Free The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag Page B

hooker or a runaway, the question still remained: What did her mother not know about her life that might have prevented her death?
 
 
“My Life”
by Gray
 
Me
One
Lone
Alone
Longing
Belonging
Acceptance
Ac cept
Ex cept
Exception
Exclusion
Conclusion
Alone
One
Me

9
    Sonya Porter was one angry young woman. She came into Patrick’s bar with narrowed eyes homed in on Tippen like a pair of dark lasers. She came across the room to their booth with all the purpose of a heat-seeking missile and clipped him upside the head with the back of a hand.
    Tippen winced. “Ouch! What was that for?”
    “I don’t remember,” she said, clearly annoyed he would ask. “I was pissed off the second I heard the sound of your voice on the phone.”
    “You were annoyed because you were hungover,” Tippen said. “That wasn’t my fault.”
    “Yes, it was,” she snapped, then softened a bit. “Well, maybe not this time. But it was your fault that other time, and I never hit you for that.”
    “So we’re even.”
    She gave him a look of disgust. “Oh, hardly.”
    Kovac looked from one to the other and back and forth. The girl—he put her around twenty-two—was a stylized character from a postmodern noir film. Jet-black hair cut in a sleek bob that played up the angles of her face. Dark purple lipstick on Kewpie-doll lips contrasted sharply with the perfect milk white of her skin.
    She shrugged out of her heavy trench coat and hung it on a hook at the end of the booth. Bright-colored tattoos peeked out of the V-neck of her sweater. A green-inked vine with a purple morning glory flower crept up one side of her neck. A tiny steel barbell pierced the severe arch of one eyebrow. A matching steel ring went like a fish hook through her plump lower lip.
    There was a part of Kovac that wanted to get up and leave this circus sideshow now. He was exhausted and out of what little patience he ever had. He had already dealt with two reporters over the phone, carefully doling out the information he wanted to let go of. Just enough detail, just enough insinuation that their Jane Doe’s murder might be tied to others. No, they couldn’t quote him. No, he didn’t have a name for the victim. And now he had to hope they didn’t fuck it up or fuck him over.
    Now this : a Tippen family reunion.
    “Oh, well,” Tippen said. “I have something to look forward to.”
    “Maiming, for instance,” the girl said.
    Tippen was unconcerned with the threat. “Sonya, this is my colleague Sergeant Sam Kovac. Sam, my niece, Sonya Porter, activist, feminist, anarchist, and freelance journalist.”
    The girl narrowed her eyes at Kovac as she slid into the booth. “Do you have a problem with any of that?”
    “I don’t like journalists,” he said. “The rest of it is none of my business.”
    “That’s fair enough,” she said. “I don’t like cops.”
    “Wow, this is gonna work out for everyone,” Kovac said sarcastically.
    A waitress pissed off to be working New Year’s came over and asked if they wanted anything. The girl ordered a shot and a beer. Kovac ordered his usual burger and fries, a heart attack on a plate. Liska usually ate half of his fries, which he figured took the damage down to a minor stroke.
    They had chosen Patrick’s for the meeting—and for the greasy food. An Irish-named bar owned by Swedes that catered to cops. Strategically located halfway between the police department and the sheriff’s office, the pub was open 365 days a year from lunch ’til the last possible moment allowed by the city—and sometimes later, depending on circumstance.
    It was a place for meals, camaraderie, and the drowning of sorrows and stress for people not understood by civilian society. Even on a holiday the place was busy with cops coming off their shift, dogwatch uniforms grabbing dinner before heading out, and the retired and otherwise disenfranchised hanging out because they had nowhere else to go. College football was playing on the