Nickel City Crossfire, Gary Ross [ebook reader for pc and android txt] 📗

to know she okay.” There was a flutter of pain in his voice. “But what if she ain’t okay? What if she in trouble, or worse? What then?”

“If she’s in an environment where she’s not okay or in danger, like a shooting gallery, I will remove her and get her whatever help she needs. I’ll try to do so the safest and most reasonable way I can. Sometimes people get hurt in places like that, but I promise I’ll do my best to make sure she’s the last and least hurt that day. What I said stands. I’ll report on her condition, but I won’t reveal her whereabouts without her permission.”

“She’s grown, Win,” Oscar said. “Legally, Rimes can’t make her come home.”

“I know,” Winslow said. “What do you need from me?”

“First I need to interview you and your wife together. Then I’ll need the names and addresses or phone numbers of her friends, co-workers, supervisors, old boyfriends, Odell Williamson’s family—anybody you can think of.”

“Done talked to her friends and people she work with. Nobody know where she at.”

“Sometimes people know things they don’t realize they know.” I took a breath. “I’ll need more than her picture. I have to spend time in Keisha’s apartment. A lot of time. If she has a computer, I need to give it to my tech guy. Can you deal with all that?”

“If it means you’ll look for my daughter, yes.”

I took a couple of cell phone photos of Keisha’s picture and slid the original back to her father. Then I closed my notebook and stuck it in my shirt pocket. “All right, Mr. Simpkins. I will do my level best to find her.”

2

Winslow and Mona Simpkins lived in an old brown house with cream trim and a two-car garage in the heart of the Fruit Belt, a neighborhood on the edge of downtown. With streets named after fruits and trees—Grape, Cherry, Mulberry, Locust—the Fruit Belt had long been largely black and low income, but its proximity to the still-developing medical corridor had given birth to a new name to underscore its gentrification, the Medical Park Neighborhood. While upscale apartments had come to other areas of downtown, much of the development in the Belt was limited to a marked increase in parked cars as hospital, med school, and medical device manufacturing personnel chose not to ride the subway to work and sought free on-street parking three or four blocks away to avoid metered parking and exorbitant ramp fees.

The Simpkins home was on a stretch of Orange not close enough to medical sites to be a front in the parking wars. A two-story clapboard frame dwelling, it sat between a new vinyl-sided ranch with an attached garage and an overgrown lot. Having followed Oscar’s old green Lincoln, I parked behind him as Winslow Simpkins got out on the passenger side and started up the front steps. I went to the driver’s side, and the window hummed down.

“Thanks for doing this, Rimes,” Oscar said. “Win is good people. Folks at church’ll be more than willing to help with your fees.”

“Don’t sweat it.”

“Your army pension can’t be that good. Mine ain’t.” He was quiet for a moment, gloved fingers drumming the wheel. “If you need somebody to ride along with you—”

“Thanks,” I said. “If the trail goes somewhere nasty, I’ll call you for back-up.” I meant it. I didn’t know him well yet but from our first meeting, I had sensed Oscar was the kind of man who would have my back and cover it well, despite his age. “First let’s see if I can find a trail. Judging by her letter, maybe her guilt makes facing the folks too hard.”

He nodded. “Well, I’ll be around if you need me, and the church will do what it can.”

Outer door open, Simpkins was waiting for me on the porch. I joined him as Oscar drove away, and we wiped our feet on a thick brown mat. He left his boots on a plastic tray between the inside doors. I followed suit, stuffing my gloves and watch cap into my jacket pockets. Then he led me through the downstairs door into a living room with faded flowered wallpaper, a small fake fireplace, a pale brown sectional sofa, and beige carpeting so worn that fibers poked through my socks and irritated my soles.

“Make y’self at home,” he said, draping his coat on a tree. “Lemme go find Mona.”

As he disappeared toward the back of the house, I slipped off my leather coat and tugged my sweater down as far as I could. With my right shoulder still recovering, I kept my Glock 26 on my belt in a cross-draw holster instead of in a shoulder rig so I could reach it with my left hand. I didn’t want Simpkins or his wife to focus on my gun. When I was sure it would remain covered, I gazed about to examine my surroundings more closely.

The walls were bare but framed photos stretched across the mantel displaying Simpkins and a heavyset woman at different ages, in different places. There were some of Keisha, at first all braces and glasses, then a pretty brown-skinned woman capped and gowned, then one showing her clad in scrubs. Shelves on the left held an old Encyclopedia Americana set and dozens of paperbacks. Shelves on the right displayed a mug commemorating Win’s retirement from the gas company, snow globes from various cities, school awards and science medals, and framed BS and Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees. So Keisha was more than the registered nurse her father’s description had suggested. I looked at her photos again, studied her flawless smile for a long time, and felt a twinge of sadness. Unlike parents proud of their child’s achievements, I was not surprised drugs had entered her life. No profession was immune to substance abuse, and addiction among medical workers was often called a silent epidemic. But I did wonder what Keisha’s tipping point had been.

I turned as voices drew