Free The Prettiest One: A Thriller by James Hankins

remembered him and said he used to hang out with someone Bruno called Stick Man. The neighbor says they seemed real tight. The guy used to crash at Bruno’s place all the time.”
    “Stick Man? What, was he just a giant pencil sketch?”
    “No,” Padilla said, “but he was apparently very skinny.”
    “That was going to be my second guess,” Hunnsaker said. “I assume you ran Stick Man through our system.”
    “Yup. Real name is . . . man, I can’t even pronounce it. First name Kenneth.”
    “That’s not so bad.”
    “Last name is . . .” He paused, then spoke slowly, evidently sounding out the name as he read it. “Kahana . . . hanu . . . kahale . . . nahuli . . . or something like that. Probably Hawaiian.”
    “No wonder he goes by Stick Man,” Hunnsaker said as she added a small splash of creamer to her coffee. “You talk to him yet?”
    “Heading to see him now.”
    “Want me to come along?”
    “No, I got it, Charlotte.”
    “Okay. Let’s hope he’s still at his last known address.”
    “He’ll be there,” Padilla said.
    “Why so sure?”
    “Because he’s got another two years left on his sentence. Mugged a little old lady.”
    “Ah. Where is he?”
    “Hampshire House,” Padilla said, which was his and Hunnsaker’s shorthand for the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction. “I’ll be there in twenty,” Padilla added.
    Hunnsaker loved it when someone they needed to interview happened to be a guest of a nearby correctional facility. “Let me know what you find out,” she said.
    She pocketed her phone, stirred her coffee, then took a sip. It had cooled a little but was otherwise just the way she liked it. Why the hell couldn’t she get her Mr. Coffee at home to brew something like this? Same coffeemaker, same coffee brand, same sugar, same everything. Why couldn’t she figure it out? Some detective she was.
    She headed back to her desk with slightly more bounce in her step. She may have struck out so far trying to ID Vic Warehouse, but at least she had a mug of good coffee in her hand and a partner who might be on his way to finding them a real live witness to a murder—that is, unless they got really lucky and the guy had pulled the trigger himself.
    Hunnsaker sat back down at her desk. She pushed the toxicology report to one side—the guy’s blood was clean—and pulled the crime scene photos toward her. The top photograph was a close-up of the victim’s face.
    “Who did you piss off enough to kill you, Vic?”

    Caitlin was sitting on the sofa of the man who claimed to be her fiancé, a glass of water in her hand. She wasn’t yet ready to look at her husband or . . . well, the other guy, so she looked around the apartment. It was small and a bit cluttered, but it was clean and smelled surprisingly fresh. It had a darkly colored, masculine feel to it, though there were tasteful touches here and there that suggested a gentle, feminine hand. She knew she was being slightly sexist, but the overall impression she got from the apartment was that it belonged to a man but a woman had exerted some influence here. She looked over at Josh, who sat in an armchair facing the couch. The other man had brought a wooden chair into the living room from the kitchen and straddled it backward, his arms resting on top of the chair’s back. They were both watching her drink her water.
    Finally, the man said, “Katie, what’s going on here? Who is this guy?”
    “Her name is Caitlin,” Josh said. “No one calls her Katie.”
    “Well, I do, pal,” the man said, “and I’m not the only one. And her name is Katie, short for Katherine, not Caitlin.”
    “No, pal , her name is Caitlin.”
    They turned their heads as one toward Caitlin. She blew out a nervous breath. She didn’t want to admit it, even to herself, but she knew what must have been the truth.
    “Josh,” she said, “you see what’s going on here, right?”
    “Yeah?” the man said. “Well, someone needs