“How did you find her?”
Mills shrugged. “Tattoo parlors panned out. I found the guy who did hers and staked out the shop, and what do you know? She cruised by.”
Roarke raised an eyebrow, impressed. But then, he’d never thought Mills was a fool.
“I called Elliott,” he told the detective. “I thought having her here might help.”
Mills considered. “Could. Kid’s not talking to me. You, maybe, pretty as you are.”
Roarke ignored that. “Any more info on her from the system?”
“Nada. Not listed as a missing person. We don’t even have a real name on her. She’s going by Jade Lauren, but there’s no such somebody on record, of course. She’s not carrying an I.D. She won’t say where she’s from. Her prints don’t match any in AFIS. At least we’ve got them now. They match the lipstick from the scene, by the way.”
So they had her at the scene of the murder. She’d be able to identify Cara. Roarke felt the realization in the pit of his stomach as an acid rush of dread.
It’s what you need, isn’t it
?
Mills was talking on. “It’s weird, ’cause most parents print their children these days. This one— not a thing.”
“That says something, doesn’t it?” a female voice said behind them.
Mills looked over Roarke’s shoulder, said under his breath, “Watch out.”
Roarke turned to see Rachel Elliott stridingdown the hall toward them, dressed in jeans and a red cashmere sweater under a dark pea coat and scarf. She was flushed and her hair was a heavy swirling cloud around her face.
She stopped in front of them, righteously pissed. “Mills, you asshole. You have no right.”
Mills held up his hands. “Hey, she was holding.”
“Like you’re not,” Rachel shot back at him, and Roarke almost laughed. She was probably right.
“Want to search me?” Mills said, unperturbed. “Roarke needs to get his girl, doesn’t he?”
“Let’s just do it,” Rachel said tightly.
Roarke and Rachel walked down the hall together, following Mills. Roarke’s sleeplessness was catching up with him and it made him clumsy, swaying into her personal space. They were close enough that he could feel her anger radiating from her like heat.
He tried to keep his voice neutral. “Have you had any luck finding out where she came from?”
“Nothing,” Rachel said. “No one’s put out anything on the missing child hotlines or websites trying to find her. I thought I might find something through foster care —more than half the teens in the life are runaways from foster homes. But she’s not in the California system, anyway.”
Before they entered the interview room, Roarke stepped into the adjacent viewing room to take a look at her through the observation mirror.
The girl who called herself Jade was seated at the table, leaning far back in the plastic chair, long legs stretched in front of her to rest on the edge of the table with an exaggerated sensuality. She was raccoon-eyed with heavy makeup and looked supremely bored with her surroundings. At the same time that he could see she was hypervigilant, she wasn’t missing a thing. She looked up at the camera at regular intervals, staring at it insolently.
Her hoodie was fashionably distressed and only partly zipped so it was slipping off her shoulders, baring her collarbone and part of her back. The tattoos there were instantly arresting; intricate patterns that he could only see the top of but which clearly covered most of her back.
And she was very young, her druggie thinness softened by skin round and smooth with baby fat.
Rachel stood at the door, watching him watch the girl. “Any tips?” he asked.
“She’s sixteen,” she said dryly. “Good luck.”
He opened the door for Rachel but made sure that he was positioned where he could see Jade as soon as the door cracked.
She looked up instantly as the door opened. Rachel, then Roarke stepped through, followed by Mills.
Rachel didn’t touch the girl, but the social worker radiated a gentleness that Roarke hadn’t seen in her before as she sat and leaned forward across the table.
“Hello, Jade,” she said. “This is Special Agent Roarke, of the FBI. He has some questions for you, along with Inspector Mills, and I’m here to supervise. Are you comfortable? Do you need anything?”
“I’d blow all of you for a cigarette,” Jade drawled.
Rachel didn’t even blink; Roarke had to admire it. “Anything to drink? Eat?” she asked, as if she hadn’t heard.
Jade waved a languid hand at the Coke can in front of her. “I’m all set.”
Roarke pulled a chair out for Rachel across the table from Jade, and sat in the one beside her. Mills remained standing, leaned a shoulder against the wall.
The girl watched Roarke’s every move, her eyes slipping over him like hands, a blatantly sexual appraisal. He kept his face neutral, but he was startled by the blazing energy coming off her. Maybe she was still high. Whatever it was, she burned.
Christ
, he thought.
Sixteen
.
Rachel shifted beside him, cleared her throat. He spoke to the girl. “We’re not holding you for the dope, Jade. Rachel can take you home in the morning.”
Jade’s eyes flicked toward Rachel, with no readable expression. “Happy days.”
“But we need to ask you some questions about Danny Ramirez.”
She shrugged lazily. “I have a choice?”
“Would you like a lawyer?”
She stared at him with blank eyes, then smiled thinly. “Crowded enough in here already, doncha think? All these people for little ol’ me.” She shifted in the chair, and leaned back again. “Just do it.”
While she had been talking Roarke had been studying her: speech patterns, mannerisms, the way she dressed.
West Coast
, he thought.
Southwest, Pacific Northwest, or California
. Or at least she’d been in California long enough to assimilate the style. Despite a street defensiveness, her body language was open, her speech a casual drawl with no Eastern or Southern affect. She was intelligent, too, she had the arrogance of a naturally high IQ and she wasn’t intimidated by adults.
He decided his best course of action would be to get right to it, not coddle her, but treat her as an adult.
“You witnessed the death of Danny Ramirez.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” she said stonily.
“We have your prints on a lipstick that was dropped at the scene.”
“I didn’t kill Danny.”
“We know you didn’t kill Danny. But you saw it, didn’t you?”
There was a lot on her face, now, but she was silent.
“All I’m asking is what you saw.”
Her eyes flicked to the side. “It was dark.”
“Let’s start with the basics. Even in the dark I think you can tell a man from a woman.”
She gave him a smile so hard it made him cold, and said nothing. Roarke put the police sketch of Cara down on the table.
“Was this the person you saw?” He watched Jade’s face.
She took her time before she looked down, and then she looked at the sketch a long time. “Who is she?”
“Is this the person you saw?”
“Probably. Without the sunglasses. It being night, and all.”
“Can you talk us through what happened? How did you get to the tunnel?”
She shrugged, yawned. “Danny texted me to meet him.”
“Why was that?” Mills asked dryly.
“Guess,” she said, looking straight at him.
Beside Roarke, Rachel suddenly leaned forward. Her voice was soft, and compelling. “I know it must have been hard to see. No matter what else you felt about him. It must have been hard.”
Jade looked back at her. “It was a lot of blood,” the girl said. “A lot of blood.”
“I know,” Rachel said. “Tell us.”
Roarke held his breath, feeling the connection between the two of them resonate in the room. The moment seemed to last forever, then Jade looked away again. But miraculously, she spoke.
“He said to meet in the tunnel so I walked down from the fair, on Haight? So I get into the tunnel and I see that he’s with someone and I don’t know what’s going on so I wait. Back a little. It’s really dark so I can’t see much, but it’s someone thin, pants and a jacket. I figure it’s someone making a buy. But when Danny lights up I see her in the flame.”
Roarke had a sudden, very clear picture of the scene, Cara appearing in the dark, as pale and blond as she was. The last thing Ramirez would have expected in that dank tunnel.
“Did they say anything to each other?” Rachel asked, exactly right, a total pro.
Jade shrugged. “Danny talked some shit. ‘Whatchu want, bitch,’ his usual charm. Wrong thing to say, turns out.” But her voice shook when she said it, and she reached for the Coke can to drink.
Roarke made sure his own voice was steady, neutral, when he asked the next. “Did she say anything?”
Jade put the can down. “Nope. She just stepped up and grabbed his hair and… sliced him.”
She wrapped her arms around her thin torso. Her hoodie slipped down off her shoulders, exposing more of the tattoo, a female figure inside a cone of flames.
“There was so much blood…” she said in a hollow voice.
Roarke’s head was buzzing.
She saw it. She saw the whole thing. A direct, material witness
.
But he sensed there was more that she wasn’t saying.
“Did she see you?”
The girl’s eyes flicked to his face. “It was so dark. I couldn’t move. I just stood there hoping she wouldn’t see.”
“You were afraid of her?” he asked, and heard the sharpness in his voice. Rachel looked at him, startled.
“She’s standing there with a razor, Danny’s there bleeding out at her feet? Are you kidding?” Jade sounded insulted… but not afraid, exactly. He couldn’t read her.
“She didn’t say anything to you,” he said, and again Rachel glanced at his face, a questioning look.
“No,” Jade said defiantly. “She didn’t see me.”
Lying
, Roarke thought, suddenly sure.
Why
?
“What happened then?” he said neutrally.
Jade looked away. “She leaned over, took his roll.”
“Money, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Pocketed it. And then she was gone.” She finally met his eyes. “I waited until I was sure. And I ran.”
She was leaving something out, he knew it. “She said
nothing
to you.”
Rachel shifted in her chair. Jade’s eyes blazed across at him. “She
didn’t see me
.” She spat the words at him.
He sat for a moment, and then asked, “Why do you think she killed him?”
Rachel shifted again beside him.
Jade stared hard at him, then her mouth quirked, not quite a smile. “I guess she thought he needed killing.”
Roarke stared back at her for a long moment. “Could you identify her if you saw her again?”
There was a quick, furtive look on her face, instantly gone. “Like I’m gonna forget?” she retorted.
Roarke sat, chair pushed back from the table, just looking at her. She looked right back. “So who is she?” Jade said.
“Our suspect.”
“And what else?”
Roarke looked at her. She stared steadily back at him. “Agent Roarke, right?
Special
Agent Roarke? So why are you here? Why isn’t Beavis over there handling this?”
“Hey,” Mills grumbled.
“What do
you
want her for?” Jade continued, never looking away from him.
“Murder,” Roarke said flatly. And he stood, ending the interview.
As they stepped out into the hall, a guard was waiting to take Jade back to a room.
“I’ll be by first thing in the morning,” Rachel told the girl. It would take that long to get her processed out.
“Whatever,” Jade said, and her eyes slid toward Roarke, a watching look.
In a moment, he decided, used it, leaned forward and closed his fingers around her wrist. She looked up at him, startled. “If you think of anything else, you’ll call, won’t you.”
“You bet,” she drawled, but he felt her pulse quicken under the pressure of his hand.
He released her slowly. “Thanks for all your help.”
He turned and walked down the hall, Rachel and Mills following after a moment in his wake.
At this hour the glare of the fluorescents in the corridor was a dreamlike haze. Rachel was silent, but Roarke could feel her thoughts ticking. Beside her, Mills was brooding. “I’m not so sure she’ll rabbit after all. I think she might play this for whatever she can get.”
Roarke thought he might be right.
They walked across the lobby and a guard tripped the doors so they could exit. The fog was so thick for a moment Roarke couldn’t make out the parking lot in front of them. Rachel shivered beside him.
As they wound their way down the curved entry and the front steps into the dark of the parking lot, Mills suddenly said, “She was lying, but I can’t figure out about what.”
“Yeah. Not sure either,” Roarke said. He shot a glance toward Rachel. “We need to work on finding out where she’s from so we can have half a snowball’s chance to find her again.”
“And to start to help her work through everything she’s been through,” Rachel said dryly.
“Right,” Roarke said. “And that.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said.
Mills turned to her. “So you’ll let me know when she vamooses?”
“I’ll call you,” she said, shaking her head.
“Nice seein’ you,” the detective said to Roarke. “Happy Turkey Day.” And he ambled off into the fog.
Roarke turned to Rachel. “Where’s your car?”
“I’m all right—”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, and she fell silent. She nodded down a row and they walked together in the drifting fog between cars. His mind was a chaos of thoughts. They finally had a witness. For the first time someone had seen Cara do murder that wasn’t self-defense. Jade could put Cara away. And all this could be over.
Rachel glanced at him, as if she could feel the intensity of his inner monologue. But she was silent. She turned in to the next row of cars and stopped — at a Prius, of course. As she pulled keys from her coat pocket, he stepped close to her.
“Rachel.”
She turned and looked up at him in the dark.
“I need anything that can open Jade up, pinpoint where she’s from.”