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CINDY NOT ONLY dubbed our gang of four the Women’s Murder Club but also branded Susie’s Café our clubhouse. It was a small miracle to have this big hug of a hangout where we could get lost in a cheerful crowd and one another’s company.
I was checking my rearview mirror to see if that a-hole Jason Blayney was following me, and at the same time I was looking for a parking spot on Jackson.
I was about to go around the block again when a car pulled out from the curb, leaving me a space right outside Susie’s front door.
I got out of the Explorer, my legs wobbling with exhaustion, and then I was inside Susie’s, enveloped by calypso music, laughing people, golden-yellow sponge-painted walls, and the smells of coconut shrimp and curried chicken.
Cindy was at the bar in the front room. She was wearing pink with a sparkling barrette in her hair and was putting down a cold one.
She waggled her fingers and at the same time gave me the evil eye. She was unhappy with me. I knew why, and I didn’t blame her.
I ordered a root beer and when the bottle was in my hand, I took a swallow, and then I tried to make peace with my friend.
“I know you’re pissed at me.”
“I’m pissed at Richie too, so go ahead, both of you can take it personally.”
“I brought you something,” I said.
I opened my bag, took out a printout, handed it to Cindy, and watched her expression change.
“Oh. No. I mean. This is one of the Ellsworth house victims?” She was staring at the artist’s sketch of Jane Doe, the woman whose head was in Claire’s cooler.
“We need the public’s help in identifying this woman.”
“What else can I say?”
“She may be the victim of a crime.”
“And what about Ellsworth?”
“I’ll tell you what I can, but don’t say that she was found at Ellsworth yet, okay? We’re not ready to officially open the story to the press.”
“And what about unofficially? The Post has the damned story, Linds,” Cindy said. “Everyone does.”
She was mad, but she was clutching the drawing and not letting it go.
“I’ll tell you officially when I can. But we can go off the record now.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Seven heads were exhumed. All of them are female, buried over the course of a number of years. We can’t identify any of them. We don’t have a clue what happened to them, how they were killed. We don’t know anything.”
“If I write that, I’m going to have to apply for a job at the post office.”
I guess my frustration was showing, and maybe some panic too, because Cindy was saying, “Okay, okay, Linds. Calm down. Take it easy,” as Yuki and Claire came in together.
Cindy settled the tab. About forty-two seconds later, the four of us were at our booth in the back room and had ordered jerked pork and pitchers of beer. Yuki was off to the races about how in love she was with Jackson Brady.
And speak of the devil: Brady picked that minute to call me and tell me he needed my butt back at the Hall.
Chapter 32
THAT NIGHT, REVENGE sat in his Hyundai SUV, engine running, under a shot-out streetlight on Sunnydale Avenue, an ugly and dangerous artery that wound through the decrepit heart of the Sunnydale Projects. All around him, packed tight and wall to wall for a square mile, were squalid housing units on streets dominated by two violent and warring bands of thugs, the DBG and Towerside gangs.
A four-dimensional map of these badlands and its occupants was engraved on his mind — every unit and alley in the projects, every felon, juvenile offender, innocent citizen.
Revenge was watching both vehicular and pedestrian traffic centered on the Little Village Market up ahead at the intersection of Sunnydale and Hahn, and he was also focused on a block of tan stucco housing units to his right: two stories high with bars on the lower windows and burned-out grass between the footings and the street.
