“Naw, last year. I say, ‘Babe, you haven’t been around lately.’ She says, ‘Just give me a room.’ I should have kicked her to the curb, but she had cash, paid for a week, and was willing to wait an hour for me to flip the room.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“I asked how she been, how she doin’, what can she do for me, you know-” He grinned.
Noah cleared his throat. “When did she come in?”
“Yesterday. Early, like six A.M. It had been a busy night, most of the rooms were still occupied. So they had to wait.”
“They?” Noah said.
“N. Smith and her sister.” He snorted. “Hardly. Nicole is a foxy black bitch with-” He cut himself off when Noah’s jaw tightened. The tension was hotter than the temperature.
“Her sister was white as a ghost. Pretty, I guess, if you like your girls young and scrawny.”
“How young?” Lucy asked. Two girls but only one victim. She feared what might have happened to the younger girl.
“Teen. Maybe eighteen.”
“Really?” Genie said.
Ray shrugged.
“Don’t fuck around, tell me how old you think she was. I’m not going to arrest you for screwing her, but I will arrest you for obstruction of justice and being an asshole.”
“
“Describe her,” Noah said.
“White. Dark brown hair down to her shoulders. About yea high.” He put his hand to his chin. He wasn’t five and a half feet, which put the girl at just about five feet. “And like I said, scrawny. I don’t think she was ninety pounds wet.”
“Did you get a name?” Genie asked.
“Barely saw her.”
Noah asked, “Did you see them after they checked in yesterday?”
“Not the white chick. The babe-um, Nicole-came and went a couple times. Brought in food.”
Buddy interrupted for the first time. “I–I-I saw the girl. Yesterday, when I was flipping a room. She was waiting outside room one-nineteen, then the black girl came out and they left.”
“On foot?”
“Yeah. They didn’t have a car. Not that I saw.”
“What time was that?” Noah asked.
“Um, four maybe?”
“Four in the afternoon?”
“Yeah. Maybe a little earlier.”
“Did you see anyone going in or out of their room? Anyone lurking in the parking lot?”
“Nope,” Ray said. “It’s been quiet until now.”
They walked outside. Genie said, “I got my team canvassing the businesses on the street to see who has security cams that actually work. Plus, the gas station on the corner-the owner of the chain is a good guy, he has decent security. Might not know what we’re looking at, but if we get a suspect, maybe we can put him in the vicinity.”
Genie continued. “What do you think about the second girl?”
“There were no signs of a second person. Maybe she was gone when the killer came in. Maybe she returned and bolted when she saw her friend.”
“Maybe she set her up,” Genie said.
“A sixteen-year-old ninety-pound kid?” Lucy said.
“I’ve seen stranger things.”
“Or the killer could have taken her,” Lucy added.
“We don’t have any evidence that he did.”
“And we don’t have evidence that he didn’t.” The whole scene felt unreal to Lucy. They couldn’t discount the fact that there had been two young women in the room, but only evidence that one had been killed. “Either way, we have an unknown minor in danger. We need to find her.”
“Either she wasn’t there, she was an accomplice, or she’s been kidnapped,” Noah said. “You’ll have access to our lab and database, Lucy can expedite the paperwork. I need to go. You good here?”
Lucy nodded. “Thank you.”
He didn’t say anything, only gave her an odd look, then left.
“Ouch,” Genie said.
“I’m so sorry you had to witness that.”
“I admire your drive. He’ll get over it, he respects you.”
“Not anymore.” And that is what really hurt. Lucy didn’t want to lose Noah’s friendship.
“He does. He thought he had to do a hard sell to get me to work with you, but you had me sold before we walked out of the motel room. It’s not like you’re an untrained crime writer on a perpetual ride-along.” She laughed. “Damn, I love that television show, even if they get procedure all wrong.”
Lucy smiled. She had no idea what Genie was talking about because she didn’t watch television.
“Seriously,” Genie said, “you have more creds than most of our rookies. Let’s go hit up the vic’s last known address and see what we learn, then I’ll drop you at the morgue. That’s not far from FBI headquarters, right?”
“A few blocks.”
“I’ll work the hookers,” Genie said. “They’re not going to talk to a white fed, but they’ll shoot straight with me.”
They walked toward Genie’s unmarked police sedan. “Don’t forget to give your grandson another dollar- twenty-five.”
“You counted?”
“You were too angry with those two jerks to do it yourself.”
Genie sighed and took out her coin purse. “He’ll be going to Harvard at this rate.”
CHAPTER TEN
Nicole’s last known address was only six blocks from where she’d been murdered.
The neighborhood was what Lucy would classify as a slum. One of the worst in DC, heavily segregated. While most neighborhoods were mixed, this one was one hundred percent black. Lucy definitely stood out, and not in a good way.
It seemed areas like this were worse in the summer, when the humidity made the overflowing Dumpsters smell ten times worse; when the heat shimmered off the sidewalks and streets; when the people slumped shirtless in any shade they could find from the sweltering sun.
Maybe because of the heat, no one bothered them as they walked from Genie’s unmarked but obvious police sedan to the doorway of a four-story apartment building that dominated the short block. The window AC units made the entire building groan.
Genie buzzed the manager first, but the buzzer was broken and there was meager security on the main door. Genie opened it with a shove and they knocked on the first door, 1A, with
AN G R
in broken letters underneath. “Hope that’s not foreshadowing his mood,” Lucy said, gesturing toward the door. Behind the door a television roared with canned laughter.
“I really hate this neighborhood,” Genie muttered. “I pull a case here at least twice a week.”
The manager was a rotund black woman in her sixties. She was dressed in a blinding bright pink muumuu with green flowers.
