“We got her,” Bautista said as they walked down the hall.
“No, we don’t. We have a murder to investigate,” he said leaving the building and heading for their car.
“Investigate how her and Ronnie King killed her and why.”
He shook his head and stopped. “I know you wanna run right out and arrest her, but we’re not there yet. We’re not even close.”
“What are you talking about? Ronnie King is six three,” Bautista argued.
“And so are a lot of men in this city. What I’m saying is that we investigate this like they aren’t the primary suspects and see where the evidence leads.”
“The evidence leads straight to Ronnie King and Rain Robinson.”
“We don’t know that,” Dickerson shook his head. “Not for a fact, so we investigate. We work this like any other cold case and see where the evidence leads. And if it does lead us to Ronnie King and Rain Robinson, and she marches a gang of high-priced lawyers into the courtroom, we’ll have a solid case to convict her of accessory to murder.”
Bautista took a deep breath and exhaled quickly.
“Agreed,” she said and continued to the car.
Since the case was filed and closed as a missing person case, there was no murder investigation, so they had to start from the beginning. All that they had was the statement of the first officer on the scene.
By that time, Dickerson had developed a good relationship with the Dean Family, so even though some were reluctant to talk to the police about Afra, in the end, they were very helpful.
Some painted a picture of a happy, confident, adventurous and fun-loving woman. Others, the reluctant ones, told stories of a troubled woman that had issues with drugs, alcohol and no good men. A hustler that was well-liked but known to be shady and prone to snitch if it came down to it; that made her dangerous in some circles.
“She was dealing for Ronnie King,” Sharon, her roommate at the time of her disappearance told the detectives. She was the one that had first reported her missing.
“This man?” Dickerson showed her a picture.
“That’s him,” she said nodding and looking at the picture. “But after a while, she started using, and that’s when things really started going bad.”
“How do you mean?” Bautista asked.
“Money problems. She’d be late with the rent or wouldn’t have enough to cover her share of the bills. And then there were the kind of people that she was allowing in the apartment.”
“What kind of people?”
“Drug people.” She shook her head. “They’d sit in the dining room, or they’d be locked up in her room for days sometimes smoking.”
“Ronnie King ever one of them?” Dickerson asked.
“No.”
“When was the last time that you saw the two of them together?”
“He came over here on the day before she disappeared. She owed him a lot of money by that time.”
“Was Rain Robinson with him?” Bautista asked.
“Who?”
“This woman,” Dickerson said and showed her a picture of Rain.
“I don’t know her. She might have been the woman that came over here with him, but he had a different woman with him every time that I saw him, so after a while, the women just blended into the background.”
“Look again,” Bautista said and handed Sharon back the picture of Rain.
“No,” she shook her head and handed Bautista back the picture. “Like I said, she might have been the woman that he came over here with, but I can’t be sure. Sorry.”