“You just about done in here?”
Trying to see through the blur of tears, she tossed his shoes into the closet and leaned down to straighten the bedding so he wouldn’t see her eyes. “Almost.”
“I’ve decided to move you in here with me.” He said it as if she should be happy about it. She wouldn’t have minded so much if she thought Marcie was really at home with Gloria. But Marcie wasn’t. She was dead, and Latisha knew that if she didn’t do something to save herself, she’d be next.
Nineteen
Jane perched on the couch beside Gloria. With only one bedroom, one bathroom and a tiny kitchen and living room, the apartment was cramped. Bookshelves made of planks and cinder block, spray-painted light blue, took up one whole wall. Each piece of tattered furniture bumped up against another, and cheap knickknacks cluttered most horizontal surfaces. But overall it was more of an organized mess than a disorganized one.
The smell of grilled onions permeated the apartment. After the blood she’d seen in Sebastian’s backseat, the thought of food made Jane nauseous. But it was easier to focus on the sights and scents surrounding her than on Gloria, who was crying in her embrace. It had been hard enough to tell her that Marcie was dead, but it was even worse to say that her body had been found in Sebastian’s car and her own parking lot. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to make her blame Jane, but she was still brokenhearted.
“I was afraid of this,” she cried. “I been livin’ in fear for weeks. But I never really believed it… Why Marcie? Why my sister?”
Jane continued to pat and rub her broad back. She had no answers. She only knew that Gloria’s sisters had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and, despite her best efforts and those of the police, Marcie was dead.
She prayed that Latisha wouldn’t meet the same fate but couldn’t help wondering if she already had.
Regardless of what happened in the future, she’d see Malcolm Turner behind bars if she had to dedicate the rest of her life to it. For Marcie. For Latisha. For Gloria. For Sebastian, too. But also for herself. Finding Malcolm had become a way to banish Oliver’s ghost. She finally had the chance to defeat a man who was just as bad as the one who’d nearly killed her. She’d strike back.
“I’m so sorry.” Even as she said it, she realized that phrase was inadequate, but she had nothing better to offer. David was still processing the crime scene. He’d be arriving shortly, but they’d talked and decided it might be easier on Gloria if Jane visited ahead of him-to break the news. Sebastian was giving the police a statement. Since Marcie’s body had been found in his rental car, they had some questions for him.
“I can’t live without her,” Gloria wailed. “I can’t do it.”
Using her free hand, Jane wiped the tears sliding down her own cheeks. “You can, and you will,” she said. “I’ll help you.”
“And what about Latisha? She probably dead, too.”
Jane couldn’t promise otherwise. While she was searching for words that might comfort Gloria without giving false hope, the door swung open so hard it banged against the inside wall. Even Gloria jumped. She calmed the minute she realized it was Luther, but Jane grew that much more uneasy.
“What do ya know.” A gust of wind whipped into the apartment along with him. “It’s the charity worker who’s too good to return my calls.”
Jane had meant to call him. She’d told Jonathan she would. But, reluctant to deal with the force of his personality, she’d put it off. “The messages you left for me didn’t deserve a response,” she said. She couldn’t let him know he frightened her. That would only encourage him to continue behaving the way he was.
“Because I’m not some white dude in a suit? Because I don’t have the money to make a donation to the cause?”
Letting her arm slide away from Gloria, Jane stood. “Because your messages were antagonistic and abusive.”
“My messages were abusive?” he scoffed with a laugh. “Bitch, you don’t know what the word means until you’ve lived in my world.”
“Luther, stop.” If Gloria was intimidated by Latisha’s father, she didn’t show it. But, at the moment, she probably didn’t care a whole lot about her own welfare. She sounded fatalistic and just plain exhausted. “She ain’t the problem. Marcie’s dead. You hear what I’m sayin’? Dead. And you come in here cussin’ at the one person tryin’ to help us. What’s the matter with you?”
Luther’s bloodshot eyes had widened at the word dead. Jane was pretty sure his brain hadn’t registered much beyond that. “What’d you say?”
“Marcie’s dead,” she repeated numbly. “They found her body this mornin’.”
His nostrils flared. “What about Latisha?”
“She probably dead, too.” Gloria began to rock back and forth. “They both gone. Oh, God! How could this happen?”
The news seemed to sap his strength as well as his anger. Slumping onto a kitchen chair that looked too small to hold him, he bowed his head. “It’s a bad cop,” he said to the floor. “I know it is. That’s what I been tryin’ to tell ya. It’s a bad cop who done it.”
Because of Luther’s arrival, Jane had been hoping to make a quick exit. She’d been planning to grab her purse and her briefcase and go, but this gave her pause. She’d heard about Malcolm Turner’s background, guessed that he might’ve used a cop light or something similar to pull the girls over, but she hadn’t shared that information with Gloria, so Gloria couldn’t have passed it along to Luther. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Word on the street.”
“Which comes from where exactly?”
“Some of the hos on Stockton Boulevard.”
“Prostitutes?”
He didn’t answer.
“They’re familiar with Wesley Boss?” she persisted. “They’ve seen him?”
“A man’s been comin’ ’round the past few months, flashin’ a badge. Won’t give a full name but says they can call him Officer Boss. Likes to rough ’em up a bit, make a few threats, but if they do him for free, he leaves ’ em alone. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Marcie and Latisha stopped because they thought they were gettin’ pulled over.”
She should’ve provided Luther with a photograph. But she’d avoided him rather than including him. “Has anyone described to you what this man looks like?”