slipped the folded-up target into my tote bag. “How about I meet you in your office?”
“Why?”
“It’s personal.”
“But you said—
“I need to go to the bathroom first, okay?”
His eyes sharpened. He was on point now, his curiosity quickening into suspicion.
“Feminine stuff,” I said.
I could sense the gears clicking and meshing in his brain, but he didn’t argue. It’s a rule: no man, no matter how screwed up, dares to question the phrase “feminine stuff.”
Even if he suspects you’re being technically truthful, but deliberately evasive.
***
She came out of the stall five minutes after I came in, her face white and her eyes red-rimmed. She was about my age and plump in a cheerleader way—lots of bosom, a generous behind, and curly brown hair clipped back in a high, tight ponytail. In her high school yearbook, she would have been Friendliest, maybe even Cutest. Now she smelled like cigarettes, and despite the denim skirt and matching vest and long-sleeved pink t-shirt, she looked middle-aged and worn out.
I waited until she’d started washing her hands before I spoke. “Janie?”
She froze, then reached for a paper towel. “Yes?”
“I’m Tai Randolph. I’m—”
“I know who you are. You’re the one who found my sister.” She threw the paper towel in the trash, and I noticed the silver cross, hanging from a chain around her neck, dangling over her heart. She put her hand to it, fingered it nervously. “What do you want?”
“Can we talk? Not here, of course, and maybe not even now—”
“Now is fine, if you know someplace I can smoke. I’m dying for a cigarette.”
“Ummm, hang on a second.”
I stuck my head out the restroom door. The coast was clear.
“Follow me,” I said.
***
We sat on the edge of the fountain out back, downwind from the spray. The place smelled like warm concrete and not-too-distant exhaust, but the steady hum of traffic mingled with the sound of splashing water in an oddly harmonious way. Janie tapped out a Virginia Slims and offered the pack to me.
I shook my head firmly. “I don’t smoke.”
“Wish I didn’t.” She fished a lighter from her skirt pocket. “Mama says it’s gonna kill me one day. ’Course she told Eliza the same thing, and look what happened.”
I just nodded. What could you say to that?
Janie continued. “’Course Eliza didn’t listen to much of nothing. I tried to tell her this was a bad idea.”
“What was?”
“Leaving South Carolina. She went from big city to big city, limping home between stops to cry and get money. Atlanta was her latest, like it was some fresh new start, like it was different. And then that damn Bulldog—”
“Bulldog?”
“Yeah, that’s what he called himself. Bulldog. Old boyfriend from high school. He’s the one got her into trouble back in Jackson. That’s where we’re from, even if Eliza stopped admitting it.” She frowned, took a long drag on the cigarette. “He couldn’t get it in his thick skull that she didn’t want anything to do with him anymore, so he tracked her down here.”
“What kind of trouble did he get her into?”
“High school stuff.”
“Like what?”
Suspicion flattened her expression, and she kept her eyes focused on the traffic just beyond the shrubbery. “It doesn’t really matter now, does it? All I know is, if there was trouble around Eliza, it would be that creep causing it.”
“White guy, built like a fire plug, crew cut, beady little eyes? Driving a blue pick-up truck?”
“Yeah, that’s him. I told the police about him and they said they’d get right on it, but they didn’t seem too interested, if you ask me. I don’t think they care about Eliza one bit. Just another dead girl to them.”
I wondered how many run-ins she’d had with uninterested officials of one stripe or another. And I understood, but what I really wanted to talk about was Eliza’s life back in South Carolina, especially the trouble Bulldog had supposedly gotten her into, but I sensed that Janie was clamming up on me.
“You know what?” I said. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that cigarette.”
She offered the pack and I took one, holding it to my nose. Ah, the crisp warm tang of tobacco, seductive and tantalizing. God, I’d missed it.
She held out the lighter. “Thought you didn’t smoke?”
“I don’t.” I fired it up, went easy on the first drag. It was like sucking in the fumes of heaven. “I gave it up a week ago. But I need one right now.”
“Why?”
The tip of the cigarette glowed red, grayed to ash. “The thing is, my involvement with