“You must be Hawk,” Lollie said when they reached her, giving Jase a practiced come-on smile. Her gaze cut to Kate, then back to him. “Snoopy told me you’d be bringing a lady to join in the fun.”
At the woman’s fake enthusiasm, pity curled in Kate’s stomach. “I’m Kate,” she said, extending a hand. “And you’re Lollie, right?”
“That’s right, honey. Lolita’s my real name.” She accepted the handshake, clearly surprised by the gesture. She was a little too thin, her eyes slightly sunken, hair short and curly. Her fake black lashes were heavily mascaraed, her cheeks brightly rouged. She looked old beyond her twentysomething years, but she had once been pretty.
“Come on in.” The woman stepped back and Kate walked into the room, Jase a few steps behind her.
Lollie closed the door, her gaze moving from Jase, who took up way too much space, to Kate, who was way taller than Lollie, to the sagging queen-size bed.
“It’s all right,” Kate said gently. “We aren’t here for sex.”
“We’re paying Snoopy for your time,” Jase said, “but we only want to talk to you, ask you some questions.”
Relief flickered over her face, followed by wariness. “What kind of questions?”
Kate managed to smile. “My last name’s Gallagher. The girl you knew as Tina Galen was my sister, Chrissy.”
Lollie glanced away, her eyes clouding. “I heard what happened. I’m real sorry. I liked Tina. We were friends.”
“Yes, that’s what we heard,” Kate said.
Jase shifted, probably feeling claustrophobic in the close confines of the tight, seedy motel room. “We’re hoping you can help us figure out who might have killed her, Lollie.”
The woman started shaking her head. “I don’t know anything. I told the police that when they came knocking at the door.”
“Do you know if she might have had a john who liked rough sex?” Jase asked.
“She might have. She never mentioned it.”
“What about a regular customer who might have started getting a little too possessive?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Can you tell us a little about her?” Kate asked. “My sister ran away two years ago. She was only sixteen. My mom and I tried to find her, my father, too, in the beginning. We never heard from her again. I never knew where she was until I got a call from the Dallas Police Department asking me to identify her body.”
Kate’s throat tightened. “I’ll never forget the way she looked lying on that stainless-steel table. My sister was beaten to death, Lollie. Someone needs to pay for what they did to her.”
Lollie sank down on the mattress, her hands clasped together between her thin legs. “I didn’t know her for very long. We only just met a few weeks before she was killed.” A wobbly smile touched her lips. “For some reason the two of us just hit it off right away.”
“Sometimes that happens,” Kate said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “I’m glad she had someone who cared about her.”
“She wasn’t from Dallas. I don’t know where she came from—Tina never said. She’d only been working the area a couple of nights when Eli spotted her on the street. She was in his territory, you see? You can’t just work like that on your own. You gotta have a protector.”
“So Eli Zepeda became her pimp?” Jase asked.
“Eli didn’t give her any choice. And the truth is, Tina needed him. She was in bad shape when she got here. She was hungry. She needed a place to stay, and...”
“And...?” Jase pressed.
“She needed a fix. Eli takes care of that for all his girls.”
Kate and Jase exchanged glances. The track marks on Lollie’s arms were impossible to miss.
“What else can you tell us?” Kate urged gently.
“Tina went to work for Eli, but she was determined to get out of the life. She told me she had family in Dallas.” Lollie looked at Kate. “She must have been talking about you.”
The lump in Kate’s throat grew more pronounced. She swallowed. “I moved to Dallas before Chrissy was in high school. Why didn’t she call me? I’m her sister. I would have helped her. Surely she knew that.”
