Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag Read Free Book Online Page B

raining! Can you believe it?
    “I need my usual, Habib,” he said. He produced a wallet from somewhere under his rain gear. Head bent, water running in a stream off his hood, the cop dug out a couple of bills. He flicked a glance at Jace. “Hell of a night,” he said again.
    “Yeah,” Jace answered. “Fucking rain.”
    “Your car break down, kid?”
    “Something like that.” Jace raised the soda can to his lips again, trying to be nonchalant, but his hand was shaking and he knew the cop saw it.
    “What happened to your face?”
    “What about it?”
    Chew pointed to his chin and jawline. “That’s some case of razor burn.”
    Jace lifted a hand to his face and winced as he touched the part of his chin he had skinned falling on the gravel as he was running for his life. His knuckles were scrubbed and torn too.
    “I fell,” he said.
    “Doing what?”
    “Nothing. Minding my own business.”
    “You got a place to stay, kid? Father Mike at the Midnight Mission can give you a hot meal and a dry bed.”
    The cop had taken him for homeless, a street kid with nowhere to go. He probably figured Jace was either turning tricks or selling dope to stay alive, and that some lowlife pimp or dealer had smacked him around. Jace supposed that was what he appeared to be as he stood there wet and ragged and pathetic.
    “I’m okay,” he said.
    “You got a name?”
    “John Jameson.” The lie tripped off his tongue without hesitation.
    “You got ID?”
    “Not on me. You gonna card me for buying a Mountain Dew?”
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-one.”
    He knew the cop didn’t believe him, that he figured Jace was trying to pass for a legal adult. Compact and wiry, he had always looked young for his age. Wet and beat-up, standing there like a stray dog, he probably looked even younger.
    “What are you doing out on a night like this?” the cop asked. “No hat, no coat.”
    “I was hungry. I didn’t think it was raining that hard.”
    “You live around here?”
    “Yeah.” He gave an address two blocks away and waited for the cop to call his bluff.
    “Are you come for the murder, Jimmy Chew?” Habib asked in the same kind of pleasant tone he might use to ask if his friend had come for a party. “I heard on the scanner.”
    Chew answered the question with another question. “You see anything going on around here earlier tonight, Habib? Around six-thirty, seven?”
    Habib pursed his lips and shook his head. He put a king-size Baby Ruth candy bar and two cans of Diet Coke in the drawer and shoved it out to the cop. “Cars go by. No fast getaways. Some poor bastard went past on a bicycle earlier. Can you imagine?”
    “What time was that?”
    “About when you said. I didn’t look at the clock. I’m working on my screenplay,” he said, gesturing to a mess of printed pages on the counter. He had slipped his gun out of sight.
    “What direction did he come from?” Chew asked.
    “The way you came. He went past and turned to the right at the corner.”
    Jace felt like his heart had lodged at the base of his throat, the beating of it interrupting his ability to swallow.
    “What’d he look like?”
    Habib shrugged. “Like a miserable bastard riding a bicycle in the rain. I wasn’t really paying attention. For heaven’s sake, who would ride a bicycle to go commit a murder?”
    “We’re just looking for anyone who might have been around, maybe saw something go down. You know how it is,” the cop said casually, including the gas station clerk in the cop process, as if Habib was some kind of auxiliary officer. He flicked another glance at Jace. “How about you? You hanging around this street six-thirty, seven o’clock?”
    “I don’t own a watch,” Jace lied. “And I didn’t see anything.”
    “You didn’t see a guy on a bike?”
    “Who’s stupid enough to ride a bike in the rain?”
    “A bike messenger, for one. You know any of those guys?”
    “Why would I?”
    “They hang out under the bridge