Runner, p.13
Runner, page 13
“Maybe,” I said. Poole, Shaw, Martini. Why not Hogan? I flicked him a look. “Solid cops, though, by all accounts. Like Martini.”
Ben sighed. “You don’t let a damn thing go, do you?”
Chapter 16
I called Leesa Evans just to make sure Hogan had been telling the truth. He had. I could practically hear the relief in her voice, like a huge boulder had been lifted from her chest. She was positive that if Ramona had had a child, she would have known about it. I wasn’t so sure, given Evans’s addiction, her incarceration, and her prolonged absence from Ramona’s life, but I had nothing to counter it.
It took me the next couple hours of nonstop phone work to find out Whip hadn’t been picked up anywhere and he wasn’t in any of the area hospitals. Meanwhile, I kept calling his phone and Ramona’s, too, with no results.
Armed with the missing flyer, I was back at it around three that afternoon, checking people walking down the street, peering into gangways, alleys, scanning deserted lots, underpasses, viaducts. It was slow, tedious work, and ultimately fruitless, but it was all I had. I wondered still about the key and ID, but they were safe where I’d locked them away. I wondered also about the young girl’s body in the can. It wasn’t Ramona, but it could be Tonya. If so, how had she ended up there? Why had she ended up there? How did a kid go from the most perfect foster home, with a pink princess bedroom, to a dirty garbage can, under a highway on-ramp? And, worst of all, burned nearly to ash? And, God forbid, had Ramona Titus suffered the same fate and just hadn’t been found yet? Was that why I couldn’t find her? Would there be another can with another body found inside it?
I walked blocks on frozen feet, the tips of my gloved fingers stinging from impending frostbite. I doubted Hogan or Spinelli had done an on-foot canvass. Maybe a couple of unis had been deployed at some point to knock on doors, or not. CPD was huge, their workload immense, and there were a lot of kids out here lost or thrown away. If they had done a door-to-door at the onset, they sure in hell wouldn’t have had the time or manpower to double back and do it again, unless the case was a high-profile one, unless the world was watching. For a kid like Ramona, it was easy to slip through cracks that wide.
Back at my car, after hours of walking, and nobody telling me squat, I gave up and drove back to Whip’s apartment to see if he’d turned up. I knocked on his door, the knocking loud enough to disturb the entire building, but got nothing. I turned when the door across the hall creaked open and an old woman peeked out, her chain still engaged.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, offering my friendliest smile. “I’m looking for a friend of mine? Charles Mingo?”
“That’s how you call on people? By trying to break their door down?”
I stepped away from the door. “No, ma’am. Like I said, I’m a friend trying to reach him.”
“Another friend? Never knew Charles had so many. You, that young woman yesterday. White.” She whispered the last word, her eyes holding mine. That would’ve been Barb. “I haven’t seen him since Tuesday morning, like I told her. He dropped me off one of his tuna noodle casseroles, bless his heart.”
I stepped a little closer to her door. “Was he okay when you saw him? Did he say he was taking a trip?”
“He seemed fine. His usual self, I’d say. Nothing about a trip. Nice young man Charlie.” Her face compressed in the first signs of worry. “He’s all right, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said. As far as I knew, that was true. “Besides the woman yesterday, has there been anyone else looking for him?”
“Not a soul. He doesn’t get much company, except for that little man who comes by sometimes. Also white. Short, dresses funny. He’s real peculiar. Strange eyes. The way he looks at me gives me a shiver. It’s like he’s planning on killing me and is trying to figure out how much I weigh and how big a bag he’s going to need to cart me away in. I stay away from him.”
I turned, stared at Whip’s door. The creepy little man had to be Pouch; if so, it wasn’t murder on his mind. He was likely trying to assess how easy a mark the old woman might be.
I dug into my bag and pulled out my card and slid it past the chain. “I really need to talk to him. Do you think you could give me a call the next time you see him? Or if he drops off another casserole, could you please tell him Cass is looking for him?”
She read the card aloud. “ ‘Raines Investigations.’ ” She looked up at me. “You said he wasn’t in any trouble.”
“He isn’t. That’s just where I work.”
She looked relieved. “Well, next time I see him, I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
“And maybe give me a call when you do see him?”
“I can do that.”
I thanked her and watched as she closed her door and locked it. I heard at least three dead bolts engage. I walked back across the hall, knocked one final time on Whip’s door, out of frustration more than anything else, and then I left. As I bounded down the stairs, I called his number again and left another voice mail, this one more insistent than the last.
He didn’t have to check in with me. I didn’t own him, but we were friends, old friends. I worried that he was doing something that would land him back in prison, forfeiting the rest of his life. If he were in trouble, why wouldn’t he have come to me or Barb? But he had, hadn’t he? He came to me needing to talk, then he wouldn’t. I worried about that all the way home, crafting nightmare scenarios in my head to such a vivid extreme that my hands shook on the wheel. Ben was wrong. I did know Whip, and something wasn’t right.
I’d lost so many people in my life—my mother, my grandparents, Pop, my father, though he’d seen fit to return. What if I was losing Whip? What if I’d already lost him, and didn’t know it yet? His car hadn’t been in front of his apartment; presumably, wherever he was, he was in it. Who could I tap to help track him down? What if I did, and Whip was fine? He’d hate that. He might even resent me for overstepping. Could I afford to wait a little longer before I did anything? What if I waited too long?
I pulled to the curb in front of my apartment. Dinner with Eli and Dana was in ninety minutes. I had just enough time to shower, get changed, and get to the restaurant for what I had a good feeling would be the most painful dinner of my entire life. I grabbed my bag, keys, and locked up, trudging through the deep snow to my front door, feeling like I had a date for my own execution.
* * *
The valet took my keys and drove my car off, and I walked into Stefano’s on Erie, right on time. Friday night, downtown restaurant, River North. I’d need a bank loan to get my car out of the garage. I spotted Eli and a sullen, pint-sized, female version of him sitting at a corner table. I’d just paid what amounted to half a week’s worth of groceries for parking, but I was trying really hard not to let that turn my mood to vinegar. Eli had offered to pick me up, but that would have meant time in the car with you know who; and I had a feeling the less time we spent together tonight, the better. He stood and waved when he saw me coming his way. I waved back and snaked through the tables.
“Hey, you made it,” he said, giving me a peck on the cheek. “You look beautiful.”
I’d worn a simple black dress, nice shoes, which explained the valet. “Thanks.” Eli was in a gray slim-cut suit and tie. He’d gotten a haircut and was neatly shaved. I smiled. “You, too.”
I glanced over at a glowering Dana. She was small for sixteen, I noted, but the aggrieved look on her face was full-on. She slumped a little in her chair, and watched me closely, even though she tried not to look like she was doing it. Sizing me up. Comparing me to her mother, trying to figure out what her father saw in me. At least that’s what I thought might be going through her mind, but what did I know?
“Dana,” Eli said, smiling, “this is Cassandra Raines.”
“ H’lo,” she grumbled.
“It’s nice to meet you, Dana,” I said; to which I received a half smile, and averted eyes.
I sat across from her, settled in, resigned to a long, awkward evening, but more than willing to give a shot at turning it around. All through the appetizers, Eli tried, poor thing, to draw Dana out, but she wasn’t having it. Trying to help him out, I came up with a few questions about school, her interests, her friends. For a good forty-five minutes, I tried. For my efforts, I got either one-word answers, no answer at all, or quick shrugs and pouts. Eli had wanted things to go well, but I could tell he was getting frustrated and embarrassed.
Having exhausted my best material, and being overly solicitous to the point of fawning, I finally gave up and checked out. When the waiter came by with the dessert menu, Eli and I ordered tiramisu; Dana rolled her eyes at the waiter, crossed her arms across her chest, and ordered nothing. We sat in silence until the plates arrived, and then I dug in, hoping to speed things along. Eli noticed.
He tossed down his napkin and leaned in toward Dana. “That’s it. You’re behaving like a brat, Dana. What’s wrong with you?”
I ignored them, spooning tiramisu into my mouth, watching the other diners enjoy their meals and each other’s company. I left Dana to Eli.
“You took my phone. What did you expect?” she snapped, then cocked her head in my direction. “You didn’t take hers.”
Another bite of tiramisu. It wasn’t half bad. Not the best I’d ever tasted, but decent. I smiled at Eli. Moral support. All you, dude. All you.
“No one brings their phone to the dinner table,” Eli shot back.
Dana reared up, scanned the dining room. “Oh yeah? I see one, two, three . . . six phones all around us.”
“That’s it. Apologize for your behavior right now.” He said it in that Dad voice, his teeth clenched.
“Apologize? I told you I didn’t want to come to this dumb dinner.” Dana cut her eyes at me. “With a homewrecker.”
“Enough!” Eli signaled for the waiter as he and his petulant, and misinformed, daughter were caught in a stare-off of monumental proportions. Homewrecker. Didn’t sound like a term a sixteen-year-old would come up with on her own. I felt the hand of Eli’s ex-wife at play here. Again, not my deal.
The title did, however, sour my appetite for the tiramisu. I put my fork down and glanced around the dining area to see who’d picked up on it. Yep, everybody. The room got quiet as gawkers craned to hear the conversation at our table; the wait staff lingered in the vicinity without trying to look like they were lingering. I’d gone my entire adult life without being the third party in someone else’s relationship. On principle. Hell, I didn’t even take on domestic cases in my job, preferring to stay well out of other people’s love messes. Now, here I was, being called a homewrecker by a kid who didn’t know the first thing about me. I was shelling out at least forty dollars for parking and taking time away from a case. Yet, here I sat. For Eli. Because it was important to him.
“We’re done.” Eli signaled for the waiter, who hurried over with the check. “And you are grounded.” He dug into his back pocket for his wallet and slid the credit card inside the little folder, holding it up for our waiter. “Cass, I’m so sorry about this. I thought we’d raised her better. I guess I was wrong.”
I said nothing, but I watched Dana carefully. What I saw was a kid in pain. She wanted her parents together, but nobody apparently had bothered to ask her how she felt about things. She was likely holding on to her mother’s anger, taking her side, which I couldn’t fault her for. She wasn’t old enough to know how complicated adult relationships could be. She believed what her mother told her: I was the interloper, the homewrecker, the reason Dana had to toggle between two homes and negotiate for each parent’s time and attention. I could try to relay the truth, but she was sixteen. It was a conceited age predicated on the belief that life was black and white, knowable, rational, fair.
I eyed the half-eaten tiramisu. Smiled again at Eli. I felt for him, too. Working out Dana’s issues was going to be a rough one. The waiter came back, Eli left a hefty tip, and we got up from the table.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you, Dana,” I said.
She said nothing.
“Dana!” Eli barked.
“Fine!” she shouted as she trudged to the door ahead of us. “Whatever.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Eli said.
I smiled. “Great.”
“She didn’t mean it. She’ll come around.”
I turned to catch Dana’s wake as the kid pushed through the front doors. “Uh-huh.”
* * *
Later that night, I lay in bed fully dressed for the streets and watched the numbers on my alarm clock change. My bedroom was dark, it was dark outside, dreary, and all of it matched my mood. Barb had called on my way home from Stefano’s to tell me she had gotten me on the Love Bus tonight. I was to meet her and it in an hour.
It would be a long, shivery night, and my plan had been to get a couple hours’ sleep to, hopefully, dull my memory of my dinner with Dana. That didn’t happen. I couldn’t drift off. Too much rolling around in my head, not the least among them being called a homewrecker by a kid not old enough to take a legal drink.
Had I been that obnoxious at sixteen? Probably. I was a handful for my grandparents almost from the first day I came to live with them—here, in the building I was lying in now. I’d come with only a suitcase filled with small clothes, a hidden Raggedy Ann I refused to part with, my favorite books . . . and grief, not realizing soon enough that my grandparents were grieving, too. They had lost their only child, and here I was on their doorstep looking just like her.
I blinked up at the ceiling, arms behind my head, my cell phone lying on my chest in case Whip called, or Barb, or anyone. For want of anything else to do, I dialed his number again and got bupkes. Insult to injury, his mailbox was now full.
I scrubbed my hands across my tired face. Maybe Whip had run away, too. Tired of slinging dirty rice, he had just taken off for Santa Fe or Timbuktu or Boise. Or? Or a lot of things. He lived light. It was easy to pick up and leave a life like that. Like Ramona, maybe.
The little tin box, left behind with Rose? Ramona hadn’t much else in the way of treasures. Everything else she owned, according to Poole, could fit in a small bag. So, why leave the box? Why leave it with Rose? Was she hiding its contents from Poole or Shaw? Martini? Hogan? If so, not a bad strategy, but what was the connection?
“Smart girl, Ramona, smart girl,” I muttered. “So, where the hell are you?”
I glanced over at the clock again; only five minutes had passed. I sent Hogan a text asking if he’d heard anything else about that body, or been able to get hold of Tonya, so I’d know it wasn’t her. I knew it was early stages, but that didn’t stop me being desperate for answers. If the dead girl turned out to be Tonya, this thing would take off in a totally different direction, and Ronald Shaw would be my suspect number one.
Once more, since the phone was already in my hands, I dialed Ramona’s cell. It was becoming habit, a thing I did as reflexively as coughing or blinking. It reminded me of calling in to a radio station, dialing incessantly, getting a busy signal, hanging up, and dialing back in hopes of getting through for concert tickets. I called Ramona’s phone, hoping to get through, only to get nothing, and yet I dialed again, and again, and again . . .
Someone picked up. I startled, only half believing it. I eased up in bed, listening to the open line, afraid to even breathe. “Hello? Ramona?” Someone was definitely breathing on the other end. The sound was low, hardly audible, but it was there. My palms began to sweat. “I’m Cassandra. Are you safe? Do you need help?” There was just the breathing. I swung my legs over the side of the bed, sweating like a faucet. “I’d like to help you, Ramona, if this is you. No judgment, no hassle, just help.” The breathing gave way to a slight rustle, like someone was moving the phone from one ear to the other. “Don’t hang up, okay? Talk to me?” Nothing. “I have something of yours.” I needed to keep the line open. “Ramona? The things you left behind in a safe place? The box.” I wiped sweat from my forehead, my heart beating like mad. “You’re going to have to tell me what they mean, though. I don’t have a clue. I’m not the police, if that’s what you’re worried about. A lot of people are worried about you, Ramona. Your mother, the Knowleses, Ms. Poole . . . Maybe if you . . .”
The line went dead.
“Crap!” I shot up from the bed, dialed right back, but the phone had gone dead again. She was likely only using it in short bursts, turning it on for just seconds, then disabling it again. I’d gotten lucky last time. I kept saying her, but was it her? Her phone could have been stolen, sold, lost. I could have been talking to someone who hadn’t a clue what I was talking about.
I tossed the phone into a chair, kicked shoes aside, knocked the pillows and blankets off the bed, then stood there, chest heaving, glaring at the mess I’d made. It was stupid. All I’d done was make work for myself. I paced the floor while I calmed down; then I went about putting everything back where it belonged.
It was now forty-five minutes until time to meet the bus. I squeezed my eyes shut, inhaled, exhaled. I wasn’t going to make it. I was going to implode long before then.
Chapter 17
I heard the Love Bus long before I saw it, and I stepped out of my building and watched as the converted school bus lumbered down my street. Its engine burped, wheezed, choked to death, black exhaust puffing out of the tailpipe. It was the middle of the night, and I worried about the noise waking my neighbors. It had been Barb who insisted on the door-to-door service. Had I known the Love Bus was just this side of scrap, I’d have just tailed along after it, instead of riding it.
I stood at the curb and watched as the bus groaned to a stop in front of me, wheezing like an old man who had just mounted a flight of stairs. It was colorful, though. It was painted rainbow colors, with big red hearts, yellow suns and balloons all over it. Cheerful, no doubt, in July, out of place in December amongst all the Santas, angels and reindeer.
The door opened and Barb bounded out, bundled up like an Iditarod racer. She smiled, her red hair peeking underneath her cap, and swept her arms toward the bus with a welcoming flourish. “All aboard the Love Bus, baby.” She looked excited, like we were embarking on a girls’ trip to Vegas, or something. “Free as the breeze. No line. No waiting.”
