AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Shit. I don’t kill nobody. I don’t know nobody. Prolly the men in white done it.”
“What men in white?”
“Shit, you know. The guys from under the world. Turn themselves into rats when they want, then kill people in their sleep. Cops know. Some prolly be cops.”
“Right. Those men in white. Blow,” she told him, and started into the building.
“Where my ten?”
“Wrong answers.”
She didn’t get any right ones on her way to the third floor. Mannery’s room was occupied again, but the current resident wasn’t at home. There was a ripped mattress on the floor, a box of rags, and a very old sandwich.
Like the chemi-head outside, nobody she managed to roust inside had seen anything, knew anything, done anything.
“Wasting our time,” she said at length. “This isn’t my turf. I don’t know who to push. And if I did, I don’t know what help it would be. Living like this, people think you’ve given up. But Mannery hadn’t. Sloan gave me a list of her personal effects. She had clothes, and a cache of food, and a stuffed dog. You don’t haul around a stuffed dog if you’ve given up. She was probably zoned out when he came in on her, but she was still breathing. And he had no right.”
Roarke turned her so that she faced him in the hot, filthy room. “Lieutenant, you’re tired.”
“I’m okay.”
When he simply stroked her cheek, she closed her eyes a moment. “Yeah, I’m tired. I know about places like this. A couple of times, when he ran thin, we’d flop in places like this. Hell, it might’ve been here for all I know. I don’t have all of it back.”
“You need to shut down for a bit.”
“I’ll catch some sleep in the shuttle. No point in staying out here. I probably think better in New York anyway.”
“Let’s go home then.”
“I guess I reneged on the out-of-town nookie.”
“I’ll put it on your account.”
She dozed in the shuttle as it flew over the country, and dreamed of rats who become men dressed in white. Of a man without a face who strangled her with a long white scarf, and tied it with a pretty bow under her chin.
Chapter 17
Marlene Cox worked the ten to two shift, three nights a week at Riley’s Irish Pub. It was her uncle’s place, and his name was actually Waterman, but his mother had been born a Riley, and Uncle Pete figured that was close enough.
It was a good way to help finance her post-grad work at Columbia. She was studying horticulture, though her plans for what she wanted to do with the degree once she’d earned it were vague. Mostly she simply liked college, so she remained a student at twenty-three.
She was a slight and pretty brunette with long, straight hair and a pair of guileless brown eyes. Earlier in the summer her family had worried so much about her—several college students in New York had been murdered—that she’d canceled her summer classes.
She had to admit she’d been a little scared herself. She’d known the first girl who’d been killed. Only slightly, but still, it had been a shock to have recognized the face of a fellow student in the media reports.
She’d never known anyone who’d died before, much less known anyone who’d died violently. It hadn’t taken much persuasion to convince her to stick closer to home, to take extra precautions.
But the police had caught the killer. She’d actually known him a little, too. That had been not only a shock but also a little exciting in a weird way.
Now that things had quieted down again, Marlene didn’t give much thought to the girl she’d known slightly, or the killer she’d chatted with briefly at a cyber-club. Between her family, the part-time job, and her studies, her life was as normal as normal got.
In fact, it was just a little too normal at the moment. She couldn’t wait for classes to get into a serious rhythm again. She wanted to get back in full swing, spending more time with friends. And she was toying with getting a bit more serious with a guy she’d started flirting with during her aborted summer session.
She got off the subway two blocks from the apartment she shared with two of her cousins. It was a good location—family approved—with quiet streets and a neighborhood feel. The short walk didn’t worry her. She’d been taking the same route for over two years, and no one had ever bothered her.
Sometimes she almost wished someone would, just so she could prove to her doting family she could handle herself.
She turned the corner and saw a mini moving van, one of the rentals from the same company she’d used when she’d moved from her parents’ place to the one she shared with her cousins.
