The Ways of the Dead Read Online Free

home.”
    “Tell her I said hello, if she’s speaking to you when you get there. Christ almighty, I think I see everybody but the
East Jesus Gazette
out there. D.C.’s finest coughing up anything?”
    Dave saw the rearview mirror on the van, a revelation, a place to check the knot in the tie. “Just got it from a brother over in 4-D. There’s a BOLO for three black guys, teenagers, who were in the store. They’re going for them hard but keeping it low-key. You know, they can’t just say, ‘Niggas killing white girls! Whoo! Hide your women!’ But that’s what’s up. Owner of the market there told the cops there was some sort of scene between them and the girl.”
    “Here we go.”
    “No no no, I’m not opening up all that shit.”
    “You calling the suspects black?”
    “On air? Not unless there’s better ID.”
    “This business,” Sully said.
    There were people on porches, men with arms folded. Horns honking at the stalled traffic. A cluster of people forming along the yellow tape a dozen yards away, forming a circle around someone. He nodded to Dave and moved quickly, forcing his way back into the crowd and pressing to the outer edge of the cluster. In the center was a young woman, thin, long boned, wearing a too-big T-shirt, BIG APPLE DANCE across the front in that split-legged logo.
    “—so I’s telling Gina the girls had been doing that. Sneaking over there. Something to eat, I don’t know.”
    Someone asked something that Sully couldn’t hear.
    “Momma calls the cops, they come running and I went upstairs. Then there’s all these sirens and I looked out the window and all them go running to Doyle’s, around to the back. Momma sees that, takes off running. Flat-out
screaming
.”
    A lady next to Sully: “Been my baby, Jesus.”
    The young woman in the circle started talking to someone next to her and the crowd shifted, losing interest. Sully pushed forward to the woman.
    “Ma’am? My name’s Sully Carter. I’m—”
    “I know you,” she said evenly, eyes dancing over his scars, starting to walk away. “You came around asking questions after that Spanish girl got killed last summer.”
    “Did I talk to you?” he cocked his head, falling in step alongside her, handing her his business card.
    She shook her head. “You just stopped in the studio.” She remembered the scars, the limp. Everybody did.
    “You knew Lana?”
    She had taken the card, that was good, she was looking down at it now, slowing, giving in. “Yeah, no, I don’t know. To talk to. Maybe I saw her around.”
    “So you saw Sarah Reese go across the street? About what time?”
    She looked at her watch, then up at him, deciding to stand for it for a moment. “After her class let out. A little after seven.”
    He pulled out the notebook, started scribbling. “Went over there by herself?”
    “Like I said.”
    “The girls, the students, they tend to do that after class?”
    A nod.
    “How much later were the sirens?”
    She folded her arms across her chest and grimaced. “The first cops, they didn’t come with any sirens. They may have been what, Secret Service? Who is it the judges call? The cops, the sirens, the ones that went over to Doyle’s? That was right at eight.”
    “Marshals,” he said. “Judges are protected by U.S. Marshals. Why do you remember the time so well?”
    “’Cause I was closing up. Eight thirty, we’re all done.”
    “Anybody from the studio go over there, to Doyle’s, before the cops, to, what, look for her?”
    “Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. Once Momma got here. I mean, look—their lessons were over, okay? They’re supposed to wait in the lobby. I saw Sarah go over there and I had another class. We didn’t know she was missing until Momma came in.”
    “Had problems with Sarah before?”
    “She was alright. Maybe a little scared of the sisters, you know.”
    “How did she come to be taking lessons down here?”
    “Maybe she heard Gina’d been in Alvin Ailey, I don’t