Bailey smiled. Her cell rang and she moved to a corner to take the call. I went to check out the kitchen. Using a dish towel, I opened the refrigerator. Not much there. Just a pint of milk, a half-eaten loaf of potato bread, and a near-empty jar of peanut butter. That told me Brian hadn’t left in haste. He’d eaten down his food reserve, knowing he was going to leave. But he also might’ve been too poor to keep a lot around. Bailey was still on the phone when the uni came back. I thought it might be time to find out what they called him when he was at home. No harm in asking a guy’s name, right?
“Hey, Ms. Knight-”
“Call me Rachel. And you are…?”
“Justin.” He held out his hand. “Justin Wagner. Nice to meet you.”
As we shook I noticed he had brown eyes and really long dark lashes. Memories of the cornerback I’d crushed on in high school came flooding back and I had to force myself to focus on the task at hand.
“Did we get any response from the tenants?” I asked.
“Yeah, Kowalski got something. He’s out in the hall. You want me to bring him in?”
I glanced at Bailey, who was still on the phone. “No, that’s cool. I’ll talk to him.”
Justin turned to lead me out and said over his shoulder, “Oh, and none of us ever sat on that bed.”
Kowalski delivered on the cliché with a Marlon Brando, thick-shouldered build, though he looked a little too buttoned-down to do the whole “Stella!” routine. I introduced myself and asked what he had, and he hooked his thumbs under his Sam Browne and stood “at ease” with legs apart as he spoke. “The old lady on the next floor in 2A, Iris Stavros, said she saw Brian on Monday, around noon. He was with a short blonde girl.”
We’d show her a photo to make sure, but it had to be Hayley. And noon. According to the time stamp on Russell’s text, that would’ve been after the proof-of-life photo was sent but before the e-mailed ransom demand.
“How did she happen to see them?”
“They were coming in as she was going out. She said she was on her way to the store to get some milk.” He glanced upward as if to make sure Iris wasn’t listening, then lowered his voice. “You ask me, she was gonna buy something a little stronger.”
Iris Stavros might turn out to be an important witness. If she also turned out to be a heavy drinker, it’d be a real problem when she hit the stand. I’d have to do a lot of checking before I put her on a witness list. “Did she notice any signs of struggle or force, anything unusual?”
