"Leave."

Vicki swallowed hard and walked to the door, then stopped in the threshold. "I'm gonna bust whoever sold those drugs to your mother."

"You go, girlfriend." Reheema dropped the bags and began to clap, and her ironic applause followed Vicki as she walked out the door.

And into the snowstorm.

TWENTY

Snow fell hard, and Vicki hurried to her car, her head bent against the icy flakes that bit her cheeks. She reached the Cabrio, got inside, but didn't pull out of the space right away. Snow dusted her plastic back window, but she could see in her outside mirror that Reheema was carrying Hefty bags out of the house and tossing them into the bed of an orange-and-white pickup, double-parked out front.

She turned on the ignition and watched Reheema work, pretending she was letting the engine warm up. Clearly the woman was determined; a Lady Tiger, indeed. Carrying concealed and aiming without blinking. Cleaning the house the same morning her mother was killed. Being practical, levelheaded, and emotionless about all of it, even her mother's addiction. You didn't need to be Dr. Phil to guess that Reheema might have been the parent growing up, taking care of her mother. Even buying her a gun for protection. Had Reheema been fooled, or did she know? Was she telling Vicki the truth? Either way, Reheema had taken the rap, spending almost a year at the FDC. And she would have been convicted if Jackson hadn't been killed.

Jackson. Morty. Who was Jackson to Reheema? How were they connected, if at all? Was it possible that Jackson knew Reheema but not vice versa? How?

Vicki yanked down the emergency brake and eased out of the spot. There was no one on the street, playing or driving. Not a living soul except Reheema, coming out of the house with another load of bags, a tall, dark figure with dark bags against the white snow, receding in the rearview mirror.

Vicki reached the corner and turned, noticing things about the houses that she hadn't before, now that it was daytime and the street felt more familiar. Here and there, lights glowed inside the houses, and in one of the windows flickered an electric candle, ringed by a plastic holly wreath left over from Christmas. There was still life in Devil's Corner; still families making their way, and people like Reheema, moving in and trying to set up house.

Vicki cruised ahead, the car interior warming, and approached Cater. The corner at the mouth of the alley was empty. No scary guys in dark hoods. She drove forward slowly and eased to a stop, looking to the right as she had last night. She parked and scanned the street, which looked different in the daylight. There were no cars parked on it, so she could conceivably drive down it, and it was lined with houses, many of which had lights on and trash at the curb collecting snow, their black bags like misshapen body bags. But even in the terrible weather, she could see people milling at the far end of the street. They seemed to be going inside the vacant lot.

The store. Vicki reached into her purse for her Filofax and pen, then started taking notes. Whether it was the bad weather or the fact that the cops had been at the Bristow house, the watchers hadn't come out yet. She shivered in the cold car, but she didn't quit because she'd never get another chance.

In time the foot traffic fell into a pattern; customers walking into the vacant lot, then leaving five to ten minutes later. A few cars came down the opposite cross street, driving toward Vicki, the windshield wipers pounding to keep the snow off.

They stopped at the vacant lot to let somebody out and back in again after the buy; the transaction was never made curbside. Only a car or two drove past her and up Cater, because the vacant lot was closer to that end, and she noted their license plates.

She documented everything in her pocket-size Filofax. Every hour or so, the same man, a short man in a black leather coat and black leather baseball cap, would leave the vacant lot, walk down the street away from the Cabrio, then return in about twenty-five minutes to half an hour. Alternating with him, but making the same trip on roughly the same schedule, was a taller man in an Eagles jacket and black knit cap. Vicki theorized that they were the go-betweens, going back and forth to a crackhouse that supplied the store.

On the third trip by the man in the Eagles coat, Vicki set aside her notes and started the Cabrio engine. She cruised forward in the driving snow, finally turning on the heat and switching the defrost to MAX to keep the windshield clear. She took a right at the corner and sped to the end of the street, her windshield wipers pumping to keep up with the snowfall. She stopped at the traffic light, striking a blow for lawful behavior everywhere, and turned right.

By the time she was on the cross street, the man in the Eagles coat had reached the top of Cater Street on foot. Vicki slowed the Cabrio to a crawl and double-parked by a salt-covered Taurus to watch him. Eagles Coat had his back to her, the emblematic bird flying high, its talons splayed. The street was quiet; there was little traffic. Nobody was out in the snow; on the drive over, she'd heard reports of a big storm.

Eagles Coat got into a battered blue Neon parked at the middle of the line-up of cars. Vicki waited while he started the Neon, and when he pulled out of his space, she let a black Ford truck get between them for cover, then took off after him. They cruised to the top of the street together, his speed quicker than hers. She stepped on it, tailgating the black truck.

Her heartbeat picked up as the Neon took a left onto Cleveland Street and headed west.

The black truck went straight, leaving her exposed, but a pile of fresh snow covered the Neon's back window, and the driver made no attempt to defrost it. The Neon had to be ten years old, with a large dent buckling the back fender. Vicki had heard that drug dealers kept the nice cars for driving around in and used crummy cars for "work," because they were less conspicuous. The felonious version of a station car.

The Neon sped forward heedless of the weather conditions, with icy snow streaming sideways across the street. Pellets hit the window, making tinck tinck noises, and the windshield wipers worked frantically. Vicki drove as fast as she could, letting the occasional car get ahead of her to minimize her chance of being spotted, since snow on the back window of the Neon was sliding off.

They threaded their way out of Devil's Corner, and Vicki could see through her steamy window that the neighborhood was worsening. They took a right and a left, and the Neon turned quickly onto a street, then parked. She drove past it because she couldn't stop fast enough and she wanted to avoid being spotted. She went around the block to the street into which the Neon had driven and glanced at the street sign. It was crooked, but its bright green was readable in the snowstorm:

ASPINALL STREET.

Whoa. Vicki flashed on the envelopes on Shayla's dresser, in the row house. They were being forwarded to her boyfriend, Jamal Browning. He lived on Aspinall Street.

Vicki's heart thumped harder. She leaned forward over the steering wheel but the Neon was parked too far away to see much. She waited. Trying to stay calm. Wishing she had a cell phone. Who would she call? The cops. Dan. Somebody. Anybody.

She assumed that Eagles Coat was going to Jamal Browning's house on Aspinall Street, because it seemed unlikely that that there were two drug dealers on Aspinall Street. That meant that Jamal could have been supplying the drugs to the new store on Cater, where Mrs. Bristow had bought her drugs. Could that be the connection? Had Reheema given her mother the guns, then her mother sold or traded them on Cater Street for crack, which was in turn supplied by Jamal Browning? Did that mean the guns had ended up with Browning? And what was Reheema's connection?