"Roland!" Barbe Lynch hurried down the alley.
Bell leaned against the brick wall, catching his breath. He glanced to the left, seeing the homeless guy he'd noticed earlier squint uneasily at the police and turn around, then head in the opposite direction. Bell ignored him.
"You didn't need to do that," Geneva said to the detective, nodding at the cuffed man.
"But he's not your uncle," the detective said, calming slowly, "is he?"
"No."
"What was he doing with you just now?"
She looked down, a sorrowful expression on her face.
"Geneva," Bell said sternly, "this's serious. Tell me what's going on."
"I asked him to take me someplace."
"Where?"
She lowered her head. "To work," she said. "I couldn't afford to miss my shift." She opened her jacket, revealing a McDonald's uniform. The cheery name tag read, Hi, my name's Gen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"What's the story?" Lincoln Rhyme asked. He was concerned but, despite the fright at her disappearance, there was no accusation in his voice.
Geneva was sitting in a chair near his wheelchair, on the ground floor of the town house. Sachs stood beside her, arms crossed. She'd just arrived with a large stack of material she'd brought from the Sanford Foundation archives where she'd made the Potters' Field discovery. It sat on the table near Rhyme, ignored now that this new drama had intruded.
The girl looked defiantly into his eyes. "I hired him to play my uncle."
"And your parents?"
"I don't have any."
"You don't--"
"--have any," she repeated through clenched teeth.
"Go on," Sachs said kindly.
She didn't speak for a moment. Finally: "When I was ten, my father left us, my moms and me. He moved to Chicago with this woman and got married. Had himself a whole new family. I was torn up--oh, it hurt. But deep down I didn't really blame him much. Our life was a mess. My moms, she was hooked on crack, just couldn't get off it. They'd have these bad fights--well, she fought. Mostly he tried to straighten her out and she'd get mad at him. To pay for what she needed she'd perp stuff from stores." Geneva held Rhyme's eyes as she added, "And she'd go to girlfriends' places and they'd have some men over--you know what for. Dad knew all about it. I guess he put up with it for as long as he could then moved on."
She took a deep breath and continued, "Then moms got sick. She was HIV positive but didn't take any medicine. She died of an infection. I lived with her sister in the Bronx for a while but then she moved back to Alabama and left me at Auntie Lilly's apartment. But she didn't have any money either and kept getting evicted, moving in with friends, just like now. She couldn't afford to have me with her anyway. So I talked to the superintendent of the building where my moms had worked some, cleaning. He said I could stay in the basement--if I paid him. I have a cot down there, an old dresser, a microwave, a bookshelf. I put his apartment down as my address for mail."
Bell said, "You didn't seem real at home in that place. Whose was it?"
"This retired couple. They live here half the year and go to South Carolina for the fall and winter. Willy has an extra key." She added, "I'll pay them back for the electric bill and replace the beer and things that Willy took."
"You don't have to worry about that."
"Yes, I do," she said firmly.
"Who'd I talk to before, if it wasn't your mother?" Bell asked.
"Sorry," Geneva said, sighing. "That was Lakeesha. I asked her to front she was my moms. She's kind of an actress."
"She had me fooled." The detective grinned at being taken in so completely.
"And your own language?" Rhyme asked. "You sure sound like a professor's daughter."