“It was in the news,” she said.
“How well did you know her?”
“Oh, I didn’t, not really.”
So much for the encouragement. “Did you ever speak with her? Can you tell me the last time you saw her?”
“I don’t think I ever talked to her. I’m friends with Betty Arcuna, who owns the house. I knew her when she lived in the neighborhood. I kept an eye on the house for her, you know, as much as I could.”
“Then did you ever see any suspicious activity around the house? Any strangers, anyone who looked like they didn’t belong?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “No, not really, not that I remember.”
A sound, like something heavy falling from a shelf, crashed from the back of the house. The woman just sighed.
“How many kids do you have?” Hardin asked.
“Five,” she said, looking even more tired.
Hardin saw movement over the mother’s shoulder. The woman looked. Behind her, leaning against the wall like she was trying to hide behind it, was a girl—a young woman, rather. Sixteen or seventeen. Wide-eyed, pretty. Give her another couple of years to fill out the curves and she’d be beautiful.
“This is my oldest,” the woman said.
“You mind if I ask her a few questions?”
The young woman shook her head no, but her mother stepped aside. Hardin expected her to flee to the back of the house, but she didn’t.
“Hi,” Hardin said, trying to sound friendly without sounding condescending. “I wondered if you could tell me anything about Ms. Manuel.”
“I don’t know anything about her,” she said. “She didn’t like kids messing in her yard. We all stayed away.”
“Can you remember the last time you saw her?”
She shrugged. “A few days ago maybe.”
“You know anyone who had it in for her? Maybe said anything bad about her or threatened her? Sounds like the kids around here didn’t like her much.”
“No, nothing like that,” she said.
Hardin wasn’t going to get anything out of her, though the girl looked scared. Maybe she was just scared of whatever had killed Manuel. The mother gave Hardin a sympathetic look and shrugged, much like her daughter had.
Hardin got the names—Julia Martinal and her daughter Teresa. She gave them a card. “If you think of anything, let me know.”
Two houses down was an older, angry white guy.
“It’s about time you got here and did something about those Mexicans,” he said when Hardin showed him her badge.
“I’m sorry?” Hardin said, playing dumb, seeing how far the guy would carry this.
“Those Mexican gang wars, they got no place here. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
She narrowed her gaze. “Have you seen any Mexican gangs in the area? Any unusual activity, anything you think is suspicious? Drive-bys, strange people loitering?”
“Well, I don’t get up in other people’s business. I can’t say that I saw anything. But that Mexican broad was killed, right? What else could have happened?”
“What’s your name, sir?” Hardin said.
He hesitated, lips drawing tight, as if he was actually considering arguing with her or refusing to tell. “Smith,” he said finally. “John Smith.”
“Mr. Smith, did you ever see anyone at Dora Manuel’s house? Anyone you’d be able to pick out of a line up?”
He still looked like he’d eaten something sour. “Well, no, not like that. I’m not a spy or a snitch or anything.”
She nodded comfortingly. “I’m sure. Oh, and Mr. Smith? Dora Manuel was Filipina, not Mexican.”
She gave him her card, as she had with the others, and asked him to call her. Out of all the people she’d left cards with today, she bet Smith would be the one to call. And he’d have nothing useful for her.
She didn’t get much out of any of the interviews.
“I’m sorry, I never even knew what her name was.”
“She kept to herself, I didn’t really know her.”
“She wasn’t that friendly.”
“I don’t think I was surprised to hear that she’d died.”
In the end, rather than having any solid leads on what had killed her, Hardin walked away with an image of a lonely, maybe even ostracized woman with no friends, no connections, and no grief lost at her passing. People with that profile were usually pegged as the killers, not the victims.
She sat in her car for a long time, letting her mind drift, wondering which lead she’d missed and what connection she’d have to make to solve this thing. The murder wasn’t random. In fact, it must have been carefully planned, considering the equipment involved. So the body had been moved, maybe. There still ought to be evidence of that at the crime scene—tire tracks, footprints, blood. Maybe the techs had come up with something while she was out here dithering.
The sun was setting, sparse streetlights coming on, their orange glow not doing much to illuminate past the trees. Not a lot of activity went on. A few lights on in a few windows. No cars moving.
She stepped out of the car and started walking.
Instead of going straight through the gate to the backyard, she went around the house and along the fence to the alley behind the houses, a narrow path mostly haunted by stray cats. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye; paused and looked, caught sight of small legs and a tail. She flushed and her heart sped up, in spite of herself. She knew it was just a cat. But her hindbrain thought of the other creatures with fur she’d seen in back alleys. The monsters.
She came into Manuel’s yard through a back gate. The shed loomed before her, seeming to expand in size. She shook the image away. The only thing sinister about the shed was her knowledge of what had been found there. Other houses had back porch lights on. She could hear TVs playing. Not at Manuel’s house. The lights were dark, the whole property still, as if the rest of the street had vanished, and the site existed in a bubble. Hardin’s breathing suddenly seemed loud.
She couldn’t see much of anything in the dark. No footprints, not a stray thread of cloth. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find.
One thing she vowed she’d never do was call in a psychic to work a case. But standing in the backyard of Manuel’s residence at night, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d missed something simply because it wasn’t visible to the mundane eye. Could a psychic stand here and see some kind of magical aura? Maybe follow a magical trail to the person who’d committed the crime?
The real problem was—how would she know she was hiring an actual psychic? Hardin was ready to believe just about anything, but that wouldn’t help her figure out what had happened here.
The next day, she made a phone call. She had at least one more resource to try.
Hardin came to the supernatural world as a complete neophyte, and she had to look for advice wherever she could, no matter how odd the source, or how distasteful. Friendly werewolves, for example. Or convicted felons.
Cormac Bennett styled himself a bounty hunter specializing in the supernatural. He freely admitted he was a killer, though he claimed to only kill monsters—werewolves, vampires, and the like. A judge had recently agreed with him, at least about the killer part, and sentenced Bennett to four years for manslaughter. It meant that Hardin now had someone on hand who might be able to answer her questions. She’d requested the visit and asked that he not be told it was her because she didn’t want him to say no to the meeting. They’d had a couple of run-ins—truthfully, she was a little disappointed that she hadn’t been the one who got to haul him in on charges of attempted murder at the very least.