The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,83
road—I’ll think about it.”
Tean pushed his glasses up his nose. He was struggling with something on the tip of his tongue.
Jem glanced over. “Spit it out.”
“Best friend.”
An instant of shock, and then Jem’s face was smooth, and he shrugged. “Obviously.”
When they got back to the apartment, Tean got out half of a Walla Walla onion, a box of Eggos, ground turkey that looked a little green, and a serrano pepper that had shriveled up.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh, you can make these waffle tacos—”
“No.”
“They’re actually really—”
“No goddamn way,” Jem said, reaching past Tean to grab the Eggos. He shoved them in the freezer. “You can defile Eggos on your own time. And throw that turkey away; you’re going to get sick.”
“I think most of it’s still good.”
“Why did Ammon arrest Hannah?”
“I told you: he said the prosecutor thinks they have a case they’re going to win.”
“Based on what evidence?”
Tean frowned. “He didn’t say.”
“That doesn’t matter. We did most of the legwork on the case.” Jem leaned on the counter. The blue-and-white polo he was wearing rode up, exposing pale skin and a trail of golden hairs. “Whatever they’ve got, it’s because we led them to it. So what do they have?”
“The body,” Tean said. “But the ME told me she couldn’t determine cause of death. She must at least have decided it was a homicide, or they wouldn’t have arrested Hannah, but unless they recovered more of the body, the cause of death is probably still undetermined.”
Jem made a face. “Ok, they’ve got part of a body. What else?”
“Zalie told us about those phone calls between Hannah and Joy. I’m sure they’ve got Hannah’s phone records, and they can show communication between the two of them. Zalie will testify. According to her, Hannah saw Joy as a threat—Joy might reveal details about Hannah’s past that would either incriminate Hannah or ruin her father’s upward trajectory in the church.”
“Those details being: a) Hannah might have been involved in an ecoterrorist bomb that killed a delivery driver, and b) she’s a total lez.”
“More or less,” Tean said, trying to keep his eyes from drifting as Jem got a hand under his polo and scratched absently.
“Possible blackmail. That’s a motive. But we don’t know anything about means or opportunity.”
“We can’t really say anything about means yet,” Tean said, “because we don’t know what actually caused Joy’s death. Opportunity, though—I think it comes back to phone records. They can probably track where Hannah’s phone was, and it must show her near Joy around the time Joy disappeared.”
Jem’s blue-gray eyes narrowed, and he stopped scratching his stomach. “Pen and paper.”
Tean grabbed them from his desk.
“Write this down: two Quarter Pounders, a large fry—ow!” Jem ran his thumb over the spot where the pen had hit his cheek. “I’m bleeding.”
“That’s ink. Don’t be an—”
“Say it. Say a bad word.”
“Don’t be a pest.”
Laughing, Jem pushed the pen back to Tean and said, “Ok, let’s make a timeline.”
“You can make a timeline.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. And you need to practice.”
“It’ll be faster if you do it.”
“Then abbreviate.”
“This is why I hated school,” Jem growled, grabbing the pen and paper. “Bunch of smartass teachers who think they have all the answers.” He wrote S-M-T-W-T-F-S at the top, and then he made four rows of boxes. He filled in the bottommost Thursday with H arest.
“Two r’s.”
He scribbled in an extra r.
They worked backward, filling in the stages of their investigation day by day, until they got to a Saturday in April. H creek stragner.
“Switch the n and the g.”
“Will you please just do this?”
“You’re doing great.”
Jem growled some more, scratched out the word, and wrote it again correctly.
“Who was this person that Hannah saw following her?”
Tean paused to ruffle Scipio’s ears. “If you’re the police, then you say it’s a lie—she made the whole thing up.”
“And if you’re not the police?”
“Maybe it was the real killer.”
“Maybe,” Jem said. “That was April 21.” He moved back a few more days. “On April 17, Joy meets her Playmates date at Kneaders.”
“Kneaders has a K at the beginning. And it’s e-a, not e-e. K-n-e-a-d-e-r-s.”
The pen tore through the paper this time as Jem rewrote the word. “As far as we know, that’s the last time anyone saw her alive.” Jem made a face. “Could Joy have been the person that Hannah saw following her?”
“No; the ME told me that they estimated Joy had been dead for three weeks. Whoever was following Hannah, Joy had to be dead by then.”