LITMIR.BIZ

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much paperwork I still need to finish tonight.’

      This was a lie. But then so was Marsha Raymond’s claim that she could afford to feed an extra mouth. Even with Trey’s salary coming in, the family were barely scraping by and Haddon knew it.

      ‘That’s a good man, right there,’ Trey’s grandma Coretta observed, tottering in from the backyard just in time to see Doc Defoe drive off in his fancy electric car. ‘You don’ know how lucky you are, Treyvon.’

      ‘I do know, Gamma.’ Trey kissed the old lady on the top of her balding head. ‘Believe me. I know.’

      It was kind of Haddon to stop by and see him. Thoughtful.

      At the same time, a small part of Trey felt suspicious. Why had he chosen tonight to trek all the way out to Westmont? Doug Roberts had been dead a year and he’d never ‘stopped by’ before. And why all the questions about Nikki and the police? Was it really coincidence, Dr Defoe’s visit coming so soon after Lisa Flannagan’s sudden death? And did he really not know anything about Lisa’s murder?

      Trey helped himself to a large plate of El Pollo Loco wings, trying to push these irrational fears aside. I’m being paranoid. What could Haddon Defoe possibly know? A few minutes later, his cell phone buzzed. Reading the text, he stiffened.

      ‘What’s the matter, baby?’ Marsha Raymond asked. After all Trey’s years of addiction, she’d learned to watch her son’s reactions like a hawk.

      ‘Nothing.’ He smiled.

      ‘You sure?’

      He nodded, putting the phone away. ‘Just work. Something I forgot to do.’

      After dinner, Trey did the dishes and took out the trash. It was important to keep to his normal routine, not to look as if he were rushing. He knew his mom would worry if anything seemed out of the ordinary. Only once the kitchen was clean did he grab his jacket, as casually as he could.

      ‘I’m going out,’ he told Marsha.

      Instinctively, her eyes narrowed. ‘Out where?’ Trey hadn’t used in over two years, but ‘I’m going out’ still triggered a fear response. It probably always would.

      ‘Jus’ for a walk, Mama.’ He kissed her on the cheek.

      ‘A walk? In our beautiful neighborhood?’ she raised an eyebrow.

      Trey chuckled. ‘I need some cigarettes. Today was a crazy day, you know? I won’t be long.’

      ‘OK, baby.’ Marsha forced herself to relax. He was a grown man after all. She couldn’t keep tabs on his every move. ‘Watch yourself.’

      ‘I will, Mama.’

      The cool evening breeze on his skin gave Trey Raymond no comfort as he walked down Denker Avenue. He was wired like an over-strung guitar, ready to snap at any moment.

      He waited till he’d turned the corner, out of sight of his house, to pull out his cell phone and re-read the text:

      ‘Be at the corner of Vermont and 135th in 1 hr.’

      That was all it said. But it was all it needed to say. Trey knew who the text was from, and what it meant. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. It was too late for that.

      He could see the corner, less than fifty yards away. Apart from a couple of wasted hookers, slumped against the convenience store wall, it was deserted.

      His phone buzzed again. MMS. A picture this time.

      Trey clicked it open and felt the bile rise up in his throat. It was a woman’s torso, what was left of it, covered in stab wounds. Her bare breasts had been sliced open grotesquely, like a split chicken ready for stuffing.

       Lisa? Or someone else, someone new? Another victim?

      Beneath the picture were two words. ‘Hurry up.’

      Trey started to run. He reached the rendezvous, breathless, but there was no one there. No cars, no people, nothing. Only the hookers sitting on the curb. Crouching down over the girls, Trey shook one by the shoulder.

      ‘Was anybody here? D’you see anybody waiting here earlier?’

      The girl looked up at him blankly, her pupils dilating like the pulse of a dying star. Trey tried her semi-comatose friend. ‘Please!’ He could hear the desperation in his own voice and it scared him. ‘I’m looking for someone. It’s really important.’

      The second girl sat up suddenly, like a robot whose batteries just got replaced. ‘Looks like you found them, sugar!’ she grinned. ‘Behind you!’

      Trey turned, just in time to feel the crackle of the Taser burning into his chest. The pain was excruciating. He fell backwards, slamming his head on the concrete.

      Then everything went black.

       CHAPTER NINE

      ‘Two pairs.’

      Lou Goodman laid his tens and eights down on the Formica table. Mick Johnson, his partner, was addicted to heads-up poker. Goodman had learned the game to try to bond with the older man. It hadn’t worked, so far, but Goodman kept trying.

      ‘Straight.’ Johnson cracked a smug smile, laying out his six-through-ten. ‘Guess that means the breakfast’s on you.’

      And the heart attack’s on you, my friend, Goodman thought, watching his partner begin to attack his second enormous stack of Denny’s pancakes, drowning in syrup and whipped cream.

      The two detectives had escaped the station together to compare their progress, or lack of it, in the Lisa Flannagan murder case. Flannagan’s former lover, the billionaire Rams owner Willie Baden, still hadn’t returned from his vacation home in Cabo San Lucas. Conveniently, he’d been in Mexico the night Lisa was killed, vacationing with his loyal, long-suffering wife Valentina, and the couple were no doubt planning to stay there until the salacious press coverage about his and Lisa’s affair died down. Goodman had told Johnson about the connection between Valentina Baden and Brandon Grolsch’s mother, Frances. But a cursory call to Valentina’s charity offices had yielded nothing of use, which left the detectives with little option but to await the Badens’ return.

      Meanwhile Johnson had drawn a blank with the dead girl’s family (no siblings, both parents dead, and an aunt in Reno who hadn’t seen Lisa since she was six) and Goodman was no further ahead in establishing whether Brandon Grolsch was dead or alive, never mind how his DNA came to be under Lisa’s fingernail. Like his parents, none of Brandon’s old friends or girlfriends had heard from him in eight months, and Goodman’s calls to all of the various rehabs and drop-in centers known to have treated Brandon in the past yielded nothing. Though it pained him to agree with Nathan Grolsch on anything, it did seem increasingly likely that Brandon was, indeed, dead. Unfortunately, ‘likely’ wasn’t good enough.

      The only other clue they’d managed to find turned out to be a damp squib. There had been a lot of excitement when one of the techs recovered pieces of Lisa’s clothing from the stretch of freeway close to where the body was dumped. But when the lab reports came in they were inconclusive; the unusually heavy rain around the time of Lisa’s death had washed away any useful DNA traces. That left them with only the baffling fingernail cells to go on. So far there’d been no sign of Dr Roberts’ missing raincoat, the one she claimed to have lent Lisa the night she died, nor of the murder weapon.

      All in all, it wasn’t exactly a triumphant start.

      ‘I don’t trust that psychologist broad,’ Johnson observed, as he did every time they discussed the case, pushing the cards aside and shoveling forkfuls of pancake into his open mouth. ‘I think we should talk to her again.’

      Goodman frowned. Johnson’s growing obsession with and dislike

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