It's Not a Pretty Sight by Gar Anthony Haywood Page B

Goldy Cruz being there the night of Nina’s murder.
    Still, the investigator’s instincts told him Pearson was an innocent man. And that left him nothing else to believe but that Nina’s real killer was still out there somewhere, enjoying the freedom Gunner had inadvertently secured for him or her by providing the police with the perfect fall guy for Nina’s murder: a mute. A motionless lump in a hospital bed who could neither deflect nor deny the charges being made against him.
    Had he only been able to move Poole to see things his way this morning, and agree to start looking for other suspects in the case, Gunner would not be here at HiNotes struggling to accept the obvious fate that awaited him. But that was life. Always throwing work in your path that would neither pay you a dime nor make you feel any better about yourself afterward.
    He put a lid on his half-full cup of Safari Black and got on with it, this business of doing yet one more dirty job nobody else could see their way around to taking Off his hands.
    “I don’t believe it,” Mimi Hillman said.
    She was sitting in her living room again, Gunner sitting opposite her. She sounded just like Poole.
    He had known it would be a hard sell, getting her to believe that someone other than Nina’s husband might have killed her, but he had nowhere else to go with his suspicions. He certainly couldn’t go back to Poole. Not yet, anyway.
    “Who else would want to kill my baby?” Mimi asked him. “Who ?”
    She had spent all of ten seconds reflecting on the news of Pearson’s grave physical condition. Heartbroken she obviously wasn’t.
    “If I knew that, Momma Hillman, I wouldn’t be here,” Gunner said.
    “Then what makes you think it wasn’t Michael? If nobody else could have done it—”
    “That wasn’t what I said. What I said was I don’t know of anyone else who could have. But you —you’re a different story. You knew Nina’s friends, her enemies …”
    Nina’s mother shook her head. “That child didn’t have any enemies. Only enemy she ever had in this world was Michael. Nobody else ever even looked at Nina sideways. Nobody.”
    “You’re sure about that.”
    “Of course I’m sure. You just don’t know Michael, that’s all. You don’t know how he beat on Nina, and cheated on her, and lied to her …”
    “I don’t think he was lying about this.”
    “Why? Why don’t you think he was lying?”
    “Because it didn’t sound like a lie to me when he said it. That’s why. I know that sounds silly to you, but …” He shrugged. “I can’t explain it any other way. I’ve been in this business almost twenty years, and I still don’t always know a lie when I hear one. But the truth —sometimes the truth makes a sound all its own.”
    “And you think he was telling you the truth. About his being with this other woman when Nina was killed.”
    “Yes. I do. Just like I believe the woman was telling me the truth when she told me where and when they’d spent the night together. My instincts aren’t much, Momma Hillman, I’d be the first to admit that. But they’re all I’ve got. And what they’re telling me now is that Michael’s not the man the police really want. Someone else is.”
    “Someone like who ? Everybody else loved Nina!”
    “I’m sure it appeared that way to you. Nina was an easy person to love, after all. But people don’t always show you their true feelings. Sometimes all the hugs and kisses and kind words are just for show.”
    Mimi shook her head again, said, “I don’t believe that. Nina’s friends are good people.”
    “I’m not saying they aren’t. I’m just saying I’d like to talk to a few of them to find out for myself what kind of people they are. That’s all.”
    “But why? Why? If the police are satisfied that Michael killed Nina—”
    “We’re not talking about the police. We’re talking about me. And I don’t want to wake up some morning five, ten, fifteen years down the road to