Killing Ways. Alex Barclay

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       7

      Ren woke at eight thirty the next morning. Oooh. Where am I? Oh, I’m home. Thank God. Alone. Phew. OK. Janine stayed here. How did I get here? Cab. OK. No – a guy called JD. Nice guy. Nothing happened. That’s a positive. There’s hope for me.

       Hope. Victims should never be called Hope. What happened to you, Hope Coulson? Did you get drunk in a bar, take a ride home with a stranger?

      Ren got up and stuck her head into the living room.

       No Janine. Why didn’t she call me? She hates me. I’m a liability on nights out.

      Ren turned on the radio and went into the bathroom. She stepped onto the scales: one hundred and nineteen pounds. Thank you. Don’t ever change. She went to the toilet, washed her hands, dried them, then stepped on the scales again: still one hundred and nineteen pounds. So, I didn’t drink that much.

       I’m high-larious.

      She looked in the mirror. Ooh: not a good look, though a familiar one. I like the cheekbones, though.

      She jumped in the shower and used every energizing product and scrub she could find to startle her awake. She dressed in gray, high-waisted straight-leg pants, a starched white shirt, a pale gold necklace with two pendants: one shaped like a crescent moon, the other shaped like a star. She did a quick makeup job, left her hair wet, and ran.

      Fifteen minutes later, she parked outside the Livestock Exchange Building. She began to jog up the steps, but her pounding head slowed her march. She walked through the doors, her footsteps echoing across the polished marble floor. She headed for the wide central staircase instead of the elevator. The staircase led onto a landing, then left or right for more steps to the next floor, and the same all the way to the top. She could hear a man above loudly announce, ‘This is not safe!’

      Ren looked up. He was rattling a clearly unstable guardrail along the second floor balcony.

       And who the fuck might you be?

      ‘Is this even forty-two inches high, I have to wonder,’ he was saying.

       Really? Do you?

      He made his way up to the fourth floor.

       The Safe Streets floor.

      Ren recognized the woman rushing up the stairs behind him as Valerie, the real estate agent – giving him a tour. There were four office spaces to rent in the building.

       On other floors.

       Oh – Valerie! She might help me and Misty find a home!

      Ren continued up the stairs. ‘Sir, this is not the floor with the vacant space,’ Valerie was saying. She looked down at Ren, exasperated.

      ‘That’s not the point!’ said the man. ‘How well maintained is this building is what I’m thinking.’ He tried to rattle the guardrail on the fourth floor, but it held firm. He looked disappointed.

      Ren smiled at him as she passed by to walk through the door into Safe Streets. He was standing about four feet to her right. She paused. ‘We don’t walk out around there,’ said Ren, pointing down to the second floor balcony. ‘No one does, so, we’ve never noticed the problem. That’s a dummy door at the end. The elevator bank is down the other way. However, I’m sure we can get the guardrail that you will never use fixed for you in no time, so that when you never use it, it will be safe, and you won’t plunge down if you never fall from a place where you will never again be going.’

      She walked through the door. She could hear Valerie rambling about the fourth floor being a federal area.

      ‘And there’s no security in the building?’ said the man. ‘No scanners? Nothing?’

      ‘This is not the FBI’s main federal building in Denver,’ Valerie was saying. ‘Would you really want to have to be scanned every morning coming to work, Rodney, really? Emptying your pockets? Taking out your phone, your coins, having your bags searched?’

      Ren was smiling as she walked down the hallway. No, Rodney, you would not. I wouldn’t want that myself. God bless our compact little squad in our beautiful historic home.

      Ren’s cell phone rang.

       Ben!

      She picked up. ‘Hey, baby.’

      ‘Hey,’ said Ben. ‘Thought I’d catch you before work. How you doing? How was your night?’

      ‘Great,’ said Ren. ‘Just let me take off my jacket, sit down. Yes, great night. We met some hilarious guys at the bar … one of them gave me a ride home. Janine forgot her keys—’

      ‘Who was this guy?’ said Ben.

      ‘Just a guy called JD,’ said Ren. ‘Why?’

      ‘Why? I don’t know – rides home with strange guys and I can’t ask who he is?’

      ‘“Strange guys” … one guy. A regular guy, not strange. Janine met him.’ And tried to keep me away from him. ‘He was fine.’

      ‘Good to know.’ He paused. ‘Aren’t you exhausted? All these nights out?’

      ‘No, Mom. I’m good.’

      ‘Fine, I’ll let you get back to work,’ said Ben.

      ‘Great,’ said Ren. ‘Talk to you later.’

      ‘Don’t call me late.’

      ‘I won’t.’

       Bo. Ring.

      Everett came into the bullpen with two mugs of coffee and put one on Ren’s desk. ‘We must stop meeting like this,’ he said.

      She smiled. ‘God bless you and the caffeine I’ll ride out on.’

      Ren opened up her laptop again, and went back to Hope Coulson’s Facebook page.

       Something is not right here.