Page 112 of Long Way Down

So far, the afternoon had yielded a whole bunch of nothing. She and Contreras had worked through lunch on the ground, following up with Lynn’s friends and the employees of the shops and cafes she attended most frequently. Everyone was cooperative, but no one knew anything.

Now, back in their conference room at the precinct, the web on the board was expanding, rather unhelpfully. Contreras wanted them to have runs at the three boys in the class, plus Professor Dubois tonight when they met Lana ahead of class.

Otherwise, they were no closer. The lab results hadn’t come in on the blood found at Dana’s apartment, and now there was the added – secret – complication of an unacknowledged vic going missing.

Poor April. Anything might have happened to her. Hopefully, she’d gotten the hell out of Dodge. But Melissa had been in this business too long to be optimistic. More than likely, April had been killed. Now it was a matter of waiting for the body to turn up.

In an impulsive need to find something out, she opened her contact list and dialed Cole Morris before she could think better of it.

He answered after the second ring, prompt as usual, skepticism in his voice when he said, “Detective Morris speaking.”

She’d forgotten how deep his voice was. Too deep, really, when compared directly to Pongo’s a minute before, that smoke-edged, familiar tenor. By contrast, Cole sounded like someone impersonating a superhero addressing the public on a stage kitted out in patriotic bunting.

And then it hit her, like a shove, that if he was answering the phone this way, impersonally, then he didn’t know it was her. Didn’t have her cell number programmed into his phone any longer. It didn’t sting as much as it once would have, but it didn’t feel good either.

“Cole,” she greeted, collecting herself. “It’s Melissa. Melissa Dixon,” she added, for fear that he’d lost her name along with her number.

“Oh. Melissa, of course,” he said, in that deep, deep, unwarm, impersonal voice that she currently couldn’t believe she’d ever found sexy.

She seriously needed to sit down with a therapist at some point and discuss her wildly fluctuating taste in men.

“How are you doing over there in Sex Crimes?” he asked without a shred of interest.

“Peachy. Hey, I’ve got a request,” she said, bulling straight to the point. Now that her insides didn’t heat and quiver at the mere sound of him, she didn’t want to waste time dicking around on the phone. “I’m wondering if any DBs have shown up within the past twenty-four hours that are jane does. This would be a working girl. Tall, athletic build. Dark hair. She’d have pretty gnarly scabbed-over wounds on her back. Words.”

A beat passed. She heard the rustling of paper, and a rustle of fabric that might have been the too-tight suit jacket he wore to show off his arms. “Not that I recall, no. We’ve had a few dead hookers, but none with scarring on their backs.”

A few dead hookers.The callousness of it shocked her. She herself could be callous – it was a requirement of the job, that level of detachment – but in this instance, with this case, with his voice already grating against her like a tumble of ugly, dark rocks, his dismissive, dehumanizing language caused her to pull the phone from her ear. She almost hung up.

Instead, she took a deep breath and said, “Okay, well, I’ve had a CI – a potential CI – on a current case go missing. If you come across anyone matching her description, can you give me a call? She goes by April. Stage name April Showers.”

He snorted. “That’s clever.”

“It is, I think,” she said, and the silence that followed rang with a new kind of tension that had never existed between them before. All the previous tensions, she now realized, had been one-sided on her behalf. She’d been admiring, and bashful, and reverent…and he’d deleted her number the moment they both moved on to other units.

Asshat.

“Sure,” he drawled, finally. “I’ll give you a call.”

“Thanks.” She hung up with a shudder, and left the room cured of whatever unnecessary feelings she’d once held for Detective Cole Morris.

Her face must have reflected the fact, because when she reentered the conference room, Contreras glanced up at her, and then frowned. “Okay?”

In so many ways, no, but in one, yes. She nodded. Glanced at the board that was a mess of photos and pins and timelines; at the table spread with printed-out phone logs, and grainy security camera snapshots. She pulled her jacket off the back of the chair where she’d left it and said, “Let’s go get Lana.”

Twenty-Three

When Melissa called yesterday and asked Lana if they could talk again, Lana had informed her that she would be attending class tonight. Since they needed to head back to the school anyway, Melissa had offered her a ride, so they could kill two birds with one stone.

Now, the contrast between the two girls, and the ways they were handling the fallout of their attacks, became stark.

In the sanctuary of her bedroom, tidied and set back to rights, Lynn had sat swathed in comfortable clothes, face scrubbed-bare, bruises on full display. Like her attack had stopped time; she had been sitting with it, quietly seething.

Lana was seething, too, Melissa could tell after one glance at her face in the rearview mirror after she’d slid into the back of the unmarked, but her anger had been dulled by an up-by-the-bootstraps resignation. She wore makeup, rather a lot of it, and though a few shadows showed through, she’d done a good job disguising the fact that she’d been beat unconscious a week ago. She’d used ice, or cucumbers, or something – Melissa wasn’t up to speed on the combined magic and artistry that was proper cosmetic application – to bring down the swelling around her eyes. Her busted lip had been camouflaged with dark lipstick.

“Hey,” Melissa said.

The door shut with a decisive thump. “Hey.”