Every Kind of Wicked. Lisa Black
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bolt. He watched her debate with herself and said, “Police. Do you live here?”
More debating.
Riley asked, “Do you know Evan Harding?”
The girl let out the breath she’d been holding, and the eternal energy her youth bestowed seemed to leak out as well. She knew exactly what they were going to say, and it would not come as a surprise. Shock, yes. Surprise, no.
She shut the door and came into the room to pull off the gloves and toss the coat over the back of the desk chair. Then she faced them, visibly bracing herself. “What happened?”
“Do you know Evan Harding?” Riley repeated.
“Yes.”
“Do you live here with him?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
Only a slight wait this time. “Shanaya Thomas.”
“What’s your relationship to Evan Harding?”
“I’m his girlfriend. What’s happened to him?” She spoke slowly. Most people would have ended each answer with this demand, but she seemed to know the news was going to be bad and didn’t mind procrastinating.
“I’m afraid he’s been killed,” Riley said, his voice gentle. There was no good way tell someone that.
The girl’s eyes instantly swam with unshed tears and she put a hand to her mouth. “I knew it. I knew something was wrong when he didn’t come home last night.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“About four, I think.”
“A.m. or p.m.?” Jack asked.
“P.m. He called, just to—just to say hi. Sometimes he’d get bored at work, call me.”
“Where does he work?”
Her gaze fell on the shelves behind him and she pushed between them, trancelike, to reach the framed photo Jack had examined before. She ran a finger over the dead boy’s face, then collapsed onto the bed as if her knees could no longer hold her, cradling the photo to her breasts. “He, um, he started a new job a few weeks ago. At the movie theater, the one at Tower City.”
“Okay,” Riley said. From Tower City to the Erie Street Cemetery to where they now sat formed a straight line, a logical path home after work. “How long have you known him?”
“A year, year and a half.”
“You’re not students here, are you?” Jack asked, trying to keep all accusation out of his voice.
After a second she shook her head, staring at the floor. “We were—but then we were working all the time and couldn’t keep up with the coursework. We didn’t tell the building . . . we need the low rent. Will you have to tell them?”
“Not unless they ask,” Riley said.
She looked at Jack. He knew his face never appeared too reassuring under the best of circumstances, but he couldn’t help that. She said, “It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t afford even the student rate by myself anyway.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Yes, in customer service, but it doesn’t pay much. It’s my one day off, today. That’s why I went out for some breakfast.” She sniffed, then reached over to snatch a tissue from a small box on the desk.
“What is this?” Jack asked, holding out the notebook. She glanced at it without interest and said she didn’t know.
Riley took her through where she and Evan were from—she, Youngstown, him, Pittsburgh—and his family and significant others. She only knew of a mother, somewhere in Indiana. “He never said anything about his father and didn’t have any brothers or sisters. His mom’s number should be in his phone,” she added.
“We didn’t find a phone.”
“But . . . it has to be there. Did you look in his coat pocket? Even if a car smashed it you can still—”
“This wasn’t an accident,” Riley said, and told her that her boyfriend had been murdered, possibly shot by person or persons unknown. She didn’t cry so much as gasp, cringe, and moan; that she’d never seen her boyfriend again had been bad enough, but knowing that someone had purposely done that to them made it too horrific to take in. Riley did his typically good work, drawing every last detail he could from her while probing for a support system—did she have family, friends that he and Jack could call? Would she like to hear from a victim advocate who could walk her through what would be done with Evan’s body? Was there anyone else who might have a name and number for this mother in Indiana?
No, no, and no—but she would be fine. When she could think straight again she’d try to message some friends to see if they had any ideas about next of kin. Riley said they would also check out Evan’s workplace to see if Evan had written anything on his employment application that might be a lead to his family, and Shanaya shot him a look of grim gratitude.
Jack asked about the cell phone service. She told them it was Sprint and gave them the phone number. She checked her own phone to see if there had been any further messages or e-mails from Evan she had missed, said there were not since that call at 3:48 p.m. the previous day. She had tried him four times during the evening, but they had all gone straight to voice mail. She figured he was busy and hadn’t worried about it.
With nothing else to do, they stated their condolences once again and left the young woman sitting on the rumpled bed, holding the photograph of her dead boyfriend and staring at nothing.
They rode the elevator down in silence.
Riley buttoned his coat as they passed out into the snow, the air so cold relative to inside that it made Jack’s nostrils stick together when he breathed in. That was the way to tell cold from really cold.
“Partner,” Riley said, his tone much less light than his words, “let’s go to the movies.”
“Yeah. There’s something about this I don’t like, either.”
* * *
Shanaya made herself count to thirty. That should be enough time for the cops to get into the elevator and out of her hallway, unlikely to bang on the door with one last question.
It took some self-discipline to wait. She’d always been good at both those things, but hearing that Evani had been murdered knocked some of her abilities for a loop. She hadn’t been lying about knowing that something had to be wrong. Evani always came home. He might go out for a drink, he might hit the slots at the casino despite her threats to stab him in the groin if he lost more than two of their dollars on gambling. If he lost five she would gut him and stuff the entrails in his mouth as he died, she had said more than once, but who knew what he got up to when she wasn’t there to watch him? He might even have gotten drunk and gone home with another woman—unlikely, since they’d always been quite compatible in that respect. More than compatible.
But getting himself freakin’ murdered—that was way out there.
Maybe she should leave. Throw what little she had into a bag and keep herself safe.
But if whoever killed him knew about this apartment or wanted to get into it, he would have taken Evani’s key card and shown up last night. The guy, or guys, hadn’t been interested in the card. That should mean she was good.
She got to thirty. Surely the cops had to be on their way out of the building. She flipped the photo frame over and ripped the cardboard stand out of its slot. It had to be there. It had to.
Under the photo was a plain sheet of paper, and between that and the cardboard backing had been stuffed two sheets of folded paper. But what she sought wasn’t there.
Of course it wasn’t. Evani never did what she told him, the damn paranoid idiot.