Page 121

“No argument.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and grabbed the door handle. “Come on. Let’s see what they have to say. If anything.”

Byrth cocked and locked the .45 from his hip holster, then pulled his Stetson from the backseat.

As they crossed the street, Payne wasn’t surprised that now all eyes were on them.

“Damn, this cold is miserable!” Byrth muttered.

Like Payne, he had left his coat unzipped. Suffering the wicked weather—like not wearing a seat belt in the event of a wreck—was the trade-off for faster access to their weapons.

—

Toward the front of the line, they walked past a pale-skinned girl with dark hair. She looked maybe eighteen and, though it took a little imagination to see it, had a pretty face. Across her white cheeks was a disturbing pinkish brown web of scarring that looked not quite healed. The lines cut from near her temples to her chin, and from ears to nose. She lowered her head and turned away.

After they passed, Payne looked at Byrth and answered the unasked question: “That’s called a ‘buck-fitty.’ She pissed off someone, probably by saying no to some gangbanger’s girlfriend who was trying to recruit her as fresh meat for her gangbanger buddies. Or maybe to pimp her out. Probably both.”

“She dissed them?” Byrth asked, but it was more a statement.

Payne nodded. “And to make the point you don’t disrespect the gang, they disfigured her. Held her down so the dissed gangbanger’s girlfriend could carve her up with a box cutter razor blade. Buck-fitty is a hundred fifty, the number of stitches they hope it will take to close the wounds.”

Byrth exhaled audibly. “I’ve heard of that happening in Houston’s Third Ward and in south Dallas, just not called that. Barbaric beyond belief . . .”

Payne and Byrth reached the two young women bringing up the end of the line. They reeked of marijuana. Expressionless, they looked numb from the cold, if not the pot, and seemed slow to focus when Payne held out his badge. He saw that under the blue hoodie the woman had a black eye, one that was almost faded.

“Evening, ladies,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Payne. Need to ask you a couple quick questions.”

They did not answer and made no eye contact.

No surprise, Payne thought. No one talks to cops.

But we have to go through the motions . . .

Byrth already had his cell phone out and was holding it up, showing them Elizabeth Cusick’s photograph on the Department of Transportation ID.

“Do you know this girl?” Byrth said, then added in Spanish, “¿Conoces a Elizabeth?”

They both glanced at it, then at each other, then shrugged and slowly shook their heads.

“How long have you been coming here?” Payne pursued.

They shrugged again. Then the line moved forward. They wordlessly turned and quickly shuffled across the snow to close the gap.

Payne looked at Byrth, and nodded toward the door.

“Let’s just work the line. We know where they’re going if we need them.”

Ten minutes later, they had reached the door. Not a single person acknowledged knowing the girl in the ID photograph.

“Let’s see how much worse our luck can get in here,” Payne said, and stepped through the doorway.

—

The house was warm but had a stale, musty odor.

Just inside the door, a folding table was set up, behind which an obese black woman sat in a folding chair. Her weight stressed the flimsy chair to the point it leaned left. She had her head down and was writing on a yellow legal pad. When she looked up she immediately looked right past Payne, then farther up, at the Hat. The white of her eyes grew impossibly large. Then she tried to recover from the initial surprise.

“What you two want?” she blurted, finally finding her voice as her big eyes darted between them.

“I’m guessing you’re in charge?” Payne said.