The Ranger - Ace Atkins [20]
“You know a girl named Jasmine?” Lillie asked, her face coloring.
The girl shook her head as Quinn drove to the back side of the strip club, parked by two overflowing Dumpsters, and killed the engine. The daylight was fading into a horizon of black, the pine trees inked cutouts, pools of stagnant water on a parcel of cleared land turning to ice.
“You sure?” he asked.
The girl shook her head. She looked scared.
“I think you’re full of shit,” Lillie said, letting down a side window and lighting a cigarette.
“You the law?”
“Yeah, I’m the law,” Lillie said, turning to face her, reaching into her purse and showing her badge. “How about you tell us where to find Jasmine, and we’ll set you right back where we left you? If not, we’ll get you for solicitation.”
“I don’t give two shits.”
“Don’t act like you haven’t got any sense,” Lillie said. “We just want to ask her a couple questions.”
“I’ve only been here a week.”
“That’s a lie,” Lillie said. “You got busted for trying to peddle pussy on the town Square this summer.”
The girl didn’t say anything.
“You’re from Florida,” Lillie said, blowing smoke through the cracked window. “You got priors. Your name is Kayla.”
“She hasn’t been around in a while. Okay? Y’all leave me alone.”
“Are y’all friends?” Quinn asked.
Kayla studied her hard-bitten nails, her knee jumping up and down like a piston. “Can I have a cigarette?”
Lillie handed her one with her lighter.
“You know where she lives?” Quinn asked.
“She got real fucked up. She ain’t coming back. What’d she do anyway?”
“She knew a man who got killed,” Quinn said. “We think she may have seen something or known something about it.”
Kayla looked out at the blackened horizon over an endless row of pines bordering the highway, looking like a high wall to Quinn. Lillie let out a long breath, patience waning, reaching for the girl’s arm and pulling her attention toward her. “You know her real name?”
Kayla shook her head.
“You know where she’s from?” Lillie asked.
“Said she was from Bruce.”
“What’s she look like?”
“I don’t know.”
“She’s white?” Quinn asked.
“Sure she’s white.”
“What color’s her hair?” he asked.
“Brown. Hell, you could look right at her and then forget her face. She looks like half the people I ever met.”
Lillie let go of her arm. “What else do you know about her?”
“I know she’s got a kid. Showed me pictures on her phone.”
Quinn looked to Lillie and Lillie asked, “She say the kid’s name?”
Kayla didn’t say anything, just looked down at the cigarette in her hand. Quinn repeated the question.
“Said her daughter’s name was Beccalynn. She said it like that, all one word, because I asked her if she’d call her Becky, you know, just to talk. But she said no because it was one name.”
“That’s a start,” Lillie said. “If she’s in school. How old do you think her daughter would be?”
“I don’t know,” Kayla said. “Six? She didn’t say.”
“Can you ask some of the other girls for us?” Quinn said. “I pay cash.”
Kayla shrugged. “I think that girl is long gone. Y’all ain’t gonna find her.”
“How d’you know?” he asked.
“If she wasn’t, she’d be out here with me in the cold, peddling pussy and trying to scrape up some money. What the hell else is there to do in this shithole?”
Lillie stared out the windshield, nodding. “You mind giving me that lighter back, sweetheart?”
7
Quinn checked out of the Traveler’s Rest and headed to his mother’s house at about eight, parking on Ithaca Road, an unfamiliar Honda in the drive. When he knocked on the door, he found it partially open and the television switched on. The sound was muted, and he heard footsteps, before a woman holding Caddy’s child opened the door. It took a few seconds to refocus on Anna Lee Amsden’s face, ten years of his life, twelve to twenty-two, and now Mrs. Luke Stevens. Quite a thing. But things go like that, he thought, not having to force