’s voice called out, “What is it?”

      Rick and Will held up their badges and asked if they could speak with her.

      “What about?”

      “About Marlon Toner.”

      They heard the locks sliding open, and the woman opened the door. “What’s he done now?”

      After another check of their badges, she let them in to a small but tidy living/dining area with classic wooden moldings and thick area rugs over the hardwood floor. She gave her name as Jennifer Toner, then waved them to her sofa but didn’t sit herself, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed. About thirty years of age, she had black skin, wavy hair to the middle of her neck, a medium build, and wore a thick sweater over dark blue jeans. She fixed them with a look that wavered between angry and hopeless. When Will suggested she sit down, she refused. She didn’t offer them any coffee, which Rick could have used after that sauerkraut dog, СКАЧАТЬ