“She’s got a damn good lawyer.”
Nick shook his head as he paged down the screen. “We work our asses off to make these cases and it goes to hell the second you cocksuckers show up.”
“Yeah, but at least you get your cock sucked.”
He gave her the look again. They both knew why she kept bringing this back to sex.
Nick said, “I could get fired for looking this up for you.”
“Tell me when a cop ever got fired for anything.”
He grinned. “Do you know how miserable desk duty is?”
“Beats being shot in the back.” She could tell by his sharp look that she had pushed him too far. So she pushed him farther. “Are you worried at all that white people are starting to distrust the cops, too?”
The sharp look got sharper, but he said, “Counselor, you better be glad your legs look so damn good today.”
She watched him turn back to his computer. His finger slid across the track pad. “Here we go. Previous addresses—Lake Point, Riverdale, Jonesboro.”
Not the northern corner of Iowa. Not on a farm. Not married. Not raising two kids.
“Lady prefers your finer establishments.” Nick took the pen and spiral notebook from his breast pocket. “Two weeks ago, she was given a citation for jaywalking. She gave an address at a no-tell motel. She in the game?”
Leigh shrugged.
“The name doesn’t exactly set her up for success.” He laughed. “Calliope DeWinter.”
“Callie-ope,” Leigh corrected, because their mother was too stupid to know how to pronounce it. “She goes by Callie.”
“So she’s capable of making at least one good choice.”
“It’s not about making good choices. It’s about having good choices.”
“Sure.” Nick ripped the page out of his spiral notebook. He folded the address in half and held it between his two fingers. He didn’t try to slip it underneath her bra strap because he was a cop and he wasn’t stupid. “What do you make, Counselor, ten grand an hour?”
“Something like that.”
“And a low-level junkie prostitute pays for that how?”
Leigh forced herself not to snatch the address out of his hand. “She’s a trust-fund baby.”
“Is that the story you wanna tell me?”
Only one emotion could cut through the Valium: anger. “Jesus fuck, Nick. What’s with the third degree? Either give me the information or—”
He tossed the address onto her lap. “Get outta my ride, Counselor. Go find your junkie.”
Leigh didn’t get out. She unfolded the paper.
ALAMEDA MOTEL 9921 STEWART AVENUE.
Back when Leigh worked Legal Aid, she’d had a lot of clients living in the long-term motel. They charged $120 a week to poor people who could find a hell of a lot better place to live if they could save up the deposit money to rent a place that charged $480 a month.
Nick said, “I got work to do. Either start talking or start walking.”
Her mouth opened . She was going to tell him the truth.
She’s my sister. I haven’t seen her in over a year. She lives like a junkie prostitute while I live in a gated condo building and send my daughter to a twenty-eight-grand-a-year school because I pushed my baby sister into the arms of a sexual predator and was too ashamed to tell her that he’d come after me, too.
“Fine.” Leigh couldn’t tell Nick the whole truth, but she could tell him part of it. “I should’ve been up front with you from the beginning. She’s one of my previous clients. Back when I worked for myself.”
Nick clearly expected more.
“She was a gymnast in elementary school. Then she got into competitive cheerleading.” Leigh narrowed her eyes to ward off a crass cheerleader joke. “She was a flyer. Do you know what that is?”
He shook his head.
“There’s a couple of guys, sometimes as many as four, who are spotters. They do things like raise up the flyer on the palms of their hands while she holds a pose. Or sometimes they just throw her up into the air as high as they can. We’re talking fifteen, sometimes twenty feet off the ground. The flyer spins around, does a couple of flips, then she comes down, and the spotters interlock their arms to form a basket for her to land in. But if they don’t catch her, or they catch her wrong, then she can mess up her knee, break an ankle, sprain her back.” Leigh had to stop to swallow. “Callie landed wrong on an X-Out basket toss and ended up fracturing two vertebrae in her neck.”