Free The Price of Innocence by Lisa Black Page A

Are you done?’
    ‘Yeah. I’ve pulled off every piece of trace evidence I could find. Do we
have
a next of kin for him?’
    ‘The Feds are supposed to find out. The parents are deceased, they told me that, but they’re searching for siblings, spouse, etc.’
    ‘No.’ A woman in a suit, the same woman Theresa had met at the scene, entered with her dour partner. ‘Sorry we’re late. They had a water main break on Euclid and we had to go around. I see you’ve started on our suspect.’
    ‘Victim,’ Theresa said. ‘No, you aren’t searching, or no, he has no next of kin?’
    ‘No,’ her partner answered. A man of few words. Though his face softened when he gazed at Christine, the Dudley-do-Right chin slacking just a millimeter. Christine’s source, no doubt.
    ‘None that we can find,’ the woman expounded. Nothing softened the lines that the intervening days had etched into her face; the agents had probably been working around the clock. ‘Parents died in Pittsburgh years ago, no siblings, never married.’
    ‘How does an Indian guy wind up part of a Georgian splinter group?’
    ‘The Vlads might have taken responsibility, but they don’t make a lot of sense. They’re a small group, no real activity on the board and we can’t confirm their numbers. They’ve created some riots in Georgia but no bombings, and have never done anything more violent in the US than write letters to the editor.’ The female agent said all this. When he could tear his gaze from Christine, the male agent merely looked around him as if he personally found everything in the room as repulsive as the flayed-open bodies.
    ‘So you think they’re just claiming the credit for someone else’s work?’
    The woman shrugged. ‘It’s a theory. It also means whoever
did
stockpile the explosives is not about to step up and claim ownership.’
    ‘Sounds like they didn’t really mean to blow up the building. Makes me feel a little better,’ Theresa admitted.
    ‘I don’t see why,’ the woman sighed. ‘They were hoarding it for some purpose. If they didn’t intend to use it on the Bingham—’
    ‘Then their target is still out there.’
    The woman nodded, and evaded a few more questions. Theresa couldn’t blame her. No one at the M.E.’s office had an official security clearance and several of them were incurable gossips.
    Besides, Theresa told herself, this isn’t my case. Even the samples she had removed from the body would be turned over to the Feds, to be analyzed and identified by their laboratories.
    Of course, no one said she couldn’t take a good look at them before she sealed them up. ‘I’ll just get out of your way, then.’
    She took her envelopes and left. She didn’t ask if Nairit Kadam, when alive, had a deformity to his left wrist, or what he had done for a living, or how long he’d been in Cleveland. Christine, she knew, would question the agents without cease for every moment they were present. If one wanted to hang around that particular doctor’s autopsies, one had to pay the price.
    Maybe the dead man knew nothing more about terrorists than what he saw on TV. But maybe he did. Maybe more destruction would explode in the city, today, tomorrow or the next day.
    Keep working, she told herself. Just keep working.

EIGHT
    L ily Simpson must not have waited for the dog to dry before presenting herself to receive the booty of her inheritance, because she appeared in front of Frank the next morning as he stepped off the elevator.
    ‘Oh, hi,’ she said. ‘I was just coming to find you.’
    ‘Yeah?’ He juggled a Styrofoam cup of coffee without a lid and a lengthy list of felons to re-interview regarding the depth of their dislike for Marty Davis. Angela had gone to get the car and he needed to get out to the Ontario Street sidewalk before she had to double-park and create a traffic hazard. RTA bus drivers cut no slack for official cars.
    ‘I went to that lawyer like you said, and he said yeah I’m the