East side, west side, race was never far below the surface in Cincinnati.
“What’s your name?”
“Jill.”
He asked her to show him her driver’s license and wrote down the information: Jill Evangeline Bailey and the addressed matched the shabby place she had come from. She was nineteen.
“You ever been in trouble, Jill?”
“No.”
“Not even a DUI?”
She shook her head.
“You have a job?”
“I’m a waitress at Tucker’s. I ride the bus.”
“So how do you know Kenneth Buchanan?”
She hesitated and ran her hands though her hair.
“Is that his name?”
“That’s his name and you didn’t answer my question. This is a homicide investigation.”
Her small frame went rigid. “I don’t know anything about any homicide.” Her voice became small and trailed off into silence. Finally, “He gave me some money.”
Will waited a few beats. “Why would he do that?”
“I didn’t do anything!” The blue eyes filled with tears. “I was raped last fall by one of these niggers and you people didn’t do anything about it. He dragged me right behind that church one night and raped me three damned times. Right there behind a house of God. This used to be a safe neighborhood. Now the white people can’t even go out at night. You people never caught him. You never even tried…”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t think I wouldn’t be gone from this shithole in a heartbeat, but after my momma died that house is all I have. I don’t even have a car.”
“Now you have some money from Mister Buchanan.”
She stared out the window.
“He wants me to get an abortion.”
“How many months along are you?” She wasn’t showing.
“Six weeks.”
“And it’s his baby?”
Again, her silence, and the clock tormenting him. He had to be an asshole cop. “Jill! Talk to me, right here, right now, or downtown and as long as it takes. I don’t care. You’ll only mean more overtime pay for me. Maybe your bike will be here when we get back, probably not. I guarantee you one thing: we’ll take as much time as we need to find out why you were screwing a big-time lawyer.”
“It’s his son, okay? His son and I had sex. One time. I got pregnant. How insane is that? One time and I’m pregnant. Now he wants me to go away.”
If it was the same son, Will thought of the foul-mouthed young man in the ball cap he had encountered at Music Hall.
“You didn’t ask for money?”
“No! I want to have this baby!” she yelled. “I won’t kill it.”