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“Motive.” There was something they hadn’t considered. “Why would someone want to murder Jane?”
“Are we assuming the killer knew it was Jane whom he was murdering?”
Amanda’s head was starting to hurt. “I think we have to assume that until we find out otherwise.”
“Okay. Motive. Jane was very annoying.”
“True,” Amanda agreed. “But the last person she annoyed other than us was Juice, and if there’s one thing I know about pimps, it’s that they don’t kill their girls. They want them working. They’re product.”
“I’ll call the jail and see when Juice got out, just to make triple sure.” Evelyn tapped the pen against her chin. “Maybe the murderer was someone who saw Jane talking to us at Techwood? The whole compound lit up when we arrived. There’s no way it wasn’t broadcast to the rooftops that Jane was talking to two police officers.”
Amanda felt unsettled by the thought that she might’ve been partly responsible for the girl’s death. “Write that down as a possibility.”
“I hate to think we had anything to do with it. Then again, she wasn’t exactly baking cookies for the PTA.”
“No,” Amanda agreed, but Evelyn had only seen the pictures. “Have you ever had a manicure?”
Evelyn looked at her fingernails, which were clear-coated, just like Amanda’s. “Bill treated me to one last Christmas. I can’t say that I enjoyed having a stranger touch my hands.”
“Jane’s fingernails were perfect. They were filed and polished. I couldn’t’ve done a better job myself.”
“That manicure was ridiculously expensive. I can’t imagine Jane having the money.”
“No, and if she did, she’d spend it on drugs, not getting her fingernails polished.” Amanda remembered, “Pete said something interesting about the attacker. He said the man was angry, uncontrolled.”
“How in the world can he tell that?”
“From the way Jane looked. She was beaten all over.” Amanda tried to think it through, but she found it was easier to talk it out to Evelyn. “I guess we should be asking ourselves what kind of person is capable of this. And then, ask how he would do it. He obviously used his fists, but he had the hammer, too. He busted open the lock on the access door to the roof. But then, we need to consider how he was able to get the better of someone like Jane. She wasn’t bright, but she was street-smart.”
“Who, how, and why,” Evelyn summarized. “Those are very good questions. If Juice isn’t the answer to them, then who is? Someone Jane has seen before. A regular customer who knows where she lives.” Evelyn tapped the pen again. “But, then, this is what we’re saying: He knocked on the door. He gave her a manicure. Then he threw her off the roof.”
“He strangled her before he threw her off the roof.”
Evelyn asked, “Pete told you that?” Amanda nodded. “That seems like a more plausible scenario. Jane screamed like a stuck pig when you kicked her, and that was barely a tap.”
“You didn’t say that at the time.”
“I was scared,” Evelyn admitted. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Amanda told her. “Maybe we could ask around and see if any johns are into choking.”
“I know a gal who works undercover downtown. I’ll see what she knows. But even if there is a guy out there who likes choking women—and something tells me there’s more than one—how are we going to find his real name? And if by some miracle we do find his name, how on earth would we link him to Jane?”
Amanda offered, “Pete scraped some skin out from under Jane’s fingernails. He said he could match the blood type against a suspect. See if he’s a secretor or a nonsecretor.”
“Eighty percent of the population has secretor status. Nearly forty percent is type O-positive. That’s hardly narrowing it down.”
“I didn’t know that,” Amanda admitted. Evelyn was much better at statistics than she was. “Let’s go back to the puzzle before we’re both late for work.” Amanda picked up where they’d left off in the timeline. “Next, we met Mr. Blue Suit, aka Hank Bennett, at the morgue. He admits he hasn’t seen his sister in years, which might explain why he couldn’t identify her.”
“Or, he’s just too arrogant to admit that he can’t.”
That seemed far more likely. “I still find it odd that Lucy Bennett didn’t have a record. She’s been on the game at least a year, probably more.”
“Neither does Kitty Treadwell.” Evelyn looked sheepish. “I radioed dispatch on my way here. They ran through all the variations for me. There was no record for a Kitty Treadwell.”
“How about Jane Delray?”
“She had two pick-ups several years ago, but nothing recently.”
“Then her fingerprints are on file.”
Evelyn frowned. “No, they’re not. I asked. A lot of the older records have been purged.”
“That’s convenient.” Amanda updated the information under each girl’s name. “We need to work on Andrew Treadwell. He’s a lawyer. He’s a friend of the mayor’s. What else do we know about him?”
“Jane intimated that he was Kitty’s uncle. She point-blank said that Kitty was rich, that her family was connected.”
Amanda said, “That article in the newspaper listed Andrew Treadwell as having only one daughter.”
“He’s one of the top lawyers in the city. He’s politically powerful. If he has a daughter who’s been pimped out on the streets by a black man, do you really think that’s something he’d advertise? He’d more likely use his money and influence to keep her hidden away.”
“You’re right,” Amanda allowed. She stared down at the diagram. “Don’t you think it’s odd that Lucy and Kitty are both out on the street and one of them has a brother working for the other’s uncle?”
“Maybe they met at a self-help group.” Evelyn smiled. “Whores Anonymous.”
Amanda rolled her eyes at the joke. “Are we still assuming that Andrew Treadwell is the one who sent Hank Bennett to talk to Hodge last Monday?”
“I am. Are you?”
Amanda nodded again. “Which may support your theory that Andrew Treadwell doesn’t want it to get out that he’s related to Kitty. We could be looking at it wrong. Who does Treadwell want to hide the relationship from if not his buddies at City Hall?”
“Bennett is quite a piece of work,” Evelyn mumbled. “He’s one of the most arrogant asses I’ve met. And that’s saying a lot considering the guys we work with.”
Amanda tried to recall Hank Bennett’s terse answers to their questions outside the morgue. She should’ve written them down. “Bennett said he sent his sister a letter at the Union Mission. Do you remember him saying when?”
“Yes. He mailed the letter to the Mission when his father passed away last year—this time last year. Which reminds me: Jane said Lucy has been missing for about a year.”
Amanda wrote down this information under Lucy’s name. “When you asked Bennett if he knew the name Kitty Treadwell, he told us to watch where we put our noses.”
