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, but that was just as well. No need to drag this process out. He’d had family members spend twenty minutes puttering in the kitchen, grasping at any activity to put off the moment when they were told the very bad news.
No, this wasn’t a social call.
Will asked if she were the wife of Marlon Toner.
“Sister.”
Rick said nothing, and neither did Will for a moment. Jennifer Toner was definitely African-American, and the dead Marlon had been pale long before dying in the cold. But sometimes kids took wholly after one parent or the other, or perhaps they were stepsiblings. Whatever.
Will, always more—what do they call it, Rick thought, in-clusionary? —went on. That’s why they made a good team, Rick believed. Will handled all the touchy-feely crap, with Rick there to take down the bad guys when necessary. “Does he live here?”
“No.”
Will said, “He has this address on his driver’s license.”
She flexed an eyebrow, a tiny reaction that told Rick she hadn’t known that, but it also didn’t surprise her.
She asked, “Has he been arrested?”
“You knew he had a drug problem?”
She didn’t seem to notice the use of the past tense. “Yes—he didn’t always. He was clean his whole life. Even in high school he wasn’t part of that mess, no gangs, no dealing. Football kept him busy and that was all he cared about. Got a job, everything going good. It was that doctor.” She sat down after all, absently sinking into an armchair.
“What doctor?” Rick asked.
Jennifer Toner settled back in her chair and rubbed one temple with long fingers. “It started five, six months ago. He stopped by—we’re close, you know? There’s only the two of us since my parents passed. Talkin’ and catching up, but I could tell something wasn’t right. He said he had a summer cold, but finally I asked him if he was high. He said no, then left. Couple weeks, he stops by work, looks the same . . . I know the signs. Called me all dragging because his girlfriend had left him but all perky by the time he showed up and it wasn’t because I cheered him up, ’cause I told him he was an idiot, she had been great for him and he should get her back. Three months ago, he loses his job. Like I said, the signs.”
Will bobbed his head sympathetically.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Rick thought. Same old story. If he had five bucks for every time a family member said but he was turning his life around . . .
“The next time I saw him, I asked where he was living since he broke up with Taya and he wouldn’t quite answer