Let It Burn by Steve Hamilton Page B

own, and took them to the kitchen. I waited for her, looking around the room, seeing all the little touches she had added, trying to make this a real home, even if the floor was damaged and there were God knows how many other problems with the place if you bothered to look for them. On top of the television set, there were pictures of her three kids when they were young. No pictures of a father. Another woman trying to do her best, all by herself. Such a sadly common story in this city.
    But she was still here, in this same house. She was still trying. That said something about her.
    She came back from the kitchen and showed me out the front door. I thanked her again for the cake. When I got in my truck, she stood there on the front porch watching me. I was about to pull away, but she waved at me to stop.
    She came down the stairs, slowly. She came to my window. I rolled it down. She put her hand on my arm.
    “I bet you had a lot of people try to lie to you when you were a cop,” she said. “I bet you got pretty good at telling the difference between a lie and the truth.”
    “Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
    “My son did not kill that woman.”
    I just looked at her. The day was getting hotter. There were insects buzzing away in the tall weeds on either side of her house.
    “That’s a bone fact,” she said, squeezing my arm harder. “That’s the bone truth.”

 
    CHAPTER EIGHT
     
    To this day, I still don’t know how the news stations do it. Maybe they have somebody sitting around, listening in on the police band radio, but somehow they always seem to know when something significant is happening, anywhere in the city.
    Now, a murder was not significant. Not in a city that would see over five hundred murders over the course of the year. During that hot summer, we’d see two or three a day, easy. But those were usually results of the gang wars, casualties in the fight for control of the drug trade. One black man killing another, whether you want to come right out and say it or not … That didn’t make the six o’clock news with Bill Bonds.
    But a white woman from the suburbs, found dead in the abandoned section of the old train station downtown … That was worth scrambling the trucks for. Which is exactly what Franklin and I saw as we came back down the tracks. Channel 2, Channel 4, Channel 7, they were all there. There were remote newscasters standing in front of cameras and lights, and there was crime scene tape strung all across the parking lot, from the station to the tracks, to keep everyone away from that back door.
    Sergeant Schuman was still on the scene. He already looked a little frazzled and ready to tee off on the next reporter who asked him a question.
    “McKnight,” he said as soon as he saw me. “Get down to the station ASAP.”
    “That’s where I was heading.”
    Nobody asked Franklin or me any questions as we ducked under the tape and headed out to the parking lot. They probably figured we were just two officers helping to secure the crime scene. Nothing special here, let’s go bug the sergeant again.
    I followed Franklin to our car. I sat in the passenger’s seat while he got behind the wheel. He didn’t say anything as he started the car and headed out to Woodward.
    “Tell me what kind of world we live in,” he finally said, “where a woman gets killed just because she’s wearing a diamond bracelet.”
    I shook my head. Did it even matter now? Was there a better reason that would make more sense?
    “They call those eternity bracelets,” he said. “Those bracelets with all the diamonds. They’re pretty expensive.”
    I shook my head again. I didn’t know anything about expensive jewelry. I’d come to find out that it was, in fact, an eternity bracelet, bought for Elana Paige by her husband on their five-year anniversary. A couple of years later, Chris Evert would stop a tournament to look for her bracelet, and that’s how they’d come to be known as