AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She was showered, dressed and pumped on coffee inside ten minutes, with Roarke barely a minute behind as he remoted a vehicle over from the garage.
Then they were out the door, into the cold, clear night, where one of his burly A-Ts waited, engine and heaters running.
“Possible missing lives with his mother on Leonard, off Broadway.”
“I heard Dispatch.” He drove fast, smooth through the gates and onto streets quiet in the predawn winter. “This is a break-in pattern, yes?”
“If they’ve got him, yeah. Jayla Campbell should have had another day. Maybe something went south there, and they’ve dumped her body where we haven’t found it yet. Or disposed of it another way. Or…”
“Still have her. Alive.”
“Doubtful, but I’d like to think so. And it may be this is a false alarm. The missing’s twenty-one – barely.” She scanned her PPC, and the run she’d already started on him.
“A couple juvie bumps, looks like. Illegals, nothing major. Currently working as assistant manager, days, at a music store – instruments, lessons. Got some income here from a band called Thrashers.”
She dug a little deeper. “Plays the guitar, sings. Looks like a handful of club dates – low-rent. Have to check it out, but —”
“He might have gotten lucky, might have gotten stoned and flopped with a friend.”
“Maybe. But it’s their territory. Single mother, bar waitress, no sibs.” Eve put her PPC away. “We’ll hear her out.”
The Mulligans lived in a triple-decker walk-up with solid security and a reasonably clean lobby.
No graffiti on the stairway leading up to three, Eve noticed, which said something about the tenants. She’d heard a mutter of a media report on two through one of the apartment doors.
Lousy soundproofing, and someone worked the early shift.
She’d lifted her fist to rap on the door, but it swung open first.
“I heard you coming. Cops?”
“Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve held up her badge. “And my civilian consultant. Ms. Mulligan?”
“Yeah, yeah, come in. Thanks for getting here so fast. The first guy I talked to barely listened to me.”
She wore a short black skirt that showed good legs and a low-cut white top that framed good breasts. Her work clothes, Eve thought, and had only changed out her shoes for house skids, tossed a bulky cardigan over the shirt.
She radiated worry.
“Reed wouldn’t not come home. I mean to say he’d let me know if he was staying out. That’s our deal. I do the same for him.”
“Why don’t we sit down, and you can run through it for me?”
“Oh, sorry.” She looked around as if she couldn’t find her place in her own apartment. “I can’t think I’m so worried. Have a seat. I’ve got coffee.”
“That’d be great,” Eve said, mostly to give the woman something to do, something that would settle her. “Just black for both of us.”
“Give me a sec.”
She moved to the rear of the room, to the jog that held a narrow, open kitchen.
She wore her flame-red hair scooped up in a bouncy tail that left her face – narrow, angular – unframed. Her run had put her at forty, but she could have lied her way to thirty-five, even with the pallor and the shadows under misty green eyes.
“I work five nights a week at The Speakeasy. It’s a bar just a couple blocks over. It’s a good place, not a dive. Classy, good customers. Roarke owns it – you know who I mean.”
Eve slanted Roarke a look. “Yeah.”
“So it’s a good place to work – not a lot of ass-grabbers come in. And it’s close to home – Roarke owns this place, too, so it’s nice. It’s secure, and it’s clean. Reed’s a good boy. Responsible. He’s got a solid day job. He wants to be a music star – that’s the dream. He plays in a band, and they’re starting to get some jobs. He’s good. I know I’m his mom, but he’s good. Anyway.”
