LITMIR.BIZ

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City Mall seemed relatively sedate in the middle of a weekday. Three floors, plus a basement where the Rapid Transit trains came and went, it had fountains, a food court, both pricey and not-too-ridiculously-pricey shops, and an eleven-screen movie theater.

      Where, it turned out, they had never heard of Evan Harding. The manager on duty, a friendly, competent, and skinny black kid who didn’t look old enough to see some of their current attractions scoured his computer and even called the corporate offices to confirm: no one named Evan Harding worked there. Not now, not previously. Jack showed him the cell-phone photo he had taken of the picture of the victim with Shanaya. The only other photo he had was one he’d taken at the crime scene, with the reddened shirt and the open, staring eyes—show that to a witness and they wouldn’t see past the blood. But the manager didn’t recognize Evan Harding, and neither did any other employee currently on duty.

      Their name tags, Jack noted, didn’t look anything like the plain white plate the victim had pinned to his shirt.

      Back out in the atrium, Jack said, “The girlfriend lied.”

      “Or he lied to the girlfriend,” Riley said, crunching popcorn from a bag he’d bought at the concession stand.

      “I don’t know. How often does the live-in girlfriend know so little about a guy? Girlfriends are usually kind of nosy, aren’t they?”

      Riley gave him a look—that what does she see in you? look—and Jack backpedaled before his partner could ask the question aloud. The only thing more difficult than maintaining a real romantic relationship was maintaining a fictional one. “I’m saying I’m suspicious of her inability to tell us anything useful. The dead guy had no family, no friends—there’s no sign in that room that either of them were ever students. Maybe it’s shock and a minimalistic approach to possessions, or maybe he was into something shady and she’s covering for him.”

      Riley crumpled up the paper bag. “Possibly. But when did you last see a drug dealer wearing a name tag?”

      Jack considered this as Riley pitched his balled-up bag into a rounded garbage can for a perfect nothing-but-net score. “Shady jobs don’t issue name tags. But if it wasn’t shady, why not tell the girlfriend about it?”

      “Do staff at strip joints wear tags? There’s a job he wouldn’t want to tell her about, how he’s surrounded by the scantily clad all day.”

      “I don’t know. About the tags.”

      “We could stop in at a few and check it out,” Riley said, currently between girlfriends and only half joking. Then a toddler somewhere behind them burst into a screeching peal, which echoed and grew as it bounced off the marble and the glass, piercing eardrums with the ease born of practice. “Either way, let’s get out of here.”

      As they exited onto Public Square, Jack noted aloud that they would have to get a search warrant for the victim’s phone. He had already called the homicide unit’s administrative assistant to see if Sprint could get the phone located on the chance the mugger had kept it. Technology could only triangulate to an area and not a pinpoint on the map, but anything would help when they had so little to work with.

      Snow kept falling, a few desultory flakes at a time. The tall buildings occasionally sheltered them from the wind and other times turned the street into a tunnel that funneled and concentrated it to a biting, shoving force of frigidity. “We have a car, you know,” Riley grumbled. “We don’t actually have to walk everywhere.”

      “It’s only two blocks.” Jack didn’t like the cold but liked moving in and out, from cold air to overly warm buildings or cars and back again even less. And he hated driving in the stuff, the sickening lurch of the frame as the tires fought for traction. He hadn’t been raised in a cold climate and couldn’t figure out why, though he had a decent furnace, his house always felt chilly to him. He should get an electric blanket. If he planned to stay.

      Riley continued to grouse. “Two blocks in June is one thing. Two blocks in December is another.”

      “Didn’t your doctor recommend exercise?”

      “No,” Riley said. “No, I have never discussed my doctor visits with you. You’re like a whole freakin’ two years younger than me so don’t—you’re going to get killed like that, you know. Speaking of health.”

      Jack had been tapping on his smart phone with one thumb, nearly stepping into the path of a passing car. “I figure we got one other clue.”

      “A to Z Check Cashing?” Riley guessed.

      Jack covered his surprise. He really shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking Riley wasn’t that sharp just because Jack had managed, so far, to keep his extracurricular activities off Riley’s radar. Overconfidence would take Jack out much more easily than a speeding automobile. “Uh—yeah. It’s on the next street from our crime scene. Might as well check it out. That’s near where the car’s parked anyway,” he added as an incentive.

      “That’s more than two blocks,” Riley grunted, and Jack let him have the last word on the subject.

      A to Z Check Cashing did, indeed, exist in a storefront in the triangular building where Bolivar met Prospect Road, one street over from where the victim had been found. A loud set of bells jangled from the pneumatic arm of the door when they entered, giving an old-school alert to the cashier that a customer had arrived. Not that there was much storefront to keep an eye on—the customer area consisted of an empty, ten by fifteen square of dingy linoleum facing a solid, chest-high counter area. Perhaps five inches of space existed between this counter and an upper wall of clear but not clean plexiglass. There were cameras in each corner of the customer area, more visible in the ceiling behind the plexiglass. Employees must have to enter via the rear—no door or opening existed to get a human being to move from in front of the counter to behind it, which must go a long way toward discouraging robbers.

      The air smelled a bit like a greenhouse tinged with both mildew and despair, but was blissfully warm. Riley let out an audible sigh. Compared to the city streets, they had walked into a sauna.

      A paunchy, middle-aged man with thick black-framed glasses emerged from the back and took them in with one sweeping glance before his face stilled into a look of utter neutrality, having pegged them as cops. Cops who would probably be annoying him with questions about his less than upstanding customers. Cops who might scare those customers away if they hung around long enough. Before the man even opened his mouth, Jack knew he would sound brisk, businesslike, and ostensibly cooperative, and all with one motive: to get them out of there as quickly as possible.

      The man said, with the barest trace of an accent Jack couldn’t identify, “How can I help you?”

      Jack waited for Riley, always better at putting potential witnesses at ease, but his partner said nothing, staring instead at the man’s name tag, crookedly pinned to a red polo shirt. A plain white badge with rounded edges and red letters spelled “Ralph.”

      Jack said, “We’re here about Evan Harding.”

      The man’s eyes widened in surprise and something like fear. “Well. I see.” He straightened a bit; his chin came up, and he spoke more firmly. “I’d like to know where he is, too. He’s forty-five minutes late.”

      Jack hid a smile. Finally, they might be getting somewhere. “He works here?”

      “For me, yeah.”

      “How long?”

      The guy shrugged as if relaxing slightly. Something they’d said had reassured him, and Jack couldn’t guess what that had been. “Four, five months. Real reliable.”

      In response to further questions he told them that he, Ralph, had owned the business for over ten years, he had five employees, that Evan had been a cashier working the front desk, and nothing else. He’d never had a problem with the kid’s work, no money missing, no customer complaints, forms always filled out properly. He didn’t know anything else about Evan Harding, not family, friends savory or un-, hobbies, vices. He didn’t come out and say that

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