Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(67)

Li turned when she heard a door down the hall gently shut. She turned back to Bodie, smiling. “See?”

Bodie didn’t care about cops at his door. He didn’t care about his neighbors. He didn’t know half of them, and the other half wouldn’t piss on him if his pants were on fire. Snobbish, standoffish, rude, thinking everything was always about them. “What case? And how did my name just happen to come up?” He was no fool. He knew how cops worked. They lied. Like that girl’s brother who’d told his pals Bodie had tripped down the stairs when he was dragged and punched and kicked all the way down. They’d pretended not to see afterward when the bruises formed, when his lip swelled.

It looked to Bodie like the Black cop was weighing something in her head. The other stood beside her doing the same. Maybe the protracted silence, the no-give in their expressions, was a little intimidating, he decided. But he had every intention of standing his ground. He narrowed the crack in the door when he saw Detective Li glance past him. His space. His right to keep them out.

“We’re investigating the murders of three women. I’m sure you’ve heard or read about them,” Foster said. “We’d like to talk to you about where you were this week, specifically Sunday night, Tuesday night, and yesterday.” She gave him a smile, but it was a smile with edge. Foster put him in mind of a jungle cat—stealthy, calculating, still, until she pounced on her prey and tore it to shreds.

And he was the prey.

“If there’s anything else you’d like your neighbors to know, we’ll continue . . . here . . . in the hall, or we can talk inside or down at our place, where most folks don’t like to be. Up to you.”

“But we will have the conversation, Mr. Morgan,” Li added just as coldly.

He stuck his head out, looked up and down the hall. He could just imagine what the neighbors were thinking, that he was some crazed killer, some sicko maniac. It’s always the quiet ones, they’d say later down in the laundry room or on the elevator. He could just hear them . . . I always knew something was off with him. “Fine. I’ll come in tomorrow. Leave your card.”

Neither cop moved. It didn’t even look like they were breathing. He was being accommodating. What was their problem? The door across the hall opened, and a middle-aged white woman came out with a small laundry bag. The cops turned to watch as she locked her door, smiled, took in the scene, sneered at Bodie, and then headed for the elevator. Laura Avers. That was who the woman was, the snootiest, most high-handed busybody he’d ever met. News of this would be all over the building by lunchtime. If he could spot a cop a mile away, she likely could too. The detectives turned back to face him.

“Now,” Foster said. “Here or there.”

He took a second to weigh the options he’d been given. He didn’t want to open up his place, but he didn’t want to be hauled down to a police station either. He was done with being confined, locked in. Resigned, he chose the lesser of the two evils and stepped back and let them in. “You’ve got five minutes, and if there’s anything I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

Right inside the door their eyes got busy. That was what Bodie didn’t like about cops. They looked at everything, saw everything, then ran it through their cop brains and came up with something that always meant bad news for you. You were guilty or innocent, telling the truth or lying, the decisions made in a flash. They’d already arrested him, beaten him, put him through changes. He had a police file now that was his scarlet letter, a devil’s mark to match the one he was born with.

Five minutes. That was all he’d give them. Just five, and then his neighbors, the ones who shunned him and avoided him for no good reason, could go to hell and back.

The Black cop, Foster, spoke first, but as her lips moved, Bodie half hearing her, he worried about what she’d learned about him in just the short time she’d been here. “Where were you Sunday night?” she asked. “Late. Around eleven or twelve?”

Bodie moved to act as buffer between them and his things. If they peered into the kitchen, they wouldn’t see much. Bodie didn’t require much. He never filled the space he occupied. Unlike Amelia, he didn’t have the patience for showy things like art and cars. “Here.”

“Just out of . . . confinement,” Li said, “and you stayed in?”

His heart raced, his mind too. They knew about Westhaven. How? “Yes. And what’s that got to do with anything?”

“What did you do . . . ?” Foster padded around the room. “Here.”

“I had dinner, watched some television. I was beat and wanted to sleep in my own bed.” Despite the roiling going inside him, he was surprised by how calm he sounded. He hadn’t cared about the bed. Bodie reasoned he could take a torch to the whole apartment and not mourn a single item lost. He’d walked the night away, free, but he wasn’t about to tell them that.

“Can anyone confirm that’s what you did?” Foster asked.

“It’s just me here, as you can see.”

“What about Tuesday or yesterday? Still home alone?” Li asked.

He’d been out walking both nights, and then he’d gone to a bar. Also, not their business. His hands gripped the back of his couch, his eyes on the cops. He was mindful of the time he’d given them. “Yes. That’s not a crime. Why are you here?”