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Ruby was frozen, staring at the splotch, her shoulders up around her ears.
Evan said, “Can you give us a moment?”
“I can’t leave you in here.”
“Just a moment,” Evan said.
The super looked at Ruby, then down at his shoes. “I’ll wait in the hall.”
He crossed to the bathroom, unplugged the blow dryer, then withdrew quietly.
Evan moved toward Ruby. When he brushed her shoulder, she started. Her eyes were wide and a bit wild.
She looked back at the floor. Crouched. Reached for the stain, her fingers trembling.
“Johnny,” she said. “This was Johnny.”
Evan said, “Yes.”
She sank more, her knees striking the floor. “Was he …?” Her throat seemed to have dried up, so she paused to swallow. “Was he left faceup? Or facedown?”
“Facedown.”
She lowered to all fours, the discolored patch right under her. Then she eased herself flat to mirror the stain below.
Lying right where Johnny had, perfectly still, her head turned.
A bead of water swelled at the corner of her left eye. It forded the bridge of her nose, ran beneath her other eye, joined the darkness on the floor.
Mack and his crew were right where Evan had left them, the road once again closed by the gate of their vehicles. Evan stopped and got out.
“Desiree,” he said to Mack. “Her name was Desiree.”
“Oh, man,” Mack said. “Desi? Why didn’t you just say so?”
“I didn’t know to.”
“She’s Tawnda’s cousin,” Mack said. “Took a jaunt to NYC, was gonna meet her a real sugar daddy.”
“She went to New York?”
“That’s right.”
“About a year ago?”
“That’s right. ’Member her pimp rolled out here, hollering at everyone, lost himself a good piece of business, know what I’m sayin’? We told her she’d be back like everyone comes back. But next time she showed up here, she was dead. With that boy.”
Mack looked through the window at Ruby. The rims of her eyes and edges of her nostrils were red. She was staring straight ahead at the dashboard, at nothing.
Mack’s eyes stabbed back at Evan, angry. “You hurt that girl?”
“No,” Evan said. “She’s the sister. Of that boy.”
Mack pawed at his mouth.
Evan said, “Got an address for the pimp?”
“Ain’t you learned, motherfucker?” Mack flashed that million-dollar smile, and Evan thought he was maybe the most handsome kid he’d seen in his life. “I got everything ’round here.”
