CHAPTER FIVE
GRACE
The interrogation room is a delightful olfactory mix of stale cigarettes and cheap aftershave, even though the former is not allowed and the latter arrives in abundance.
Hunter stands to the side with his arms crossed… and bulging. That surfing-the-door-down-the-stairs thing has my interest heating up, and maybe other things, not that doing anything with someone you work with is a great idea. I tried it once and let’s just say the Hindenburg was less of a disaster.
I approach the table, winking at Hunter on the way, and place my hands down on it, pushing my ass out a little because yes, it is amazing.
Look all you want, Beckett.
“Okay, Chris,” I start. “Here we are. Start. Fucking. Talking.”
Hunter’s watching me closely, like a parent. I sense my potty mouth’s getting to him, but fuck that. I’m not about to simmer down for his hillbilly sensitivities. He should hear what comes out of my mouth during sex.
“Look,” says Chris, hands outstretched and open. “I got out of there as soon as I heard you guys talking, ran for as long as I could. I found a bar.”
“What bar?” I press.
Chris’s hands flail. “I don’t know. It was green, Irish maybe?”
That really narrows it down. “And?”
“I got drunk.”
“Drunk-er, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get home?”
“I walked back. The front door to the apartment was locked, so I went around back.”
“And kicked that door in.”
“Yes,” he replies cautiously, knowing how it sounds. “But she wasn’t there, I swear. I looked for her before I passed out upstairs. It’s not even her place.”
I can’t help a quick glance at Hunter. “Whose place is it?”
A shrug. “She never told me. Some guy, I suppose. She said it was all paid for.”
“That’s a nice story.”
“It’s the truth.”
I lean further over the table, pants audibly stretching around the peachy globes of my backside. “Then why don’t I believe you?”
Chris looks to Hunter, but there’s no boys club to be found here. “You believe me, right?”
To my astonishment, Hunter replies, “I do.”
I throw him a ‘What the fuck?’ look, but he pulls out a chair and sits, scooting forward to the edge of the table. “I believe you, but you’re not telling us everything, are you?”
It’s like he’s performed a Jedi mind trick. The guy opens up like a sorority girl on Saturday night. “Rachel is—was, he corrects—a junkie. We both are. The gear, man… I can’t live without it.”
The raccoon eyes and twitchiness did kind of give it away, but for a junkie, this guy’s almost close to functional.
Hunter comes forward even further. “Is that why you were arguing last night, over drugs?”
Chris begins to flinch, gets real jittery the way these gearheads do.
Hunter leans across the table and puts his hand on the guy’s arms. God. I wanted him to still play Good Cop, not metamorphose into Mother Teresa… with steel-cut shoulders and arms that could pull trees from the bare ground.
“Look,” he says, “you cared for her, I get it, but she’s gone and at the moment you are the only person who can help us understand why.”
Poor bastard starts blubbering, balling like a baby right there in front of us. He pulls in a big, wet sob. “I found out she was doing tricks, on the side, to help pay for the habit and shit. The apartment… one of her Johns paid for it.”
“Her habit?”
“Ours, man,” Chris corrects. “She was good like that, wanted to help, you know.”
“And she didn’t tell you she’d become a prostitute, or who exactly owned the apartment?”
He shakes his head violently. “No way. I mean, how would you react finding out your woman is spending half the day sucking some stranger’s cock? I got mad, I admit it, but I did not kill her. I’d never do that.” He draws a line with his finger on the tabletop as if to drive the point home.
I slam my hand into the table, both of them flinching. “But you liked to hit her, didn’t you?”
He’s too shocked to respond.
“Answer me!” I repeat, thinking of the way Rachel was lying there like a used candy wrapper, angry at the way her life unfurled into this and knowing that maybe I could have stopped if I’d just kept in touch.
This damn job. It consumes you completely, leaves no room for anything else, much less meaningful relationships.
Don’t do it to yourself. It wasn’t your fault.
I push the thoughts away, the clichés and guru bullshit. I like facts, solid evidence, and direct plays. Some like to beat around the bush, shake it out, but me? I go in hard and I go in fast.
I look him dead in the eye. “Where was she doing tricks? Tell us.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
I slam my hand down again. “Fucking tell me!”
“I don’t know!” he repeats, louder now.
I reach forward and take hold of his shirt, dragging him across the table. “You better tell me something, and fast.”
“Doyle,” he sputters.
I let go. “What?”
“Doyle, our dealer. He was always hassling her, man. He’s the one who started her on the shit in the first place. Guy’s a fucking psychopath. Every problem she had, we had, was because of that prick.”
I turn to Hunter, subtlely try to get a read on him. He might seem straighty one-eighty, but I have a feeling there’s more going on. There always is.
I push a notepad across the table. “This Doyle, where do we find him?”