Ashes to Ashes Read Online Free PDF

“Don’t know your way around. Don’t have any connections. Hard to get set up, get your life going.”
    The girl bowed her head and chewed at a thumbnail, her hair swinging down to obscure her face.
    “It takes money to set yourself up,” Kate went on. “Money to eat. Money for a place. Money for clothes. Money for everything.”
    “I get by.”
    Kate could imagine just how. She knew how it worked with kids on the street. They did what they had to do to survive. Beg. Steal. Sell a little dope. Turn a trick or two or ten. There was no shortage of depraved human scum in the world more than willing to prey on kids with no homes and no prospects.
    Liska set the steaming coffee cups on the table and leaned down to murmur in Kovac’s ear. “Elwood tracked down the building manager. The guy says the apartment’s vacant and if this kid is living there, then he wants a five-hundred-dollar deposit or he’ll press charges for criminal trespass.”
    “What a humanitarian.”
    “Elwood says to him: ‘Five hundred? What’s that? A buck a cockroach?’”
    Kate absorbed the whispered remarks, her eyes still on Angie. “Your life’s tough enough right now without having to become a witness to a murder.”
    Head still down, the girl sniffed and brought the cigarette to her lips. “I didn’t see him kill her.”
    “What
did
you see?” Sabin demanded. “We need to know, Miss DiMarco. Every minute that passes is crucial to the investigation. This man is a serial killer.”
    “I think we’re all aware of that, Ted,” Kate conceded with a razor’s edge in her voice. “You really don’t have to remind us every two minutes.”
    Rob Marshall twitched hard. Sabin met her gaze, his own impatience showing. He wanted a revelation before he bolted for his meeting with the mayor. He wanted to be able to step in front of the cameras at the press conference and give the monster loose among them a name and a face and announce that an arrest was imminent.
    “Angie seems to be having some difficulty deciding whether to cooperate or not,” he said. “I think it’s important she realize the gravity of the situation.”
    “She watched someone set a human body on fire. I think she understands the gravity of the situation perfectly.”
    In the corner of her eye, Kate could see she had caught the girl’s attention. Maybe they could be friends living on the street together after Sabin fired her for challenging him in front of an audience. What was she thinking? She didn’t even want this mess in her lap.
    “What were you doing in that park at that hour of night, Angie?” Rob asked, mopping at his forehead with a handkerchief.
    The girl looked him square in the face. “Minding my own fucking business.”
    “You can take your coat off if you want,” he said with a brittle smile.
    “I don’t want.”
    His jaw clenched and the grin became more of a grimace. “That’s fine. If you want to keep it on, that’s fine. It just seems hot in here. Why don’t you tell us in your own way how you came to be in that park last night, Angie.”
    She stared at him with venom in her eyes. “I’d tell you to kiss my ass, but you’re so fucking ugly, I’d make you pay in advance.”
    His face flushed as red as a bad rash.
    A beeper went off and everyone in the room except the witness reached for theirs. Sabin scowled darkly as he read the message in the display window of his. He checked his watch again.
    “Did you get a good look at the man, Angie?” Rob asked in a tight voice. “You could be such a help here. I know you’ve gone through something terrible—”
    “You don’t know shit,” the girl snapped.
    A vein popped out in Rob’s left temple and sweat beaded on his shiny forehead.
    “That’s why we’re asking you, kiddo,” Kate said calmly. She blew a lazy stream of smoke. All the time in the world. “Did you get a good look at the guy?”
    Angie studied her for a moment, the time and the silence stretching, then looked to