Strong Medicine Read Free Page B

that woman last year?”
    That woman had parked in a cop’s designated parking bay. He’d rammed his car into hers then shot her three times in the chest. Far safer to park on the street outside than risk getting killed by some crazy cop.
    I nosed the Uno into the open space. A pair of eyes in a dirty face scowled at me from the edge of the pavement. Empty bottles and polystyrene food containers littered the space around the man.
    “Watch your car for you, missus?”
    I tried not to frown at the man who shuffled to the front of my car. Layers of clothing hung from his stick-thin body. A scraggly white beard, with lumps tangled in the frizz, stood out against dark, leathery skin. I held my breath until we were out of the cloud of stale urine and wood smoke which clung to him.
    “ Ja , okay.” I nodded to him. I double-checked that I had locked the doors before we walked into the police station.
    The reception looked like something straight out of the eighties. Small windows dotted the wood-paneled walls and a heavy counter ran the length of the room. Two rows of wooden benches stood before the counter. People sat pressed into the benches so tightly that they could barely move. A queue of bored-looking people snaked away from the benches, reaching toward the door. Besta and I took our places at the back of the queue.
    Seven booths occupied the counter, each separated from its neighbor by a thin plywood partition. Three of the booths housed bored-looking officers who stood behind the counter transcribing the troubles of the person opposite them. Half a dozen more cops sat laughing at a table behind the counter.
    The combined body heat of all these people made the room stuffy and stale. The stench of sweat and beer and something sour all vied for my attention.
    The snakes in my gut buckled and writhed again, and I had to swallow hard. I counted the heads between me and the counter: twenty-seven.
    A lady in green stepped away from her booth and the officer signaled the next person in the queue. Two elderly men stood and shuffled over to him while the rest of the queue moved along the chairs like the legs on a millipede.
    A clock ticked on the wall, it was half past eight. More than five hours had passed since Lindsey had been due home. A digital display next to the clock flashed red demo text across a black screen. I watched it for a few minutes. It was hypnotic in a way; the dotty letters slid and flashed and faded their way back and forth across the narrow screen.
    “Is there anywhere else she might have gone?” Besta asked.
    I shook my head. “I don’t know, Ma . She doesn’t really tell me who her friends are.”
    “And she’s always home before dinner,” my mother said.
    I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen, hoping to see good news. There were no SMSes or missed calls, just an old picture of Lindsey and me eating ice cream. We were at the zoo. I could just make out the elephant enclosure behind us. She was five in the photo. I’d spent twenty minutes that morning brushing her white-blond hair before pulling it into pig-tails and tying pink ribbons around them. White ice cream ran down her fingers, a drop captured as it was about to fall to the floor.
    Another person stepped away from the counter and everyone concertinaed forward. We’d been here for almost half an hour and there were still twenty-four people ahead of us in the queue.
    “This is fokken crazy.” I glared at my phone, my knuckles white around the edges, willing it to ring. I started tapping my foot, drumming my hands on my thighs, chewing my nails, anything to try and pass the time while we were stuck in limbo in this queue. Fifteen minutes passed, one more person moved to the front of the queue.
    “Why don’t those lazy fuckers do something?” I glared at the group of cops chilling behind the counter. I counted to ten, taking deep breaths between each number, trying to slow my pulse and gain control of my temper.