Milo shrugged. “Uh, sure, right.” He nodded down to the photographs in Reed’s hand. “Yeah, I can do that. You know, the newscasters keep speculating on what the connections between the victims might be.”
Oh, Reed knew. He knew it well. He got no less than twenty calls a day asking him if he could give them details on the other victims after it’d been leaked that the ones who’d been named hadn’t been the only targets of The Hollow-Eyed Killer. The CPD was keeping the names of the falling victims out of the news for the moment though, hoping to hold on to some information only the killer would know.
He handed Milo the photos and he looked through them, shaking his head non-committedly, but when he came to the last one, he flinched, dropping it on the coffee table. “Is this a joke?”
Reed frowned. “You know her?”
“That’s my fucking mother.”
Reed stared at Milo for a minute and then glanced down at the photo of Margo Whiting, the prostitute who took a dive off the balcony of her apartment building. “Your mother?”
“Not that she deserves the title,” Milo said. He appeared agitated suddenly, his knee bouncing rapidly as he ran his palms over his thighs. “How’d she die?”
Reed’s mind was buzzing, whirring. “Margo Whiting fell to her death,” Reed said. “We have evidence that she was targeted and killed by The Hollow-Eyed Killer.”
Milo’s face did a number of strange tics before settling into a deep frown. He rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair. “I have nothing to do with her. I haven’t seen Margo in over a decade.”
“Why?” he asked. “She was your—”
“That woman was never a mother.” He let out a small humorless laugh.
Reed frowned, leaning back on the couch. “Can you tell me about your relationship with her?”
Milo blew out a long breath as though he needed time to come up with the right words. “My mother was a whore, Detective. And not the Pretty Woman type, you know . . . good-hearted girl, down on her luck. Margo was a heroin addict who tricked for money and let her john’s do things to her in front of me I’ll never erase from my brain. If they offered enough cash and they were interested in me too, she tricked me out as well.”
Reed flinched. “I’m sorry.”
Milo shrugged. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. It is what it is. I’m not there anymore.” He leaned forward. “Child Protective Services eventually took me away because a neighbor complained about Margo leaving me alone in the house while she went out for days at a time.” He let out a humorless laugh. “That was the funniest part of all. I got taken away from her because she left me alone in the house. And the true joke? Those were the only times I had any peace.”
Jesus. “What happened after that?”
Milo sat back. “Margo had had a relationship with some loser for a couple months, so miracle of miracles, she knew who my sperm donor was. Some deadbeat I saw around the neighborhood here and there. But he’d had a daughter who was ten years older than me, married, living a decent life, and she took me in.”
“That’s why you have a different last name?”
“Yeah. Even though my sister, Yolanda, was really just my legal guardian, in essence she and her husband, Troy, adopted me. I took his last name.”
Reed nodded. “Did you ever see Margo after that?”
He shrugged. “She tried to come around for money sometimes. Yolanda told her to fuck off.”
Good, Reed thought. Christ, the lives people had to live. Sometimes he felt so fucking sad about the state of the world, it felt like it was eating away his insides. And all he was doing was taking in the information. This man had lived it. “Your life got better,” he said. “Living with your half-sister.”
Milo nodded, swallowed. “Yeah. There was no half about it. Yolanda and Troy saved me. I made a life for myself because of them, outran my demons.” He paused, meeting Reed’s eyes. “I realize Margo was murdered by a psycho, but I can tell you this, I’m not at all sorry that bitch is dead. I hope she’s burning in hell.”
Reed couldn’t blame him. Not at all. He thanked Milo for his time and walked back down the path toward his car.
Margo Whiting was Milo Ortiz’s mother. This absolutely could not be a coincidence. Reed felt antsy with