Misty. Now there's a name, Jed thought as he ambled up the stairs to the second floor. In his mind, he'd pegged Ricky's girlfriend as a big-boobed bimbette, with frosted hair and a Texas accent. Probably worked as an exotic dancer. As he rapped on the hollow door, he held his badge up next to his chin, where it would be visible through the peephole. He kept his right hand free, just in case, pressing his elbow against his side to double-check on the Glock. In this complex, you could never be too careful.
He was about to knock a second time when he heard the knob turn and the door was pulled open, releasing a pulse of refrigerated air into the thick heat of the day.
Jed's assumptions couldn't have been further off the mark. The woman he faced looked no more exotic than a grieving housewife. She was young, maybe twenty-five, neatly dressed in a cheap shorts set. She wore her shoulder-length brown hair tied back in a tight ponytail, which she had clipped up to the back of her head. From a distance, she would have been attractive, but up close, her only visible feature was a deep red scar that traversed the bridge of her nose and continued under her left eye, nearly to her ear. The lines of the wound were too deliberate to be anything but an intentional act of violence. Jed fought the urge to look away, concentrating intently on her eyes. She had been crying.
"Are you Misty?" Jed asked.
"Mitsy," the woman corrected, shifting her eyes from Jed's face to his badge and then back again. "About time you got here."
"Beg pardon?"
"I said it's about time you got here. I had to hear about Ricky on television. Y'all could've at least shown the courtesy of telling me in person." Her voice sounded strained. She stepped back and to the side, inviting Jed to enter.
As he crossed the threshold, Jed broke eye contact and fumbled for his notebook. "Well, fact is, ma'am, we didn't know that Mr. Harris had a… well, significant other."
Mitsy kind of snorted and shook her head as she retreated deeper into the apartment. "Jesus. You guys are something else. Significant other. You make it sound so romantic?' She disappeared around the corner into the kitchen.
"I need you to stay out here, please," Jed called. He fought the urge to draw down.
Mitsy came back around the corner with a half-empty Budweiser longneck. "Relax, officer, I don't own a gun." She slumped heavily into the sofa, sending a puff of cushion stuffing into the air, and gestured to a sagging La-Z-Boy. "Take a load off," she said.
"No thanks, I'd rather stand," Jed replied. The apartment was decorated in early yard sale, but it was clean enough, and Jed saw none of the accumulated dust and food trash he had come to associate with Brookfield Gardens. "Are you here alone?"
Mitsy nodded pensively. "I am now," she said, all but finishing her beer in one extended guzzle. A scattered pile of empties lay on the floor near the shipping crate that served as an end table. "So, are you gonna catch that little son of a bitch or not?"
"And who would that be, ma'am?"
Mitsy looked at Jed, then shook her head in disgust. "Who would that be, ma'am," she mocked. "Who the hell do you think? How many little son of a bitches are you looking for?"
"Look, Ms., uh… "
"Cahill. Mitsy Cahill."
"Ms. Cahill, look. I know this isn't pleasant, but do you think. .. "
"Sit down, goddammit!" Mitsy shouted, her eyes wet. "Just sit down and talk to me, will you?" Tears splashed down her cheeks as she blinked, and she wiped them with her fingertips in a futile effort to preserve her makeup. She took a deep breath and composed herself, then softened her expression as she again motioned to the chair. "Please," she said, much more quietly. "It's been a very lonely, very difficult day. I'm thrilled to have the company. Please."
Jed shifted his stance uncomfortably, checked his watch, then sat down in the worn-out La-Z-Boy. It was like sitting on the edge of a well.
"So," Mitsy declared, using the word as a sentence, an icebreaker. She forced a smile. "Nobody knows about Ricky and me, huh? I guess that means he didn't talk about me very much to his friends." The thought seemed to sadden her.
Jed shook his head. "No, ma'am, I guess not. At least not to the people we spoke with."
She sighed and dabbed her eyes again. "He thought I was too ugly to show off to his friends. He never said it in so many words, but I always knew he was thinking it."
Jed suddenly felt obligated to contradict her, to say she wasn't ugly at all, but he sensed that Mitsy would know better. He just let the words hang in the air for a while as she seemed to travel in her mind to a faraway place. After ten seconds or so, he couldn't take it anymore.
"Were you and Mr. Harris married?" he asked.
The question seemed to bring her back into the world. She shook her head and looked down. "No," she said softly. "We talked about it a few times, but the time was never right. First we were waiting for him to have a better job, then after I got laid off, we were waiting for me just to have a job. When I finally found work, we needed to save some money. Recently, it's been Ricky's drinking. I was waiting for him to stop. All in all, we've been talking for nearly three years now. Never meant to be, I guess."
Mitsy paused for a moment, looking like she might crumble. Then she smiled again-a tired, humorless smile that seemed to be an extension of her tears. "Like my sister told me, Ricky's a man, and he was willing to take me in. With my face…" Her voice trailed off. "All things considered, he was a good man."
Of the two of them there in the room, Jed wasn't at all sure who was less convinced by her conclusion. "Did Ricky have anything to do with.." He aborted the question. There was no way to phrase it that would not seem brutish.
Mitsy let him off the hook. "My face? Oh, heavens, no. This was a gift from a boyfriend I dumped back in high school. Said he'd make me so ugly nobody else would ever want me." She shrugged, as though she had told the story enough that it didn't bother her anymore. "It worked, too. Until Ricky. And now I find out that he thought… Well, it's been a very, very long day."
Jed cleared his throat. "Well, Ms. Cahill…"
"Please," she interrupted. "Call me Mitsy."
Jed smiled. "Okay, Mitsy. I don't mean to pry at such a difficult time, but I do need to ask you a few questions."
"About Ricky?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"He's not just an innocent victim, is he?"
The directness of the question caught Jed off guard, yanking his eyes from his notebook. "Actually, that's what we're trying to find out."
The room fell silent as Mitsy struggled with her thoughts. "He hated that place," she said finally. "He hated everything about it." "The JDC?"
"Ricky called it the jungle. He always talked about quitting, but he never did. Just when he'd reach the breaking point, they'd come through with another cost of living increase, and he'd decide to stay. It was awful." She stopped talking, as though she had run out of steam.
"Did Ricky ever mention Nathan Bailey to you?" Jed asked.
Tears flooded Mitsy's eyes again as she leaned forward in her seat. "You know, I've asked myself that question a thousand times today. I heard about what that boy said on the radio, and I've driven myself crazy trying to remember the name, but it's just not there. I'm sorry?'
"You know, then, that Nathan said some uncomplimentary things about Mr. Harris. What do you think about that?"
Mitsy stewed for a long time before answering. She clearly had something to say, but she seemed unwilling to say it out loud. Jed just sat patiently, giving her all the time she needed.
When she finally spoke, she addressed Jed's shoes. "I wish I could tell you that killing one of those little bastards would be totally out of character for Ricky, but I can't. He hated them all so much. They'd never show him the respect he deserved. If somebody pushed him hard enough, well, anything could happen?' She faded away again, then stood up abruptly, startling Jed. "I need another beer. Do you want one?"