Nickel City Crossfire by Gary Ross (popular romance novels .txt) 📗

nothing at his son’s apartment because the organization had another site where product was prepared and money secured. But I doubted that as soon as I heard Odell speak. His voice was higher than his father’s and rang with a joyful fluidity that reminded me of Bobby. Though retired from the classroom, my godfather retained the vocal range and cadences of the natural teacher, the person whose rightful place in the universe was among those who needed to learn something. Odell, I was sure, had the same intellectual DNA. That future students would never hear his voice only magnified his loss.

Carl’s words rang in my head: Call me when you catch the motherfuckers. I thought about the threatening text from a burner: Lucky once bitch.

I stood up and got another Corona from my refrigerator. As I popped the top, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out of my pocket and said, “Hello.”

“Gideon Rimes?”

The voice was female, but its huskiness was familiar. “Yes.”

“This is Jen Spina. You—”

“Sergeant Spina! This is a nice surprise.”

“Call me Jen.”

“All right, Jen. So, what can I do for you?”

“I know you talked to my wife today, about her friend who’s missing.”

“I did.”

“We talked about it at dinner. She said it would be okay if I called.” She hesitated. “Bianca is kind of reserved, so I’m guessing she didn’t let you know how upset she is.”

“She made it plain.”

“Keisha’s good people. So are her parents. They accepted me because Bianca was like another daughter, so I must be okay. I hate to see them left hanging. I hear you got friends in the department. For damn sure bringing in a cop-killer made your stock go up.” She drew in a deep breath. “So if you need anything to help you find her, even on the down-low, please contact me. I’ll run plates, check reports, dig up arrest records—whatever you need that won’t get me shit-canned. If you gotta go somewhere you need back-up, call me. Not the number on the card I gave you in the hospital, but this one, my private cell.”

I couldn’t remember where I’d put her business card. “All right, Jen. I appreciate it.”

“If you hear something, please let us know.” Her voice caught. “If it’s bad, tell me first so I can break it to Bianca.”

Clicking off, I added her number to my directory. Then I sat down and forced my mind back into the case at the right point: Lucky once bitch. I remembered what Phoenix had said at dinner, that the botched break-in might have been Odell’s crew looking for hidden drug money or rival dealers trying to learn how Odell moved product. Since I had begun to believe Odell had no crew, the break-in was either unrelated to Keisha’s disappearance or an attempt to find something else. Lucky once bitch. Had that come from the would-be burglar? If so, what had he been trying to find? I took a hefty swallow of Corona as I thought about that. Then I turned on Keisha’s laptop.

Her home screen background was a photo of a gleaming glacier shedding a chunk of ice. Against the brilliant white and stunning blue were assorted program icons, browser and email links, and several large folders labeled Humanitas, Church, Pictures, Misc, Games, and Professional. My first pass was through the folders. Most were like Russian nesting dolls, full of additional folders and files. Humanitas held Projects, Programs, Letters & Memos, Minutes, Staffing, Studies, Case Histories, Outreach, Outside Agencies, and at least twenty others that would take hours to examine. Church was home to Newsletters, Meeting Minutes, Cong Letters, Church History, Bldg Needs, and Memb Roll. Pictures had Family, Holidays, Vacations, Phone Pix, and Random. Misc was a nightmare of disconnected folders and files, a dumping ground to help keep the desktop uncluttered. Only Games and Professional had no other folders. The former had program icons for Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, puzzles, several Sims games, and a handful of action games. The latter had only Word files, JPEGs, and PDFs of Keisha’s resumes, degrees, and certifications.

There was nothing that, on the surface, would interest a thief.

Grateful that she was organized, I began opening Humanitas files and skimming through them, convinced I was going to be up for a long time. When I finished my Corona, I stood up to make coffee. At that moment my cell phone buzzed again.

“Hello.”

The voice on the other end was breathless. “Gideon? Ileana. Are you free to join me at a homeless shelter right now?”

“Is Keisha there?”

“No, Veronica Surowiec. She says she saw Keisha earlier today. And bring money or she won’t talk. She already got my last twenty.”

13

Veronica Surowiec was hideous, the remnant of a once beautiful woman who had fallen into hell. Honey blonde hair now dry as broom straw stuck through holes in her old red watch cap. Her blue eyes were cloudy, the sallow skin of her face dotted with blisters. Behind her cracked full lips were the discolored, crumbling teeth of a long-time meth addict. If her hands were any indication, the body beneath her filthy mustard coat was skeletal and unwashed.

With her long charcoal coat open, Ileana Tassiopulos and I sat across from Veronica at a table in the back of a deconsecrated Bidwell Parkway church that now housed Sanctuary Nimbus, a ragtag social collective which had replaced church pews with folding cots and kept a soup kitchen in the basement. It was a cold night but only half the cots were occupied. Maybe homelessness was on the decline, but it was far from being a problem solved.

Sanctuary Nimbus, Ileana had explained as she led me from the front door, was the brainchild of an entrepreneur whose epiphany about asceticism and social responsibility would in another time have been called a nervous breakdown. Decades earlier, Paul Pollard had devised the Omicron Seven management system. For a time the rage in business schools and multinationals determined to humanize capitalism, Omicron Seven had made Pollard wealthy enough to squeak through