The only disturbances were the cadaver of a mouse that was already being taken care of by the ants, and a huge mound of dog poo where his garden met the sidewalk. The flies were not unhappy about it, but dog poo was just nasty in Andi’s opinion. With a sigh, he got a plastic bag, went outside again, and found the offending remains.
After the crap had been disposed of, Andi washed his hands twice—knowing what was in dog poo had him contemplating using hand sanitizer as well, even though he hadn’t come into direct contact with the stinking mass—and then he made himself a sandwich. After the day he had had, something more substantial would have been good, but the mere idea of cooking required more energy than Andi had to spare at the moment.
Once the sandwich was gone, he changed into his yoga pants, forgoing a shirt, before he returned to his favorite spot in the garden—a cozy gazebo with a wrought-iron fence where he did his yoga routines when it was warm enough. He rolled out his mat, stepped onto it, and started with a salutation to the sun to warm himself up. The sun still had a lot of power despite it being evening, and the warmth helped his muscles get smooth more quickly. The more he concentrated on his flows, on the correct positioning of his limbs, the harmonization with his breathing, the fainter the thrum of pictures, colors, scents, and vibrations whirling through his consciousness became. After an hour of vigorous training he was dripping sweat, his mind in a rare state of peace and calm.
When he was exhausted enough to fall asleep as soon as he was showered, Andi went back into the house. He let the warm water relax his body further, drowning out the soft rustling that was trying to return to his mind with the hard beat of the shower. Sleep came swiftly, and Andi shoved all worries about the case and George from his mind.
Chapter 7—A Name to the Face
GEORGE WASrunning a bit late because he had underestimated the morning crowd in the Starbucks. He really should have anticipated a rush, but for some reason he had thought it wouldn’t be as slow going as in the early afternoon the other day. Some days his detective skills took a little time to wake up. Since Andi didn’t drink coffee, he ordered herbal tea and a plain bagel for him and a black coffee and two chocolate chip muffins for himself. George was usually more careful with what he ate, being of the firm belief that his body was a temple he needed to treat reverently. The events of the previous day had him indulging, though. He was still gnawing on the fact that Andi seemed to have known there were two more victims, and even though he tried to tell himself countless times to give it a rest, to wait for more clues, he couldn’t stop replaying the expressions on Andi’s face—especially when George had confronted him about his “hunch.” Something was indeed wrong with Andi; he could practically smell it. What it was, though, he couldn’t imagine. The man didn’t strike him as crooked. Unsociable and prickly like a hedgehog with a sore nose, definitely, but cops who were crooked needed to be amenable in some way. George just couldn’t see Andi being approached by anybody for anything. Hell, the man made buying coffee an impossible task. So what was Andi hiding from him? And was it something bad? No matter what Chief Norris thought, if Chief Renard had not only tolerated but also protected Andi, it couldn’t be a horrible secret. George hoped he would find out something soon. He didn’t like scrutinizing his partner while working a huge case with the potential to make some big waves.
Laden with his gifts, George entered the precinct, finding Andi already at his desk. The man looked a bit better than the day before; the circles under his eyes were a little less pronounced, and his scowl was—for a very brief, precious moment—replaced by the ghost of a smile. It seemed he was making some leeway with his difficult partner.
“Good morning, Andi. I brought you tea and a plain bagel.” He offered Andi the bag and the cup. His partner gave him a funny look but took the gift without mentioning that last time Andi had offered to pay. Perhaps he had forgotten, and George surely wouldn’t remind him when they were finally getting a little closer to each other.
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” That was politer than George could have hoped for. He sat down at his own desk, taking a sip from his coffee.
“Do we have any news from the lab yet?”
Andi attacked his keyboard. “The coroner’s report isn’t done yet, but we seem to have a hit on the victim from outside. We got a match with missing persons. Her name is Lilly Cordon, age sixteen. She’s from Spartanburg and was assumed kidnapped on her way home from school almost a year ago. They never found a trace of her and had no leads on who could have been responsible. The pictures of the other two are still running through the system; so far no matches.”
George put his muffin aside, went to the whiteboard, and put Lilly’s name on top of the Jane Doe writing. “Is there a report about her disappearance?”
“I already pulled it from the system. It’s not very telling, though. The precinct up there was swamped with a huge drug case when she vanished, and there weren’t that many leads to begin with. They put it on cold cases after only a couple of months. I’m sure the fact that she’s black and her parents are poor had nothing to do with it.” Frustration laced Andi’s voice, giving George another small glimpse into the mind of his partner. He obviously had a strong sense of justice, something else that spoke against him being crooked.
“Do you think it would help if we talked to the detective responsible for her case?”
Andi shrugged. “Depends. We’d have to make sure he doesn’t feel cornered or accused, though I think it would be more informative if we talked to the parents. Since we have to inform them of their daughter’s death, we could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Also, I don’t want them to hear it from the officers who weren’t able to find her.”
George shuddered. Telling somebody a loved one had died was high on his list of things he hated to do. During his time in narcotics, it had happened only a few times, but he was always rattled afterward.
“Should we go today?”
Andi sighed. “It’s a four-hour drive. Perhaps we’ll have to stay overnight.”
“I can drive. And I don’t have a problem driving late at night either, should things really take longer than anticipated.” George loved driving. It gave him a chance to let his mind wander.
Andi checked his watch. “It’s quarter past eight. With some luck, we’re there at noon. Should give us plenty of time to talk to the detective and the parents. Perhaps we can even have a look at where she was supposedly taken.”
“Then we shouldn’t waste any time. Can you call the detective from the car?”
Andi grabbed a pen and wrote a number down on a yellow Post-it. “Of course.”
A familiar rush went through George when he grabbed his car keys, the bag with the muffins, and his coffee. The hunt was one of the things he really liked about his job.
As soon as they were in the car, Andi dialed the number from the Post-it. When he heard the ringtone, he realized Andi had put the call on speaker, which George found oddly polite, considering how rough their start had been.
“Detective Harris speaking.”
“Detective Harris, this is Detective Donovan and Detective Hayes from the Charleston PD. We’re calling concerning the case of Lilly Cordon. She went missing roughly a year ago, and I’m afraid we found her body yesterday. We’re on our way to Spartanburg at the moment and wanted to ask if you had time to meet with us.”
“That’s unfortunate. To be honest, when I worked on the case, I was convinced she’d been murdered. Given the area she was from, it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”
From the corner of his eye, George saw Andi gritting his teeth. Detective Harris wasn’t impolite, just indifferent as all fuck. His attitude rubbed George the wrong way as well.
“Well, she died only three days ago. We had a look at the report in the system, and since there weren’t any leads, we thought we could talk to you. Perhaps there’s something you remember that didn’t make it into the reports?”
The silence at the other end of the line lasted a second too long. If it was because Detective Harris felt insulted or because Andi had hit a little too close to home was impossible to tell.
