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"Ooh."
When I got there, I was met by a uniformed officer who let me in and told me that the scene had been tampered with once already.
"By who?" I asked.
"Seems she had a roommate." The cop said. "Chick named Felicia Hardy. She got in, took her stuff, and disappeared."
"Any idea where she went?"
"Nope. She just vanished. She used to be a cop. Quit the force a few months back to go to school full time."
"Any relatives?"
"What do I look like, huh? Check with personnel."
"Well, you knew all that other stuff." He unlocked the door and I followed him in.
"Yeah, well, Kirk told me all that stuff and said to help you anyway I can. So I figured he wanted you to know."
Kirk was helping himself by helping me. Nevertheless, I didn’t think he’d let me have a look at an ex-cops file. I looked around the apartment. As promised, most of the roommates stuff was gone. The room looked like it had been hit by a very focused hurricane. Once I had my gloves on, I rambled through it, looking, but really not expecting to find anything. If she was a cop, she wouldn’t leave any clues to where she was goin’. There wasn’t so much as a piece of paper. I left the room and closed the door behind me.
Everything else in the apartment was untouched. I looked in the kitchen, there were signs of a struggle. Then I checked the spot where her body was found. "Do you know if they found any drug paraphernalia?" The officer checked the inventory sheet. "I don’t see any." I went in Pamela’s room and sat down on the bed. I was sure now that the pictures and the video hadn’t been taken here.
Sitting on the dresser was a picture of Pamela and a woman I’d never seen before. She was pretty, very pretty. It was taken in the living room. Maybe it was Felicia Hardy, maybe not. Since I was collecting pictures, I took the picture out of its frame and put it in my shirt. I would give it back to Kirk if he let me see her file. After one last turn around the apartment, I thanked the cop and left. I figured I’d check out LaShawn’s apartment.
"Nick! Nick Simmons!"
I didn’t recognize the voice. I turned around. The mailman was walking quickly toward me. "Nick Simmons, how you doin’, man?" he grabbed my hand and shook it. It was obvious that he knew me, but I had no idea who this man was.
"I’m okay."
"You don’t remember me, do you?"
"I sure don’t," I said reluctantly.
"It’s me, Reggie."
"Little Reggie McCray."
"Yeah."
"I sure didn’t recognize you." Little Reggie McCray was now about six three and all muscle. "And look at you, Reggie. How you been?"
"Been doin’ good, Nick. What about you? You look good, prosperous, you know."
"Thanks, man. I been doin’ all right, Reggie." Seeing Reggie took me back to the old days coming up on the block. "You get around the way much? How’s your mother?"
"She’s fine,
Nick. Still living in the same house. Me, my wife and my son live upstairs."
"How’s that lyin’ ass brother of yours?"
"Frankie’s dead."
"I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t know."
"Frankie got shot when Black took the neighborhood to war."