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“Give me twenty-four hours to get going.”

“If you find out something worth sharing before that, call. Anytime. Day or night.”

“One more thing.” Ordinarily she shies from anything personal, especially if it might seem confrontational, but this morning she doesn’t hesitate. She’s got hold of this now, like a snarled knot she wants to unpick. “Tell me about the argument. The one that got heated.”

Penny once more folds her arms over her chest, more tightly this time. Holly knows defensive body language from plenty of personal experience. “It was nothing. A tempest in a teapot.”

Holly waits.

“We argue from time to time, big deal. What mother and daughter don’t?”

Holly waits.

“Well,” Penny says at last, “this one was a little more serious, maybe. She slammed the door on the way out. She’s a goodnatured girl and that was out of character. We had some… some warm discussions about Tom, but she never slammed out of the house. And I swore at her. Called her a stubborn bitch. God, I wish I could take that back. Just say, ‘Okay, Bon, let’s forget about it.’ But you never know, do you?”

“What was it about?”

“There was an excellent position at NorBank. Records and inventory. Collating. Front office, working from home guaranteed, how great does that sound with everything that’s going on? I was trying to get her to apply for it, she’s excellent with numbers and a real people person, but she wouldn’t. I told her about the substantial pay jump she’d get, and the benefits, and the good hours. Nothing got through to her. She could be stubborn.”

Look who’s talking, Holly thinks, remembering fights she had with her own mother, especially once she started working with Bill Hodges. There had been some doozies after she and Bill had almost gotten killed while chasing after a doctor who had been possessed—there was really no other way to put it—by Brady Hartsfield.

“I told her if she worked at the bank she could buy some decent clothes for a change and stop dressing like a hippie. She laughed at me. That’s when I called her a bitch.”

“Any other arguments? Sore spots?”

“No. None.” Holly knows she’s lying, and not just to the private detective she’s just hired.

Holly types one more note, then gets up and puts on her mask.

“What will you do first?”

“Call Izzy Jaynes. I think she’ll talk to me. She and I go back quite a few years.”

And even before Brown, the pickup truck man, she wants to talk to Lakeisha Stone. Because if Lakeisha and Bonnie were besties—even closies—Lakeisha will have a better fix on how the mother and daughter got along. Door-slamming argument or not, Holly doesn’t want to start this by equating her own mother and Bonnie’s too closely.

You are not the case, Bill told her once. Never make the mistake of thinking you are. It never helps and usually makes things worse.

November 22–25, 2018

1

Em doesn’t like this one.

Not that she liked Cary Dressler, and she loathed Castro, the spic maricon. This girl, though, this Ellen Craslow, is different from either of them. Because she’s female? Em doesn’t believe it.

She descends the stairs to the basement, carrying the tray in front of her. On it is a pound and a half of liver, uncooked and swimming in its own juices. Price at Kroger: $3.22. Meat is so expensive now, and the last piece was wasted. She came down and found it crawling with maggots and flies. How they got into this sealed room, and so quickly, is beyond her. Even the crack at the foot of the door leading to the kitchen has been sealed.

The girl is standing at the bars of the cell. She’s tall, with skin the color of cocoa. Her hair is neat and short and dark. From the foot of the stairs Em could almost believe it’s a bathing cap. When she comes closer, she can see that Ellen’s lips are cracked and sore-looking in places. But she doesn’t cry or beg. She’s done neither. So far, at least.

Em takes the plate of liver from the tray and places it on the concrete. She drops to one knee to do this rather than bending. Her sciatica is bad, but bad she can take. When it screams though, when it makes every step agony… that is a different matter. She takes the broom and pushes the plate toward the cell. The red liquid sloshes. And as she has done before, Ellen Craslow blocks the pass-through with the side of her foot.

“I’ve told you, I’m a vegan. You don’t seem to listen.”

Em feels an urge to poke her with the broom handle and quells it. Not just because the girl might catch hold of it, either. She must not show emotion. Like Castro and Dressler, this is a caged animal. Livestock. Poking livestock is childish. Being angry with it is childish. What you do with an animal is train it.

Ellen refused the protein shake, too. She drank both of the small bottles of water that were in the cage when she woke up, the first all at once. She made the second one last, but both are gone now. From the pocket of her apron, Em takes another. “When you eat your meat, Ellen, you can have this. Your body doesn’t care that you’re a vegan. It needs to eat.” She holds the bottle out, displaying it. “And it needs to drink.”

Ellen says nothing, only stands looking at Em with her hands loosely gripping the bars and her foot blocking the pass-through. That gaze is unnerving. Em doesn’t want to feel unnerved, but tells herself that she’d feel the same way if she were at the zoo and locked eyes with a tiger.