“About what?”
“Her coming home. She, well, if you know her name, you know her history. Go-Go is bipolar. She’s been doing really well, too, working for her dad. That’s where we met. My mom is on dialysis. But she stopped taking her meds about a month ago, and things went downhill pretty quickly.”
“So you were out here trying to save her?”
He shook his head miserably. “No. Not at all. I didn’t know she was out here. I certainly didn’t know she was on the streets. I’d have come looking sooner.”
“So today of all days, you just happen to run into her, and then boom, she’s dead? Is there something you want to tell me, Derek?”
The boy’s face flushed with horror, and his mouth dropped open. “What? No. I didn’t do anything to her. We just talked. Shared a bowl. That’s it.”
“So you admit to doing drugs with the decedent?”
The kid nodded, his head moving vigorously on its slender stalk. “Yeah. But I promise, that’s all we did.”
“I think you should probably come down and talk to me a little more, Derek. Okay?”
The bowed shoulders straightened and the tears stopped. His voice grew cold. “Am I under arrest?”
“Not right now. We’re just going to have a little chat.”
“I know my rights. You can’t detain me unless you have cause.”
Taylor narrowed her eyes at the boy.
“Don’t give me a reason, kid. I’m not in the mood. We can do this hard or we can do this easy. You just admitted to using an illegal substance on state property. You want to go down on a drug charge, I’m happy to make that happen for you. Or you can come in and have a nice friendly chat. Your call.”
She stepped back a foot and fingered her cuffs. Rucka swallowed and shoved his hands in his pockets, head cast downward in defeat.
“Okay then. Come with me.” Taylor led the kid to her car, put him in the back seat. “I’ll be back in a minute. You just hang out.”
Of course, one of the reporters saw this, and shouted across the tape at Taylor frantically. “Lieutenant, do you have a suspect in custody?”
Taylor ignored her. She wasn’t about to get in a conversation with a reporter, not when the chief was on his way. She returned to the body, watched as Keri McGee took samples and bagged the girl’s hands.
“Anything?” Taylor asked.
“Not really. Nothing that’s leaping out. I have hairs that don’t match the body, debris, but that’s not a surprise, considering she’s out in the crowd like this. She’s wrapped up like she’s wearing a sari. I’ll get her back to the morgue, and we can get her peeled down to her skin, run everything and see what’s out of place.”
One of these things is not like the other ...
Oh, great. Now she was going to be singing that stupid song for the rest of the night.
Taylor didn’t blame Keri for wanting to get the girl out of the limelight as quickly as possible, especially with the chief making an appearance. It was practically record speed for a homicide investigation, but Keri was a stellar death investigator. Taylor trusted her to know when it was time to move on to the next step.
Go-Go would be posted in the morning along with any other unfortunates who found their way to the tables of Forensic Medical. In the meantime, Taylor had a job to do. She started toward the perimeter when Keri shouted to her.
Taylor turned and saw Keri waving her back.
“What’s up?”
Keri handed Taylor a small leather wallet. “Found it under her layers of blanket. Don’t know why I didn’t see it when I rolled her.”
“Hers?”
“Not unless her name is James Gustafson.”
Taylor flipped the wallet open. It was all the standard stuff: a driver’s license and a few credit cards, plus some cash. The photo showed a pale man, forty-one, blue on brown, five foot ten inches. His address showed him to be from Virginia.
“Keri, tell me if I’m crazy. Maybe we just caught a break and this is our killer’s wallet. Go-Go tried snatching it, he got pissed and stabbed her, then was spooked and ran before he retrieved it?”
“Would you leave your wallet if you had just stabbed someone?”
“No one said these guys were geniuses.”
Keri laughed, then a frown crossed her face. She had her hands in the grubby folds of Go-Go’s blankets. “Now that’s weird.”
“What?” Taylor asked.
Keri produced three more wallets, all very similar to the first, and four cell phones.
“Well, well, well,” Taylor said. “Our Go-Go is quite the little pickpocket.”
“Bet there’s some folks up on the plaza who will be happy to get their stuff back.”
“No kidding. Good job, Keri. I’ll have Parks Jr. do some canvassing, see which phone and wallet belongs to which person. They can all come in and have a chat. At least we have some suspects. Maybe we can crack this one tonight. Later, ‘gator.”