Another piped up, “I’d never come out of the house looking like that. You need to put some cream on that.”
Ari smiled at the young teenager sitting at a table with a group of girls. “Thanks, Devon. I’ll make sure I do that.”
“Did somebody hit you?” a girl named Shanna asked. Ari pushed her coins into the change slot and selected her drink. The machine hummed and the can landed with a thunk.
“Nope,” she replied. “No one hit me. Unfortunately this is what happened when someone tried to help me.”
Ari walked through the room and she heard Shanna tell Devon, “I heard Ms. Grant was downtown and there was a big fight. Someone got shot.”
“Who told you that?” Devon asked.
“My cousin. He was there. Said Antonio was high and shot some guy he had a beef with.”
Ari paused next to the girl’s table. “Shanna, your cousin was there?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Then she narrowed her eyes. “You got that when Antonio shot that man?”
“Yes. I got this when Mr. Davis knocked me out of the way.”
“Is he the man that got shot?”
“Yes.”
“Antonio hates him. Says he’s the devil or a witch or something.”
“The devil?” Ari thought back to Davis saying Antonio was paranoid and delusional. She wondered if his drug use was a method of coping with mental illness. “Why would he say that?”
“He said that whole place is bad. That it’s a cult or something.”
“How is it like a cult?” she asked, but to be honest, she already had an idea of what he meant.
“They can’t leave that place and they have all these meetings teaching them how to behave and if they do anything wrong, they get punished.”
“That sounds like the group home I was in that time. It wasn’t a cult, though. I just hated it,” Devon said.
“It’s a very intense program,” Ari said. “I can see how it wouldn’t be the right fit for everyone.”
“I’m just saying.” Shanna looked at Devon and they both shrugged.
Rebecca walked into the room and said, “You have a phone call. I think it’s important.”
“I’ll take it in my office,” Ari said. She gave the two girls a stern look. “You two need to find something better to do than gossip.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Devon agreed.
The activity room had a side door that entered the back hallway, where the offices were located. Ari took the shortcut, reaching her desk quickly. “Ari Grant,” she said into the phone.
“Ms. Grant, this is Detective Morgan from the Glory Police Department. I got your name off Maria Snow’s file.”
Ari sat in her desk chair and searched for a pen and paper to take notes. “Maria is one of my clients. Is she okay?”
“I hate to tell you but, no, she isn’t. Her body was found in a ravine off Duncan Street last night.”
The news hit Ari like a ton of bricks. “Oh, no. What happened?”
“Can you tell me the last time you saw her?”
“I’ll have to look it up, but it’s been a couple of weeks. She missed our last several appointments and I had a warrant out for her to be picked up by Apprehension Services.” Ari spun her desk chair around and scrambled for Maria’s file in the cabinet.