Killing Jane: An Erin Prince Thriller

by Stacy Green

  Erin got the woman’s point. “Of course not. Your mother’s life choices aren’t my business and have no bearing on how I work the case. I want to catch the person who did this.”

  “That’s all I wanted to hear.” Rylan’s watery eyes drifted toward the clock. Erin wasn’t going to make the woman wait any longer. One more thing to apologize to Beckett for.

  “Let’s get started without my partner.” Erin said. “Tell me about your mother’s decision to move here from South Carolina. Why did she leave?”

  “She needed a change after she and my dad split,” Rylan said. “They’d been living as strangers for years. Mom got the courage to come out as a lesbian. I always found it funny it took her so long because she married my African-American father in a state where that’s barely accepted. Back when they got together, it sure wasn’t. But coming to terms with her sexuality and then coming out to her family and friends took my mother a long time.” Pride filled her voice. “My mother went through a lot and never gave up.”

  “How did people in her life take it?” Erin asked.

  “Some were surprised. My father had known for a long time. Instinct, I guess. Some of her friends and family shunned her. Some said okay.”

  “Your parents had an amicable split?”

  The lock of hair flowed loose again. Rylan twisted it around her index finger. “Yes. No attorneys. Just a mediator.”

  “What about after your mother arrived here?” Erin asked. “Was she happy? Did she have friends? Anyone special?”

  “At first it was tough,” Rylan said. “She basically started from scratch. And she was lonely. But everyone accepted her. She never talked about any issues like that. She kept herself really busy.”

  “Did she date anyone?”

  Rylan shook her head. “I don’t think so. No one she mentioned, anyway.” She steepled her hands together, pressing the tips of her fingers to her mouth. Her eyelids fluttered in an effort to stave off fresh tears. “I just can’t believe she’s gone. It’s not real.”

  Helplessness descended over Erin. She had no words of comfort to offer that didn’t sound trite. How could she pretend to understand what Rylan felt?

  “Can you tell me about her work with the Adult Learning Center? Her colleagues at the university didn’t seem to know much about her outside of their work environment.”

  “She loved working at the ALC.” Rylan tried to smile. “She said it was more fulfilling because those students were so desperate to better their lives. A lot of the ones at AU were privileged snobs who didn’t want to work as hard as they needed to.”

  The current state of the union.

  “A lot of the students at the ALC are at-risk,” Rylan continued. “They didn’t finish high school. Some are being forced to go because of their parents or are court mandated. Others are adults trying to get on their feet, but they’ve got a lot of baggage keeping them down. My mom loved being able to help them.”

  How many lives had Virginia Walton touched in her short time in the city? The harsh truth of the world pressed down on Erin. Society needed more people like Virginia Walton. Yet she had been savagely murdered, and how many scumbags still walked the streets? “Did your mom ever mention anyone specific at the Adult Learning Center? Anyone she had an issue with?”

  “She talked about a lot of different students,” Rylan said. “But she never made it sound like she was scared of them.”

  Rylan hiccupped, a sob mixed in, and pulled a fresh tissue out of her crushed packet. “Please tell me how this happened. Was she targeted because she was gay? Is that why he ... cut her up?”

  “We don’t think so,” Erin said. “But we’re still gathering evidence. Did your mother ever mention a woman named Bonnie Archer?”

  Rylan’s eyes opened wide and then narrowed, the freckles on her nose disappearing into her creased skin. “She told me someone stabbed the poor girl to death. My mother knew her in passing; Bonnie went to the ALC.” Her wet eyes flashed. “That happened three days ago. You think the same person killed my mother?”

  Rylan’s heartbreak and despair turned to rage, the fury darkening her bloodshot eyes and reddening her cheeks. The woman’s slender hands came down hard on the table, her athletic body lurching across at Erin. “My mother is dead because you can’t do your job?”

  “We’re working on it.” Erin tried to hold her ground.

  The anger rolling off Rylan filled the small room. She had a few inches on Erin and several pounds of lean muscle.

  “It’s a complicated case, and we don’t have a lot to go on.”

  “Three days.” Gut-wrenching despair colored Rylan’s tone. “And you didn’t protect my mother?”

  “Your mother wasn’t on our radar as a possible target.” Erin tried to sound gentle and not defensive. “A killer like this one usually targets similar victims. But we have new information that makes us believe Bonnie and your mother were targeted for a specific reason.”

  “What information? What reason?”

  Rylan deserved answers, and she might physically take them if Erin didn’t tell her something soon. “I’m not at liberty to say. It’s an active investigation.”

  “And it’s my mother at the morgue!” Rylan stood up, fast as a bullet. More hair escaped the knot and haloed around her face as she shouted. “Not at liberty my ass. You don’t have a clue who’s doing this. You’re just giving me face time and hoping I’ll tell you something that will help because you don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground.”

  “I’m sorry,” Erin said, fighting to keep her composure. “You’re grieving and not thinking clearly. We are doing our best, I promise.”

  “Your best isn’t good enough. You have no idea what I’m going through. Have you ever had a call telling you the most important person in your life was dead? Have you ever had to go into a fucking morgue and identify their body?” Rylan choked out, tears flash flooding her face.

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing,” Rylan spat. “You don’t know anything about me. Or my mother. Or Bonnie Archer, evidently.”

  “Please,” Erin said. “Sit back down. I’m sorry I offended you.”

  “I don’t want to sit.” Rylan crossed her meaty arms and stared back, daring Erin to argue.

  “All right.” Erin knew when to pick her battles. “What did your mother tell you about Bonnie Archer?”

  “She said she met Bonnie through her cousin Sarah. She liked her. Bonnie had gotten her life on track.”

  “Did your mother mention Bonnie coming over to her house?”

  “Why would she?”

  “We’re just trying to figure out why someone would want to kill both of them.”

  “She never said a word about it. And I have no idea why the girl would go to my mom’s house.” Rylan kept glaring at Erin, the grief in her eyes clouded with judgment and anger.

  Erin’s skin heated; her stomach danced. How had she gotten off so terribly wrong with the woman? She needed to bring things back on track.

  “Your mom did great work with the ALC.” Erin tried a new tack. “Did she ever mention a black male named Ricky?”

  Rylan’s teeth dug into her upper lip. “I don’t remember. Why?”

  “Sarah Archer said your mom told her about an argument she had with Ricky a couple of weeks ago. It was fairly heated and frightened your mother.”

  “Oh Christ.” Rylan’s hands went up, and she paced. “So because a black man from the streets confronts a white professor, he might have killed her? And you’re basing that on a rich white girl’s interpretation of what my mother said?”

  “No.” Erin couldn’t believe she’d stepped into it again. “I’m trying to get some more information before we go to the ALC.”

  “Well, let me give it to you,” Rylan said. “My mom liked working there better than she did American University. She took the job at AU because of the pay.”

  “I understand,” Erin said.

  Rylan barked out a hoarse laug
h. “But you don’t. My mom grew up in the South. She fell in love with a poor black man who worked his ass off to put food on the table. She knew how easily under-privileged kids could—whatever their color—fall between the cracks and have zero opportunities in life. Those are the kids she wanted to help. But the college kids at American University—like Sarah Archer, like you—the vast majority are rich white kids who don’t have a clue about the real world. So excuse me if I don’t put much faith in Sarah’s recollection of what my mother said. I guarantee you Mom wasn’t worried about how to handle that boy.”

  She gripped the back of the chair with both hands, leaning against it, looking down at Erin as if she’d just scraped her off her shoe. “Is this the best you’ve got? The best my mother’s got?”

  “Look.” Erin’s fine thread of patience snapped. “My job is to go over every piece of information we have. Let me decide what’s relevant and what’s not. How about that?”

  Rylan’s head jerked back, curls bobbing in time with her emotions. “Oh, you’re going to decide? Like you decided after that girl got cut up? Like you decided while someone slaughtered my mom?” She slammed the chair against the table.

  Erin slid her own chair back and stood up. “I understand you’re hurting. But you’re not helping the situation.”

  “Neither are you, evidently. Why is my mother dead?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out, so stop fighting with me.”

  The door swung open, revealing a flustered looking Beckett. “I’m so sorry.” Beckett offered his hand to Rylan Walton. “I got delayed, and my partner’s still new to working homicide. Let’s you and I start over. How about that?”

  Erin’s mouth fell open. “Are you kidding me?”

  Beckett shot her a look. “Sergeant Clark wants to see you anyway.”

  “I’m leading an interview.”

  “Not anymore.” Beckett wasn’t going to budge. He stood there in pressed pants and an ironed shirt, his dumbass mustache twitching. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Erin never wanted to scream at someone so badly in her professional life. The vitriol bubbled on her tongue, but she saw Rylan out of the corner of her eye. Making a scene would accomplish nothing. “Fine. I’ll speak to you after you two are finished.” She turned her attention back to Rylan, who looked both smug and distraught. “Again, I’m sorry for your loss. We’ll find whoever did this.”

  She shut the door and marched out of the room. Bright spots danced in her vision. What the hell had just happened? Weren’t partners supposed to present a united front? Beckett had come in there and treated Erin like a kid caught joyriding with her older brother’s car. And Sergeant Clark allowed it?

  Fresh anger rolled through her. She stalked around the corner intent on going straight to Clark’s office, but her superior waited in the hallway, arms crossed over his big chest.

  “What the hell, Prince? What happened in there?”

  He’d been watching on the live feed. Had Beckett been as well?

  “We never had a chance to establish any kind of confidence,” she said.

  “You alienated her.”

  “She alienated herself. She already knew my family background and made a judgment before she even met me.”

  “Which you then fulfilled.” Sergeant Clark shook his head. “You had the right idea but the wrong words. She’s grieving. She’s probably got a chip on her shoulder about race and God knows what else.”

  He took off his glasses, cleaned the lenses, and then put them back on. “And the truth is you do come from a different world than most people. You rubbed elbows with the Reagans and the Bushes and other bigwigs. You went to an expensive private school, where you were protected and sheltered from real life.”

  “Not by choice,” Erin said. “And I got out of it as soon as I realized how little I knew about the rest of the world.”

  “You did,” Clark said. “And you don’t judge by skin, class, sexual preference or anything else. You’re fair. And fierce. I know.” He pointed in the direction of the interview room. “That woman doesn’t. All she knows is her mother is dead, and you’re a Prince. She found some basic shit about your family on the Internet, and she needs someone to lash out at. You didn’t handle her with kid gloves and gave her the perfect opportunity.”

  Erin’s hands fisted against her hips. Frustration tickled the back of her eyes. She would not allow angry tears. “I tried to.”

  “I saw. It’s not your fault. It’s an experience thing. Think back to when you first started working sex crimes and talked to a victim’s mother for the first time. You didn’t know what to say, did you?”

  “Somewhat,” Erin admitted. “But I’m a mom too. Common ground came easily.”

  “Exactly. Not so easy in homicide—which is a good thing. That’s where years on the job come in. The more you do it, the better you get. You learn to read people.”

  “Like the Wonder Boy in there.”

  “He’s good, and you know it.”

  “He embarrassed the hell out of me. And where’d he disappear to? Didn’t you call him back?”

  “He was already halfway to The Point, so I told him to follow up. Turns out one of the bartenders remembered Virginia Walton coming in more than once over the past couple of months. She had a heated conversation with another customer who matches Tori’s description two weeks ago—the last night Tori was seen at The Point.”

  “But the bartender can’t definitively ID Tori?”

  Clark shook his head. “He never got that close to him, but he’s positive the person was either a masculine-looking woman or a man in drag. I’d say that’s pretty good odds. Talk to Beckett for the details. As for him embarrassing you, that’s your fault. He had to play off what you started with Rylan Walton. It’s not personal.”

  Erin threw up her hands. “So you’re saying life and death is a game?”

  “Dealing with people is a game,” Clark corrected. “The sooner you learn to play, the better off you’ll be.”

  Just like everything else in life. Do the dance, pull the right strings, learn to work the system. God forbid anything ever be as simple as right and wrong. “Tell Beckett I’ll meet him at the Adult Literacy Center in Columbia Heights in an hour. I’m going to lunch.”

  “Before you leave ...” Clark handed her a signed warrant. “We lucked out this morning. The judge is an LGBT supporter. I might have hinted we thought this could be a hate crime. Made me feel a bit scummy, but we got our warrant for Ricky Stout’s contact information.”

  Erin tucked the warrant into her bag. “First good news I’ve had all day.”

  Charlie didn’t know what to do anymore. Mina wouldn’t stay quiet. She’d always listened to him in the past. But she fixated on that homicide cop as if she could somehow magically save them from the prison they called life.

  Anxiety rippled through him in shockwaves. He wished the end would come and save him the fight of trying to be the voice of reason for people who never wanted to listen and didn’t give a damn about anyone else.

  He thought about running away, escaping into the dark with Mina. But he’d tried that before. They always got caught.

  He had no choice. He couldn’t go to the police because he shouldn’t know the things he did. He couldn’t fight because he always lost. He couldn’t keep a lid on Mina because she never listened.

  Charlie sank into his secret hiding spot and cried silent tears.

  Erin didn’t eat. Instead she drove to Columbia Heights and used her Bluetooth audio system to call her brother. The irony of driving a nearly new car with all the bells and whistles wasn’t lost on her. She only used her trust fund for important things like a down payment on a house and a reliable vehicle. She justified the Bluetooth as a safety measure.

  “Maybe he’s right,” she told Brad as she navigated the traffic around the National Mall. Tourist season slowed in November, but the traffic never seemed to change. “We grew up with everything. And even though we lef
t the nest and the lifestyle, we still enjoy a few perks, like the cars we drive. And we can’t imagine what it’s like to be poor or a minority.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Brad said. “I’ll give you the poor. But I’ve been a minority.”

  “Fine, but the color of skin is something a person can’t hide. You lived in the closet for a long time. Yeah, it sucked, but you could walk into a store and buy whatever you wanted without the clerk expecting you to rob the place.”

  “Walton’s daughter is our age. She didn’t have to fight for a right to sit at the counter.”

  “No,” Erin said. “But she grew up in South Carolina. She’s got a valid point about racism. And about how I can’t relate.”

  “Who can?” Brad asked. “So Beckett knows how to talk to her. That means he’s good enough to fake it, not that he can actually commiserate with her. He’s just better at pretending he doesn’t have an opinion.” Brad snickered. “That’s never been your strong suit, anyway.”

  Erin rolled her eyes. “Whatever. The entire thing made me feel like an asshole.”

  “‘Cause you are,” Brad said. “Two women are dead, and you’re gettin’ all butthurt because your partner taught you a lesson. Quit being a whiner and learn from it.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  His laugh filled the car. “You called me to lift your spirits. That’s what I’m doing. You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself. You get to bust your ass and stop a sicko, and you get to learn some things in the process. So what if you were humiliated? Welcome to life.”

  Brad always knew exactly what to say to make her see things clearly. He also excelled in pushing every damn button possible in the process.

  “You’re a self-righteous asshole.”

  “But am I right?”

  Erin jabbed her finger against the car’s touch screen and ended the call. “You won’t get me to say the words.”

  Erin waited for Beckett beneath the portico entrance of the Adult Literacy Center. She chose a heavier coat this morning, but the damp chill still seemed to permeate the fabric and leach warmth from her bones. She always hated this time of year for its drab coloring, but this stretch of gray days felt like some kind of record. She needed to see the sun again.