PsyCop 3: Body and Soul by Jordan Castillo Price Read Free Book Online Page B

I thought, fuck it. I was already pretending to be macho by doing the driving. I didn't need to batter down the door.
    The door opened just a few inches, exposing a security chain so lousy that even I could break it. A brown eye set in brown folds of skin peered out at me. "Si?"
    I flashed my badge. "I'm Detective Bayne, this is Detective Zigler. Habla usted ingles?"
    "Un momento," she said, shutting the door. I heard her scuttle deeper into the apartment, calling, "Carlos? Carlos!"
    I hadn't thought about the possibility that Miranda's family spoke Spanish, despite the fact that she lived in a neighborhood more Hispanic than not. I wasn't used to talking with living witnesses anymore; Maurice had always done that. I wondered if I did find Miranda's spirit floating around, would I need a translator?
    "You speak Spanish?" Zig asked, sounding pleasantly surprised.
    "Not much."
    Zigler shifted gears immediately into neutral, staring over my shoulder at the door. It opened again, all the way this time, and a wiry kid of about eighteen glared out from the apartment. Shaved head, tattoos, and flashing dark eyes you could get lost in. If you were a girl, anyway, since my gaydar told me this kid was the last one I'd find trolling Boys' Town.
    "You cops?" he asked.
    "Detective Bayne," I repeated, showing him the badge I hadn't bothered to pocket. "Detective Zigler."
    "You here about my mother? You find her?"
    "Not yet," I said. I probably wasn't supposed to be so blunt, but hell. We didn't have all day. "I was hoping we could come in...."
    "I already told them everything I know." Carlos crossed his arms like Jacob did when he wasn't planning on going anywhere. He wasn't bulky like Jacob, but he could still fill a doorway.
    I really didn't want him to challenge me. Not in front of fucking Zigler. "If we could just go over things one more time..." and really, I knew the facts already. Who'd last seen Miranda, what she'd been wearing. The fact was, I just wanted to get into that apartment without announcing that I was ghost hunting.
    "Don't you people ever read? You make all these notes, and then what? You throw them out when you leave?"
    It wasn't any good to argue, especially when I had to admit that, aside from throwing our notes away, it pretty much was the way we operated. "It'll only take a few minutes...."
    "Carlos," said Mrs. Lopez, dragging him out of the doorway. She motioned for us to come in while she lit into him in Spanish. I might not have been able to understand her word for word, but her body language and her tone were crystal clear: Carlos, stop being a jerk .
    Zig and I crowded into the small kitchen. I swerved to avoid knocking over a table full of lit candles with my hip, or maybe setting myself on fire, though I suspected the polyester in my suit coat would melt rather than bursting into flames. But you never know with these mystery fabrics.
    Zig got ready to take some notes while I stared at the makeshift shrine. Saints, crosses, a bunch of religious paraphernalia. And why not pray? Miranda was missing. But the candles triggered some other memory in me that wasn't entirely religious. I'd been to a few weddings, but aside from that, I wasn't a big church-goer. So why did the Saint Martin candle look so familiar?
    Mrs. Lopez poured coffee while Zigler loomed over a sullen Carlos and told him to think back and recall everything he could about the day Miranda disappeared. That was good; Carlos would be distracted by a Q& A session with Zig, and it'd buy me some time.
    Mrs. Lopez handed me a mug full of coffee pale with milk and I nodded gratefully. There was no spirit in the kitchen, but maybe Miranda had come back to her bedroom. I juggled the cup to my left hand while I attempted some made-up sign language: a person walking, and then me pointing to the doorway that let to the rest of the apartment.
    "Si," she said, grabbing me by the forearm and towing me deeper into the house. She talked to me in Spanish as we went,