“Yes, ma’am,” Devon agreed.
The activity room had a side door that entered the back hallway where the offices were located. Ari took the shortcut, reaching her desk quickly. “Ari Grant,” she said into the phone.
“Ms. Grant, this is Detective Morgan from the Glory Police Department. I got your name off Maria Snow’s file.”
Ari sat in her desk chair and searched for a pen and paper to take notes. “Maria is one of my clients. Is she okay?”
“I hate to tell you but, no, she isn’t. Her body was found in a ravine off Duncan Street last night.”
The news hit Ari like a ton of bricks. “Oh, no. What happened?”
“Can you tell me the last time you saw her?”
“I’ll have to look it up, but it’s been a couple of weeks. She missed our last several appointments and I had a warrant out for her to be picked up by Apprehension Services.” Ari spun her desk chair around and scrambled for Maria’s file in the cabinet.
“We’re going to need whatever information you have on her.”
“Of course.”
“Do you know if she was having any problems?” he asked.
“Nothing more than usual. She had a pregnancy scare last year. Truancy problems. Fights at home.”
“The crime scene wasn’t pretty. Whoever did this to Maria wanted to hurt her.”
Ari thought of the girl. Pretty and brown skinned. She loved sports—it was the only thing that kept her out of further trouble. She could only imagine that Maria put up a fight. “I’ll just get this file together and bring it to your office this afternoon, if that’s okay?”
“That would be great.”
“Have you notified her mother?”
“Yes ma’am. An officer brought her in earlier. She identified the body.”
“Okay, wow. Poor Maria.”
Detective Morgan gave the location and address of his precinct and Ari agreed to meet him there on her way home from work. She hung up the phone and walked to the office next door and broke the news.
***
Nick came by the office to take her to the police department. Maria had been one of his cases, too. Going together didn’t raise any suspicions other than with Rebecca, who’d simply raised an eyebrow when they’d left together.
They hadn’t seen one another since the incident at the GYC. Ari called him after she’d visited Davis, but he’d returned late and they’d made promises to meet one another after work. Maria’s death changed that. Once they were in the car, Nick reached for Ari’s face, turning it so he could examine the wound. He sighed and said, “I guess it could be worse.”
“Yeah,” Ari said. “It could have been a gunshot wound.”
“Don’t talk like that,” he said. Nick gave her a lingering kiss.
Ari kissed him back, but with hesitation. They were still in the parking lot after all. When they parted, she said, “It’s true. Thank God Davis was there.”
“Thank God for that,” he said. She noted the sarcasm. “Next time you should decline any invitations. Your instincts may have been right. Sounds like that place is dangerous.”
“The kids weren’t involved. It was other people—outside the match. The event itself carried off without a hitch. You should have seen Curtis. He was so proud.”
Nick seemed irritated. She placed a hand on the back of his neck, running her fingers through the hair at the nape.
“It’s not the first scary situation I’ve been in since I took this job,” she told him.
He glanced over and said, “It’s the first one you’ve been in since we got together. I don’t like it.”
Ari switched the subject to Maria and the limited information the police gave her. Before Nick picked her up, Ari had gone through the moderately sized file on the girl. She’d made sure all her notations were up to date before she made copies to bring to Detective Morgan.
The Glory Police Station was located downtown, not that far from the GYC. Nick parked in the front lot. They walked through a metal detector and Ari approached the desk.
“We’re here to see Detective Morgan,” Ari told the young officer behind the desk.
They didn’t wait long before being ushered back to a small office. Detective Morgan was an older man with gray, short hair. A large man, he gave off an imposing vibe, although his eyes held the weary look of some of the older case managers Ari worked with.
His first reaction was a raised eyebrow at Ari’s bruised face. “That’s quite a bruise,” he said, pointing to the two chairs in his office.
Ari sat in one, Nick the other, and she said, “I fell the other night. It’s okay.”
Nick snorted. “She was involved in the shooting on City Street.”
“One of my clients is placed there,” Ari explained.
“We’ve got that guy downstairs waiting for his hearing,” Detective Morgan said.
Ari reached in her bag and pulled out Maria’s file. “I looked through everything and made sure it was up to date. I don’t think there’s anything relevant in there, though.”