Chapter Ninety

The dead girl was Felicia Garth. Prole ran through the backup of Wick’s records in her office and found her in less than a minute. Recidivist runaway, some street prostitution that was more likely rape than business, and she’d been given the choice of counseling with Wick or juvenile hall. If Furyk was right, then Wick had recruited her for something a little classier but no less disgusting than standing on a back street and giving blow jobs with her head banging against a steering wheel. She must’ve decided screwing the new clientele was a step down and gutting her therapist was the better in a series of obviously stupid choices she’d made over her entire sixteen years of life.

No proof, though, other than the second-hand account of a guy she couldn’t find and the prime suspect who was equally unavailable. Prole’s boss wouldn’t listen to theoretical bullshit. He’d want evidence and until then Merrill Wick was just a murderer on the run. Maybe a two-time offender now, with the girl dead. Prole needed something solid. She looked at the computer screen with Felicia’s face and basic information. Finding Merrill wasn’t going to solve this. She tapped her teeth with short, well-kept fingernails. She stared into the girl’s eyes. No answer there, just the echo of a life that ended for one of a thousand reasons that made Prole sick to her stomach. Wick was a scumbag, his customers worse. But setting Merrill up to take the fall had to come from someone else. Prole spun her chair around and looked out the window at the far end of the squad room. She couldn’t think of anything else that fit the facts, so she’d go with Furyk’s stupid paranoid theory. Cordoza was there, Cordoza shot the girl, and someone with pull in the department had orchestrated it – not to mention Furyk getting shot at. Either someone in the department was corrupt and running this or it was someone outside the department who had something on someone. A lot of somethings and someones in one theory. She absently pulled at a bra strap under her blouse that was rubbing against her shoulder. A younger detective sitting at his desk between her and the window was on the phone, tapping a pencil against the surface. He watched her and smiled, unrelated to the conversation he was having with some clown who was reporting a bum going through his trash. Prole thought about what threads to yank on to get some rhythm on the case. She pictured Merrill on the night of Wick’s murder. The furious daughter, the mother with the doe-eyed demeanor of a prescription drug fan, and the caricatured slick attorney.

Bingo. She let go of the strap beneath her shirt and it made a soft snapping sound. Her gaze lowered from the window and she caught the detective looking at her chest from across the room. “Tell your wife they’re real, douchebag,” and spun back to her desk. She fumbled around the pages of her notebook, flipping back to the night of the murder. The addresses were there, home and office. Time to have a little chat with that asshole Margolin.