Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Cherish nods, tucking her hands between her knees. “Yeah, they can. You gotta be careful. Especially if you don’t have no one taking care of you.”
“So you don’t have a pimp, then? You work on your own?”
“I did have a man, but he got shot three months ago. Killed. So now I’m on my own.”
“Killed? I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
She bobs her head, removes her hands from between her knees, and begins picking at a sore on her thigh. “Yeah. He was one of my sons’ fathers, so . . . you know, that was hard.”
“How many kids do you have?”
The first flutter of what might be despair moves across her expression before she sighs. “Two. I got two boys. They got taken by the system, though.” She looks away, zoning again.
“I’m sorry.” Jamal gives her a moment. “How old are you now, Cherish?”
“I’m twenty.”
“Twenty years old. You’ve been through a lot for someone so young.”
“Yeah.” Cherish laughs again, that same hollow sound. “Too much.”
“Do you have any aspirations, Cherish?”
“Aspirations? Like goals?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes slide to the side again. “I’d like to get my kids back.” She picks at that wound again. “But I don’t know. I’m just tryin’ to survive, you know? Just tryin’ to stay alive.”
CHAPTER TWO
The recently closed Surfside Motel was within walking distance of the homes featured in Mrs. Doubtfire and Full House. Unfortunately, the people inside room 212 wouldn’t be engaging in any tourist activities in the near future—or anything else, for that matter. One DOA was lying prone on the floor, only her legs visible, the two others supine on the bed.
She smelled blood, and also the evidence that the victims’ bowels had emptied in death. “Hi, Sullivan,” she said to the first-responding officer standing in the outdoor hallway to her left.
“Hi yourself, Lennon.”
Lennon took a moment to glance around at what she could see of the motel room through the open door. Stained, dusty curtains, peeling striped wallpaper, and a myriad of brownish-yellow water stains on the ceiling.
A few furniture items remained: one bedside table, mostly blocked by the bodies; a writing desk; a black, unplugged minifridge with its door wide open; and the headboard and stripped mattresses, now featuring a large dark bloodstain on the side facing her.
She removed a pair of booties from her pocket that she’d taken from the kit in her trunk and started pulling them over her shoes, stalling as she mentally prepared herself to enter the room. “Just you here so far, huh?” she asked Sullivan.
“Yup. Except for them.” He nodded his head back toward the room.
Them. The dead.
Damn. She snapped the bootie over her loafer and set her foot on the ground. She would never purposely drag her feet when a call came in for a triple homicide, but she didn’t particularly like being the only one in the room with the recently deceased victims of a brutal killing. It was the very worst part of her job.
“Sucky wake-up call, huh?” Sullivan asked.
“It’s not my favorite way to start the day,” she said as she took out a pair of gloves from her pocket. “But I was already up and on a jog.” She’d been running the path along the beach when the call had come in. She’d gone home, taken a quick shower, changed, and driven there. All that, and the sun was barely up. And no one else had arrived, other than the officers she’d passed on her way through the parking lot, who were stretching crime scene tape across a second set of stairs.
“It’s not safe for a woman to be jogging alone in this city. Not anymore,” Sullivan offered.
“I’m painfully aware of the crime rate, Sullivan. I’m good, I promise.”
He gave a short grunt. “I hope so, because we can’t afford to lose any more inspectors.”
She glanced at him and then away as she stretched one glove over her hand. Sullivan was a good guy. He’d already been an officer for over a decade when she’d started at the SFPD, and while she’d worked to move up the ranks to homicide inspector, Sullivan was content to remain a beat officer. She respected that, and in his position, experience mattered a great deal. So did numbers, and he was right: they couldn’t afford to lose any more staff of any rank.
“Who was it that called this in?”
“An anonymous call. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a homeless person looking for a place to sleep who came upon this. I’d bet anything it’ll come back to a temporary burner phone someone stole from Walgreens.”
She snapped on the second glove and then glanced down at the doorknob. It was hanging partway off the door, but whether that was because someone had kicked at it or just because this whole place was old and rickety and falling apart at the seams, she couldn’t tell. Lennon leaned inside a little more. There was a door near the back that she assumed was the bathroom. “You clear it?”