Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery 2)
“We do what we want.” She stood up straight and bore into me with a hard look. “We gots our things we do for money, so nobody tell us what to do.”
“Your mom know about the gang?”
“Shit no. Half the time, she don’t even know what day it is.”
“So Tina was here with you last Wednesday. All night?”
She paused again, then nodded. “Yeah.”
“All of you.”
Rochelle fiddled with the pink scrunchie. “Tina spent the night. The others left.”
“What time?”
“I dunno. Late.”
“Eleven? One in the morning?” My exasperation grew. Nailing down a few facts with this kid was like nailing Jell-O to a wall.
“I don’t know.” She came down hard on each word.
“What are their names?”
“Why it matter? You jus’ want an alibi for Tina right?”
“Did I say that?”
“Well, what else would it be?”
“Who were the other girls?”
She smiled and shut the door in my face.
* * * * *
Little D was waiting for me in the car. “No luck on the door-to-door,” he said.
“Why am I not surprised?”
We spoke little as he drove me back to the office. It was rush hour and traffic inched its way northbound on Route One. I stared out the window, catching glimpses through the trees of a MARC train rattling by, heading from D.C. to Baltimore.
“I wonder what’s on them discs,” Little D said.
My thoughts shifted from Tina’s case to Brad Higgins’s. “I was wondering that myself. Some kind of data? Trade secrets or confidential information?”
“Whatever it is, it obviously ain’t for the good of their employer.”
“Maybe they’re using the information to set up their own business.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever’s on those discs, these guys are stealing tens of thousands of dollars to pay for them.”
We crept up on the light at Contee Road.
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “You’re one of the few people I’ve met who’s had a good word to say about Shanae. How’d you get to be friends?”
He cleared his throat. “We had a kind of . . . business relationship.”
“Dare I ask the nature of the business?”
“I met her back when she was dealing.”