I look over at her, raise my eyebrows, afraid my voice might shake. Just turning my head causes pain in my ribs, the spot where Gavin kicked me two nights ago.
“The heater’s not working upstairs,” she says. “Surprise, surprise.”
“It— Oh.” Relief floods through me. “Want me to take a look?”
“You’re the only one who has a prayer of fixing it.”
“Sure. Who— Was someone at the door?”
“Cops. They want to talk to the woman who came here two nights ago, Jamie. About pressing charges against her husband.”
—
I shake out my nerves and take several deep breaths. They’re not here for me.
I go to work on the radiator upstairs in Dorm A. Lacking air-conditioning is one thing, but we have to keep this place warm. Last winter, the heat went out in February. We scrambled for blankets and space heaters and prayed that we didn’t burn the place down.
It’s cold out, and we have an infant in here. And no funds for a repair call.
I manage to get the radiator working. The pin inside the valve head is stuck in the down position, so I wrench it free and put some lubricant onit to stop it from happening again. Not that hard to fix, but every move I make, I’m reminded of that kick to the ribs from Gavin.
Once the radiator is gurgling and hissing, my work is done.
I look out the window again. Will Gavin come tonight?
Or will he wait until tomorrow, November 3, D-Day?
Gavin is a problem. He was a mistake on my part. A loose end.
I hate loose ends.
90
Jane
“Mrs. Bilson, this is exactly why we called this emergency town hall meeting,”says Alex Galanis, Village president, sitting at the middle of a long table.“So we could be transparent. As transparent as the chief is able to be with an ongoing investigation.”
Jane smirks. They called the emergency board meeting at eight in the morning, hoping fewer people would attend. It didn’t work. The place is standing room only, with more than four hundred people crammed in there. She’s glad she isn’t there herself, instead sitting in the chief’s office, watching the whole thing through closed-circuit TV with her partner, Andy Tate.
“Well, it’s November third,”says Mrs. Bilson, standing at a podium.“You’ve had two whole days to investigate, and it feels like nobody knows anything. Or at least you won’t tell us anything. We don’t even know how she died. Is it true she was hung?”
“Hanged,” says Jane, ever the grammarian. Andy throws her an elbow.
“...not to compromise the investigation by releasing details,”says Chief Carlyle.“We can say it was a homicide. I’d rather not go further.”
“Well, do you have any leads? Is it true he was wearing a costume?”
“Again, ma’am...”
“God am I glad I’m not in there,” says Andy. “Remind me to never be chief of a police force.”
“My name is Donald Fairweather. We’re hearing that it was some gang initiation thing like we had a couple years ago with the carjackings. Is that true?”
Jane covers her eyes with her hand. Three summers ago, the Village did experience a rash of car thefts and carjackings tied to a west-side gang, an initiation ritual. It took coordination from four different western suburbs and Chicago P.D. to finally crack down on it.
“Well, I think we’d all like to know if some Chicago gang has decided to come into our town and start killing people!”
“Sir—Mr. Fairweather—we are confident, as we’ve said before, that this murder was a domestic issue. It was unique to the Betancourt family.”