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Trent was sticking coins into the machine. He gave her a nod, but his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. “Good morning, Detective Polaski.”

  “Trent’s with the GBI,” Michael said. “Greer called him in to give us a hand with the Monroe case.”

  Michael was watching Trent, waiting for the guy to point out that Greer hadn’t actually called him, that he’d shown up at the lieutenant’s doorstep on his own. Trent, for his part, was tracing his finger along the glass front of the machine, trying to read the code under the Kit Kat bars so he could press it into the control panel. He was squinting; Michael figured the guy needed glasses.

  “Oh, fer fucksakes,” Angie muttered. “It’s E-six.” She punched the code in herself, her garishly long fake fingernails clicking on the plastic keys. She told Michael, “I’ll get the file on Monroe.”

  She was walking back toward her squad before Michael could think to say anything else. He saw Trent watching her walk, the way her ass moved in the high heels.

  “I worked with her a while back,” Michael told him. “She’s all right.”

  Trent peeled back the wrapper on the candy bar and took a bite.

  Michael felt the need to explain. “She’s kind of got an attitude.”

  “If I had to dress that way for work every day, I don’t imagine I’d be very cheerful.”

  Michael watched Trent’s jaw work as he chewed. The scar on his cheek seemed more pronounced. “How’d you get the scar?”

  Trent looked at his hand. “Nail gun,” he said, and Michael could see a pink scar cutting through the skin on the webbing between the man’s thumb and index finger.

  That hadn’t been the scar Michael had meant, but he played along. “You into home repair or something?”

  “Habitat for Humanity.” Trent shoved the last of the Kit Kat into his mouth and tossed the wrapper into the trashcan. “One of my fellow volunteers shot me with a galvanized nail.”

  Michael felt another piece of the puzzle slide into place. Habitat for Humanity was a volunteer group that built homes for low-income families. Most cops eventually ended up volunteering for something. Working the streets, you tended to forget that there were actually good people out there. You tried to salve this wound in your psyche by helping people who actually wanted your help. Michael had worked at a children’s shelter before Tim had been born. Even Leo Donnelly had volunteered with the local Little League team until they’d told him he couldn’t smoke on the field.

  Trent said, “I’d like to see the crime scene.”

  “We tossed her place last night,” Michael told him. “You think we missed something?”

  “Not at all,” Trent countered. Michael tried to find any guile in his tone but came up empty. “I’d just like to get a feel for the place.”

  “You do this with the other cases?”

  “Yes,” Trent said, “I did.”

  Angie was back, her high heels click-clacking on the tile floor. She held out a yellow file folder. “This is what I’ve got on Monroe.”

  Trent didn’t reach for the file, so Michael took it. He flipped open the cover, seeing Aleesha Monroe’s mug shot. She was attractive for what she was. The hardness in her eyes was a challenge as she stared straight into the camera. She looked irritated, probably doing the math, figuring how much money she was going to lose before she made bail.

  “Her pimp’s Baby G,” Angie told them. “Mean motherfucker. Been up for assault, rape, attempted murder—probably ordered a hit on two other guys, but there’s no way they can pin it on him.” She indicated her mouth, showing her front teeth. “Has a gold grill with crosses cut into them like he’s Jesus’s own.”

  Michael asked, “Where does he hang out?”

  “At the Homes,” she said. “His grandmother lives in the same building as Aleesha.”

  Trent had tucked his hands into his pockets again, and he was staring at Polaski like she was a Martian from space. His silence was annoying, and he exuded an air of superiority, like he knew more than he was saying and thought it was some kind of joke that they couldn’t figure it out.

  Michael asked him, “You got anything to add to this?”

  “It’s your case, Detective,” Trent answered. He told Angie, “Thank you for your assistance, ma’am,” flashing what might have been a smile on someone less patronizing.

  Angie looked at Michael, then Trent, then back at Michael. She lifted an eyebrow, asking a question Michael couldn’t answer. “Whatever,” she muttered, holding up her hand in the universal sign of dismissal. She turned her back on both of them, and Michael was too pissed to admire the view this time.

  He asked Trent, “What’s your fucking problem?”

  Trent seemed surprised by his tone. “I’m sorry?”

  “You gonna just stand there all day or are you here to get your hands dirty?”

  “I told you—I’m just here to advise.”

  “Well, I’ve got some advice for you, Mr. Here to Advise,” Michael said, his fists clenching so hard he could feel his fingernails digging into his palms. “Don’t fuck with me.”

  Trent didn’t seem threatened by the warning, but considering Michael had to crane his neck up to give it, this didn’t come as a complete surprise.

  “All right,” Trent said. Then, as if that had settled everything, he asked, “Would you mind going to the Homes again? I’d really like to see the crime scene.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Everything Will Trent said and did grated on Michael’s nerves, from his “of course,” when Michael said he would drive to the way he stared blankly out the car window as they traveled up North Avenue toward the Homes. The GBI agent reminded him of those geeky kids in high school, the ones who kept slide rules in their breast pockets and quoted obscure lines from Monty Python. No matter how many times he watched it, Michael still didn’t get Monty Python and he sure as shit didn’t get geeks like Trent. There was a reason these guys got the shit beaten out of them in school. There was a reason it was guys like Michael doing the beating.

  Michael took a deep breath, then coughed, his lungs still pissed about the cigarette. He thought about Tim, how his son wasn’t normal, how this attracted abuse from other kids. There was already a group of bullies at Tim’s school who had given him some grief—stealing his hat, flattening his sandwich at the lunch table. The teachers tried to stop it, but they couldn’t be everywhere all the time and some of them weren’t real happy to begin with about Tim’s being mainstreamed into their classrooms. Maybe Will Trent was Michael’s karma playing out. He was being tested. Be nice to this freak and maybe Tim would get the same kind of pass.

  “Oh,” Trent said, pulling a small tape recorder out of his jacket pocket. “I’ve got the nine-one-one call.” He pressed the play button before Michael could comment. A tinny, high-pitched voice bleated from the small speaker, You gotta come to building nine at the Homes. They’s a woman being raped pretty bad.

  Michael drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for a red light to change. “Play it again.”

  Trent did as he was told, and Michael strained his ears, trying to hear background noise, to figure out the tone and tenor of the voice. Something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  “ ‘Raped’,” Michael echoed. “Not ‘killed’.”

  Trent added, “The caller doesn’t sound frightened.”

  “No,” Michael agreed, accelerating as the light changed.

  “I would think,” Trent began, “if I were a woman, that I would be frightened if I saw, or even heard, another woman being attacked.”

  “Maybe not,” Michael contradicted. “Maybe if you lived in the Homes, you would’ve already seen your fill of this kind of violence.”

  “If that were the case,” Trent said, “then why would I report it?” He tried to answer his own question. “Maybe I knew the woman?”

  “If you knew her, then you’d sound more upset than that.” Michael indicated the recorder. The caller had sounded calm, like she was r
eporting the weather or the score from a particularly boring game.

  “It took over thirty minutes for the unit to come.” Trent didn’t seem to be making a condemnation when he pointed out, “Grady has the slowest response time in the city.”

  “Anybody watching the news would know that.”

  “Or living in the Homes.”

  “We’ve checked everybody in the building, did door-to-doors that night. Nobody’s popping up with a big sign hanging around his neck.”

  “No sex offenders in the buildings?”

  “One, but he was banged up the whole day being interviewed on another case.”

  Trent rewound the tape and played it yet another time, letting it run into the emergency operator saying, Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you there?

  Trent tucked the recorder back into his pocket. “The victim’s a little old, too.”

  “Monroe?” Michael asked, trying to switch gears. Trent was finally talking to him like a cop. “Yeah, if Pete’s right, she’s probably around my age. Your girls were—what—fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “White, too.”

  “Monroe was black, living in the projects, working the streets.”

  “The others were white, middle to upper class, came from solid families, doing well in school.”

  “Maybe he didn’t have time to hunt down a new one,” Michael suggested, feeling like he was walking on a very thin wire. He got that buzzing in his ears again, that something in his head that told him to shut up, don’t trust this new guy, don’t let him fool you.

  “Could be,” Trent allowed, but his tone of voice said he didn’t find it likely.

  Michael kept his mouth closed as he took a right into Grady Homes. The development looked a hell of a lot better at night, darkness covering the worst of its flaws. It was almost ten o’clock on a Monday morning, but kids were milling around on their bikes like they had been freed for the summer. Michael had done this same thing when he was a kid, straddling his Schwinn as he bullshitted with the other kids on his block. Only, Michael hadn’t been passing dime bags out in the open like these kids were doing now, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have had the balls to toss a wave at a couple of cops as they cruised through his neighborhood.

  The BMW was still parked outside of building nine, two teenagers sitting on the hood with their arms crossed over their chests. They looked about fifteen or sixteen, and Michael felt a cold sweat at the soulless look in their eyes as they watched his car pull into the lot. This was the age that scared him most as a cop. They had something to prove, a quest to fulfill in order to grow from boy into man. Spilling blood was the quickest way to cross over.

  Trent was looking at the boys, too. He gave a resigned “Great,” and Michael was relieved to see him still thinking like a cop.

  The front door to the building banged open and they both reached for their guns at the same time. Neither one drew as a short, fireplug of a man stalked down the broken sidewalk, pounding right past Trent’s side of the car without giving them a second look.

  The man wasn’t wearing a shirt and his broad chest showed hints of thick muscle under jiggling fat, his pecs jerking up and down like tits with each step he took. He had an aluminum bat in one hand, and as he got closer to the boys on the car, he wrapped his other hand around the base, ready to break some balls.

  Michael looked at Trent, who said, “Your call,” but he was already getting out of the car.

  “Shit,” Michael hissed, opening his door, getting out just as the fireplug reached the boys.

  “Get the hell off my car!” the man screamed, waving the bat in the air. Both teens stood up straight, arms dangling at their sides, mouths slack. “Get on a’fore I beat your asses, you lazy motherfuckers!”

  Wisely, the kids bolted.

  “Well,” Trent said, letting out a breath.

  “Stupid motherfuckers,” the man repeated. He was looking at Michael and Trent, and Michael was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about the boys anymore. “What the fuck you two pigs want?”

  “Baby G?” Trent asked.

  The man kept the bat up, ready to strike. “Who the fuck’s asking?”

  Trent took a step forward as if he wasn’t scared his head would be knocked into right field at any moment.

  Assault, Michael remembered Angie saying when she told them about Baby G. Rape, attempted murder.

  Trent said, “I’m Special Agent Will Trent, this is Detective Ormewood.” Michael waved, glad there was a car between him and the angry pimp. Trent was an idiot if he thought he’d get anything useful out of this thug.

  “We’re investigating the death of Aleesha Monroe.”

  “Why the fuck should I talk to you?” Baby G kept the bat in the air; his muscles tensed.

  Trent looked back at Michael. “Any ideas?”

  Michael shrugged, wondering how he was going to write this up in his report once he got Will Trent to the hospital. Officer antagonized suspect… came to mind.

  Trent turned back to the pimp, holding his hands out in an open shrug. “Honestly, I’m shocked my good looks and charm aren’t enough for you.”

  Michael felt his jaw drop in surprise. He closed it quickly, let his hand reach down to his gun again so he’d be ready to react when the pimp figured out he was being disrespected.

  Two or three seconds passed, then two or three more. Finally, Baby G nodded. “All right.” He smiled, showing the gold caps on each tooth, crosses cut through the centers showing the whites, just as Angie had described. “You got ten minutes before Montel comes on.”

  Trent held out his hand, as if they’d made a deal. “Thank you.”

  The pimp shook the offered hand, looking Trent up and down, saying, “You sure you a cop?”

  Trent reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge.

  Baby G glanced at it, then let his eyes do a once-over of Trent again. “You one weird motherfucker.”

  Trent tucked his badge back into his pocket, ignoring the observation. “You want to talk out here?”

  Baby G dropped the bat to his side, leaning on it like it was a cane. “Them’s my cousins,” he said, indicating the car, obviously meaning the boys he’d chased off. “Up to no good. They should have they asses in school.”

  “It’s nice that you take an interest in their lives,” Trent allowed. He had tucked his hands into his pockets again, and was casually leaning against the back of the car like this was some kind of friendly conversation. “When did you last see Aleesha?”

  Baby G took his time. “About six last night,” he finally answered. “She was going off to work. Wanted a little something before she went out.” He lifted his chin, waiting for Trent to ask what the little something was.

  Trent obviously knew. He had seen the tracks on the hooker’s arms just like Michael. “Did you give it to her?”

  Baby G shrugged, which Michael took for a yes.

  “Did she have any other suppliers?”

  The pimp looked around as if he was checking his audience. He spit on the ground, puffing out his chest in defiance, but he still answered the question. “Hell no. She didn’t have no money. Nobody was gonna float that ho for a dime.”

  “I could run up the street and blow just about anybody for a baggie,” Trent pointed out. “No cash involved.”

  Baby G laughed at the thought. “Yo, bitch, not on my turf.”

  “I’m sure Aleesha reported all her income,” Trent said, more like a question.

  “Shit,” Baby G grunted, like it was stupid to even suggest such a thing.

  Trent asked, “She a good earner?”

  “She like that needle in her arm. Do anything you ask to get it.”

  “Did she have any regulars? Men we should be looking out for?”

  “Not sick mothers like what did that,” he used the bat to indicate the top floor of the building where Monroe had been found. “I take care of my girls.” He kept the bat raised in the air, using it to make his point. “If I’d’a seen this motherfucke
r, you best be sure he’d be the one going in the ground right now, not my Leesha.”

  Trent nodded toward the building. “You live here?”

  He softened a bit. “With my granny. She gettin’ kind of old. I gotta look out for her.”

  “Were you with her last night?”

  “Me an’ my boys was out at the Cheetah watching the game.”

  “Do you mind if we speak with your grandmother?”

  “Hell yes, I do. Don’t go gettin’ my granny mixed up with this shit. She didn’t see nothing, you hear? She just an old lady.”

  “All right,” Trent acquiesced. He looked back at Michael as if to ask if he had any questions. Michael shook his head and Trent told the pimp, “I know you want to go watch your program. Thank you for your time.”

  Baby G stood there, unsure of himself. He finally shrugged them off, repeating, “You just one weird motherfucker,” before walking back into the building.

  When the door had banged shut, Trent turned to Michael. “What do you think?”

  “I think he’s right,” Michael said, pushing away from the car. “You’re pretty fucking strange.”

  Trent’s cell phone chirped, and Michael felt his earlier irritation spark again as Trent walked a few feet away to take the call.

  “Yes, sir,” Trent said. “Yes, sir.”

  Michael looked up at the sky, the dark clouds that were starting to roll in. The way today was going, a storm would break just as they were leaving the scene and he’d end up sloshing through the parking lot, ruining his new shoes.

  Trent snapped the phone closed, tucking it into his vest pocket. “You need to go home, Michael.”

  Michael felt his heart stop in his chest. “What?”

  “You need to go home,” Trent repeated. “There’s been an accident.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Michael drove like the devil, his hands gripping the wheel. Trent sat beside him, stone quiet even as Michael blasted through red lights and ran stop signs. The house was less than twenty minutes away from Grady Homes, but Michael felt like it was taking hours to get there. His heart was in his throat, pumping like a freight train. All he could think about was all the horrible things he had done to his family, how he didn’t deserve them, how he would clean up his act, turn his life around, if only Tim was okay.