Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(22)

“You memorizing his face?” Lonergan asked.

“He didn’t ask how she was killed.” She knew from experience that the how was important. In fact, survivors—family, friends, even dumped exes—almost always asked how before they asked when, where, why, and who.

Lonergan turned to stare at Rimmer. “And he’s got a dog of an alibi.”

They wove through the crowd toward the door. “You ever do weed, Foster?” he asked when they’d pushed out onto the sidewalk.

Was he joking? She zipped up her jacket. “No.”

They headed for the car parked at the curb. “Don’t you want to know if I ever did?” he asked.

She quickened her step. Lonergan sighed.

“I’ll take that as a no.”





CHAPTER 10


Amelia slid out of an Uber at the horseshoe at Pioneer Court and stood on the busy plaza, watching a crowd of onlookers leaning over the bridge railing, cameras out, everyone in a sideshow kind of humor. The Riverwalk had them enthralled. It also warranted the attention of three news helicopters that hovered overhead, the steady whomp-whomp of their rotor blades loud enough to drown out the heavy traffic along Michigan Avenue. There were police officers on the bridge trying to keep people moving, but many looked like they were fine staying put, at least long enough to capture the oddity below for Facebook or Twitter or Insta.

Flipping her hood up, she took up a spot along the railing and peered down at the sagging police tape and the cops and techs wrapping up below. She glanced over at the glass-encased Apple Store, but no one there appeared to care what was going on outside.

“It’s something, huh?” the man next to her asked. “As though Mondays couldn’t suck enough.”

Amelia looked him over. The man was dressed in a tan maintenance shirt and dark pants, his name stitched into a patch above his left chest pocket. Andy. “What happened?”

He held up his cell phone. “Somebody got killed down there this morning. Drowned, I think. Somebody else got taken to the ER. Made the midday news. They’ve been down there ever since, but it looks like they’re just now packing up the last of it. I been following it all day. They moved the body out already. I got a shot of that on my lunch hour.” He swiped through his phone and held up the image of a body bag on a stretcher being towed up the stone steps toward a waiting cop van. “They were looking for something in the water too. I got some good snaps of the police divers.” Andy glanced up at the choppers. “No idea what they’re doing up there still. Not much to see now.”

An Asian woman in a short car coat, a briefcase in her hand, had been following the conversation “The guy over there said it was an overdose. Two women. One didn’t make it; the other was barely breathing when they found her.” She shook her head, her expression displaying a hint of disapproval. “Sounds like kids.”

“Whichever it is,” Andy said, “I guess we won’t know for a while. They always notify the families first. How’d you like to get that call, huh? I know I wouldn’t.”

Amelia watched the cops below. “Two women. That’s terrible.”

The man moved away from the railing and turned south. “It ain’t good for somebody, that’s for sure.” He walked away, his curiosity satisfied. “I’m going home to watch the rest of it in high def.”

The woman gave the scene a final look as well before walking off with a shake of the head. “I’ve seen enough. What people do to themselves,” she muttered in a stage whisper.

Amelia stood on the bridge with the others who were choosing to hang in until there was nothing else to see. A drowning or an overdose. It was interesting to see how a lack of definitive information could quickly lead to misinformation. But she was sure the divers weren’t here for an overdose.

Amelia’s body hummed as though she’d been infused by a low electric charge. The sound of the helicopters, the churning of the gray water below them, the chatty passersby, the cars and cabs and buses honking behind her, the police. What a mess. Where was Bodie? Though she knew this situation had nothing to do with him, he was her first thought whenever anything unusual or tragic happened. It was a worry, an automatic reflex, like throwing an arm out to protect a child when the car lurched to a sudden stop or gripping your bag in a panic when you thought you’d lost your cell phone. She’d figured out that fear and the anger that grew out of it were what caused him so much trouble. But Morgans didn’t talk of such things.

When the nearest chopper slipped away, prepared to take another pass, Amelia plucked her cell phone from her pocket and punched in Bodie’s number, just to check, plugging a finger in the opposite ear to block out everything else. She breathed a sigh of relief when he picked up.

“Hey, what’s up?” He sounded chipper, relaxed.

Amelia swiped a look at the chopper as it veered off over the lake. “Why’s something have to be up?”

“You’re calling to check on me, Am. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. Look, I’m good. Okay?”

He’d said the same before. Bodie was always good, always okay, until he wasn’t. He’d been okay, good, when he’d busted out the windows in his high school geometry class when the teacher had berated him for not having done his homework. He’d been okay, good, when he’d dropped out of college but slashed every tire in the employee parking lot on his way off campus. And he’d been okay, good, when he’d followed that woman home from the bar and gotten arrested. Bodie’s okay, good was untrustworthy, and no one knew that better than she did.