“What about my bike?”
“Lean it against the front of the car where we can watch it.” For all he knew, it was one of the few things she owned in the world. As she did so, he tossed his cane in the back seat.
Once she was in the car, he could see her more clearly. She was younger than he had first assumed, and her fiery hair framed a lovely face, the home to startlingly blue eyes. Her features were uniformly delicate and her skin was as flawless as Kristen Gruber’s. Put her in different circumstances on the east side and she would have worlds offered to her.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I didn’t say you did,” Will said. Time was running against him, even if the call location was close. If Fassbinder knew what he was really doing, all his dreams of revenge could be quickly visited on Will’s head. He kept the agitation out of his voice. “You had a visitor a few minutes ago, well-dressed man, middle-aged.”
“So?”
“So, are you a pro?”
“No! I don’t turn tricks, don’t do drugs.” She pointed out the window at a passing man. “Why don’t you people do something about the niggers overrunning our neighborhood, instead of hassling me?”
East side, west side, race was never far below the surface in Cincinnati.
“What’s your name?”
“Jill.”
He asked her to show him her driver’s license and wrote down the information: Jill Evangeline Bailey and the addressed matched the shabby place she had come from. She was nineteen.
“You ever been in trouble, Jill?”
“No.”
“Not even a DUI?”
She shook her head.
“You have a job?”
“I’m a waitress at Tucker’s. I ride the bus.”
“So how do you know Kenneth Buchanan?”
She hesitated and ran her hands though her hair.
“Is that his name?”
“That’s his name and you didn’t answer my question. This is a homicide investigation.”
Her small frame went rigid. “I don’t know anything about any homicide.” Her voice became small and trailed off into silence. Finally, “He gave me some money.”
Will waited a few beats. “Why would he do that?”
“I didn’t do anything!” The blue eyes filled with tears. “I was raped last fall by one of these niggers and you people didn’t do anything about it. He dragged me right behind that church one night and raped me three damned times. Right there behind a house of God. This used to be a safe neighborhood. Now the white people can’t even go out at night. You people never caught him. You never even tried…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t be gone from this shithole in a heartbeat, but after my momma died that house is all I have. I don’t even have a car.”
“Now you have some money from Mister Buchanan.”