Free Hold Still by Lisa Regan Page A

clicks on her computer, Jocelyn brought up an old mug shot of Larry Warner, taken about five years earlier. His brown hair was shot through with gray. He looked like an emaciated Morgan Freeman. “Looks like the guy Anita described and the guy from the Dunkin’ Donuts video.”
    “What’s he been in for?” Kevin asked.
    Jocelyn scrolled down all the arrests and convictions Warner had accumulated over the years. “Forgery . . . writing bad checks . . . receiving stolen property . . . identity theft. A couple of drug possession charges and a DUI.”
    Kevin’s eyebrows drew together. “Anything violent?”
    Jocelyn scrolled down further. “Aggravated assault . . . terroristic threats. Five years ago. He did eighteen months.”
    “Did he get picked up last night?”
    Jocelyn clicked back to the first screen. “Inez responded to the call. Let’s find out.”
    It took only a quick text to locate Inez. “She’s downstairs in CCTV,” Jocelyn said. “Let’s go.”
    Kevin sighed. “Now just a minute there, Rush. I’m not running all over town for an SVU case. When’s the last time we had a slow night? We should be enjoying this shit.”
    Jocelyn rolled her eyes. “You really want to be sitting on your ass when Ahearn makes his rounds?”
    Kevin grimaced, his lips forming a thin line. “Good point.”
    “Let’s just run with it till I get in touch with Vaughn.”
    Inez met them in the hallway. “Yeah, I talked to the witness. He was pretty shook up. We ran the tag, came up with Warner. He wasn’t home. His mother was there. She let us do a plain view search of the house. There wasn’t anything there. We put out a GRM on the vehicle. We got nothing. No one reported any black females missing, so there’s no movement on it.”
    “The woman’s at Einstein,” Jocelyn said.
    “She alive?”
    “Yeah, but she wishes she wasn’t,” Kevin said.
    Inez rattled off Warner’s address. “You might take another ride past there to start. Maybe he’s been home since then.”
    “Thanks, Inez,” Jocelyn said. To Kevin, “Let’s go.”

    Larry Warner lived in a run-down row house on North Sixteenth Street. Jocelyn rolled past the house once and parked three houses away. The gray Bonneville was parked across the street from Warner’s house.
    “It cannot be this easy,” Kevin said as they got out of the car.
    “Give it time,” Jocelyn said as she locked the car. “I’m sure it will get harder.”
    Weeds sprung from the cracks in the pavement outside the house. Small piles of broken glass had collected in the creases of the porch steps. The house was an ugly red color—almost burgundy. The porch roof sagged, and one of the upstairs windows above it had been boarded up. The screen door let out a loud belch as Jocelyn opened it.
    “Glad it didn’t come off in your hand,” Kevin remarked as Jocelyn rapped her knuckles against the door.
    They waited a long moment. The rain had stopped. A cool October breeze drifted across the porch, bringing with it the sounds of children playing down the block. In the street, two men labored past, pushing a metal shopping cart with a disemboweled refrigerator atop it. Jocelyn knocked again, harder. After another moment, the door creaked open. Larry Warner stood before them in jeans and a worn black T-shirt. He looked them up and down. It was clear to Jocelyn by the way his eyes darted up and down the street that he knew they were cops. In neighborhoods like these, whether you’d done something to break the law or not, you didn’t want to be seen talking to cops.
    Larry remained calm. “Help you?” he said.
    Jocelyn put a foot in the doorway and flashed her credentials. “I’m Detective Rush—this is Detective Sullivan. Can we come in?”
    With the same feigned indifference, Larry shrugged and let them past. A musty smell greeted them. The floorboards in the living room bowed beneath their feet. A nubby green carpet covered the center of the room. There was a