Devoted in Death (In Death #41)(64)

“If they’ve got him, yeah. Jayla Campbell should have had another day. Maybe something went south there, and they’ve dumped her body where we haven’t found it yet. Or disposed of it another way. Or…”

“Still have her. Alive.”

“Doubtful, but I’d like to think so. And it may be this is a false alarm. The missing’s twenty-one – barely.” She scanned her PPC, and the run she’d already started on him.

“A couple juvie bumps, looks like. Illegals, nothing major. Currently working as assistant manager, days, at a music store – instruments, lessons. Got some income here from a band called Thrashers.”

She dug a little deeper. “Plays the guitar, sings. Looks like a handful of club dates – low-rent. Have to check it out, but —”

“He might have gotten lucky, might have gotten stoned and flopped with a friend.”

“Maybe. But it’s their territory. Single mother, bar waitress, no sibs.” Eve put her PPC away. “We’ll hear her out.”

The Mulligans lived in a triple-decker walk-up with solid security and a reasonably clean lobby.

No graffiti on the stairway leading up to three, Eve noticed, which said something about the tenants. She’d heard a mutter of a media report on two through one of the apartment doors.

Lousy soundproofing, and someone worked the early shift.

She’d lifted her fist to rap on the door, but it swung open first.

“I heard you coming. Cops?”

“Lieutenant Dallas.” Eve held up her badge. “And my civilian consultant. Ms. Mulligan?”

“Yeah, yeah, come in. Thanks for getting here so fast. The first guy I talked to barely listened to me.”

She wore a short black skirt that showed good legs and a low-cut white top that framed good breasts. Her work clothes, Eve thought, and had only changed out her shoes for house skids, tossed a bulky cardigan over the shirt.

She radiated worry.

“Reed wouldn’t not come home. I mean to say he’d let me know if he was staying out. That’s our deal. I do the same for him.”

“Why don’t we sit down, and you can run through it for me?”

“Oh, sorry.” She looked around as if she couldn’t find her place in her own apartment. “I can’t think I’m so worried. Have a seat. I’ve got coffee.”

“That’d be great,” Eve said, mostly to give the woman something to do, something that would settle her. “Just black for both of us.”

“Give me a sec.”

She moved to the rear of the room, to the jog that held a narrow, open kitchen.

She wore her flame-red hair scooped up in a bouncy tail that left her face – narrow, angular – unframed. Her run had put her at forty, but she could have lied her way to thirty-five, even with the pallor and the shadows under misty green eyes.

“I work five nights a week at The Speakeasy. It’s a bar just a couple blocks over. It’s a good place, not a dive. Classy, good customers. Roarke owns it – you know who I mean.”

Eve slanted Roarke a look. “Yeah.”

“So it’s a good place to work – not a lot of ass-grabbers come in. And it’s close to home – Roarke owns this place, too, so it’s nice. It’s secure, and it’s clean. Reed’s a good boy. Responsible. He’s got a solid day job. He wants to be a music star – that’s the dream. He plays in a band, and they’re starting to get some jobs. He’s good. I know I’m his mom, but he’s good. Anyway.”

She brought coffee on a tray with the grace and ease of a longtime waitress.

“I work four nights seven to midnight, and one night – like tonight – five to two. Reed said how he might go out late, jam with his band some. They’re working on a sound, compu-boosted. He’s got a knack with computers. So when I got home and he wasn’t here, I wasn’t worried. But when I checked the house ’link – it was blinking so I knew there were messages, I got worried.”

She picked up her own coffee, set it down again. “The first message was from Benj—that’s Reed’s best friend, and one of the band. He was a little steamed. Where are you, sort of thing, why aren’t you answering your ’link. You could listen.”

“That’d be good.”

Quickly, Jackie rose, flipped on the message replay.

Hey, man, wtf! We’re still waiting. Answer your pocket, dude. You said you’d be here in a few. It’s been a freaking hour. Tag me.

The machine flagged the message at 1:06 a.m.

And the next, again from Benj, twenty minutes later. A third from a female – ID’d as Roxie Parkingston, lead vocalist – twenty-two minutes after that.

Reed, you’re scaring me now. I swear if I don’t hear back from you in another half an hour, I’m tagging your mom. Don’t make me tag your mom.

“She did,” Jackie confirmed. “I was listening to the message, her last message, when she rang through. She said Reed had talked to Benj when he was on the way – walking to this basement unit Benj and a couple of the other boys share on Morton, just off Seventh. They’ve soundproofed it, so they practice there. It’s only ten minutes away on foot. At most.

“Something happened,” she insisted. “He wouldn’t do this. We have a deal. All either of us have to do is say we won’t be home – no explanations, no questions. But we have to let the other know. We always do. And he was on his way to Benj and the band. His dream.”