Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [23]
He came back with, “Maybe your prejudice shows in other ways.”
Now, hackles up, she challenged him to explain.
He tried to deliver his message casually so as to not fan the flames. “Maybe you think I’m with you because I want to be with a white woman. You know the old cliché—”
Her angry eyes and tight lips stopped him in mid-sentence. There was a moment when she considered throwing her drink in his face. Instead, she left the club, leaving him to extend his hand and call after her.
He came out of the shower and dialed her number. “Mary, are you there? Are you there? Please pick up if you’re there. It’s Matt. Look, I’m sorry about last night. I said things I shouldn’t have and I apologize. I never should have had that last drink and… and I’m sorry. See you at work.”
She was cold to him when they met up at MPD, but not terminally, and Hatcher’s arrival curtailed any further discussion.
“Here’s the drill,” Hatcher said, still wearing his sunglasses. The headache hadn’t gone despite the glasses and a mouthful of Tylenol. “Mary and I will talk to the congressman at eleven. Matt, I want you to run down this Mickey Mouse broad and see what you can get from her.” He glanced at Mary. “You’ve got a dirty mind, kid,” he said. “I didn’t mean what you think I meant.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“We’ll meet back here at four,” Hatcher said. “The deceased’s father is arriving this afternoon. Got it?”
On the way to the parking lot where they’d checked out two unmarked vehicles, Matt whispered to Mary, “I called this morning and left a message. I’m sorry about last night and—”
“What the hell are you two doing?” Hatcher growled. “Making a date?”
Mary and Matt’s eyes met as they prepared to climb into different cars. Her tiny smile buoyed him.
Before leaving headquarters, Matt ran a computer check on Micki Simmons. Like Rosalie Curzon, she lived in Adams Morgan. He drove to her apartment building and called her number on his cell. A sweet, sexy, southern-tinged recorded voice said, “I’m not available at the moment, but I do want to talk to you. Please call again soon.”
He left a message saying who he was, and included a phone number at which he could be reached.
Matt sat in his car and watched people come and go from the apartment building. After a half hour, boredom set in. He pulled the printout he’d run at headquarters. Micki Simmons: According to the sheet, she was thirty-one years old, although a photograph taken when she’d been booked a few years earlier showed what appeared to be a woman older than that. But that was a booking photograph, usually less flattering than even driver’s license and passport photos. Natural redhead? Hard to tell, but probably not. Nice features, a little swollen from crying. Getting booked often brought out the tears.
She was born in South Carolina and came to D.C. six years ago. Aside from a few busts for prostitution, one as a result of a sting while working for an escort service, she had no further criminal record, not even a parking ticket. As he studied her photo, he read into it a vulnerable woman, her eyes sad and looking for something in her life that she’d probably never find. Hatcher would consider such an analysis to be naïve, even stupid.
He forced Hatcher from his mind, got out of the car, and walked to the building’s entrance, where he scanned the tenant list next to call buttons. Her apartment was number 9-C. He pressed the button and heard it sound in the apartment. No voice responded through the small speaker.
An older woman pushed through the door.
“Excuse me,” Jackson said.
She eyed him suspiciously.
“I’m looking for Ms. Simmons.”
The way she said, “I don’t know her,” coupled with the disgusted look on her face, told him that she did.
“Do you know if she’s away?” he asked.
“I hope so,” the woman said, and left.
He was about to return to the car and go back to headquarters when the door to the building opened and Micki