Gina's bike a continuing story written in real time

Gina's Bike

Lois raised her eyes from the table she was cleaning to look out the greasy window. Her interest had been peaked by the sounds of what could have been a weed whacker moving across the parking lot. The sound was moving too fast for the Mexican landscape crew.

What Lois saw was a figure on a most uncommon bicycle coming across the parking lot. The rider pulled the bike onto the sidewalk. The figure was dressed in long shorts and a zippered windbreaker. Since the lunch crowd had left, Lois could spare the time to watch the figure swing a leg over the bike. The bike helmet and thick plastic rimmed sunglasses, and generic dress hid the rider's features. The rider locked the bike before removing the helmet.

Lois' suspicions were confirmed when the biker removed the helmet and unzipped the windbreaker. The rider of the odd bicycle was a woman. She had moved with a grace that tipped Lois off before she revealed herself. Not only was the rider a woman she was an attractive women. If there was one thing in the world Lois appreciated, it was an attractive athletic woman. The blonde spiky hair was a bonus.

Lois moved quickly to be sure she was the one who greeted the woman at the door. "Welcome would yah like a table or a booth?" Whenever she thought enough to listen to her own voice, Lois was embarrassed. She was a pure redneck and her accent and choice of words confirmed what her body and dress hinted.

"I think I'll just sit at the counter," the stranger suggested.

Lois backed off. She got a good look at the thin graceful blonde as she moved to the counter. The view from behind was just as spectacular as the view from the front. Lois hurried around to stand in front of the woman. "So what can I get you to drink?"

"Do you have iced tea?"

"Sure sweetened or un?" the waitress asked.

"Un," The blonde replied.

After the better look Lois was finally ready to commit to a guess as to her age. The blonde was definitely thirty or so. "You want the lunch or breakfast menu?" Lois asked.

"If you are still serving breakfast, that would be nice."

"You must be new around here," Lois made the statement a question as she placed the breakfast special on the counter in front of the blond.

"Do you know everyone in town?" The blond asked it with a smile.

"Pretty much it isn't that large of a town."

"How about everybody at the prison camp, do you know them to?"

"All the staff has been in here at one time or another. Is that were you are from?" Lois asked.

"Yes, I work at the prison camp." Gina replied. She knew that it was officially the department of corrections women's work facility number 5, but it was the prison camp to everyone involved. It did have some of the architectural features of a summer camp. Long rows of cabins sleeping ten women each in cheap metal bunk beds.

The beds might have been military surplus. If not they were definitely made by the same manufacturer. Gina knew a little about military beds since she had done ten years in the U.S. Army herself. She joined the prison staff only because the state recognized her military time toward retirement. That being the case she could end her career with the state ten years and six months early. It was also the only place she could get a ten year jump in starting salary.

"So where did you get the bicycle, I have never seen anything like it?" Lois asked.

"I built it myself. Don't be surprised if you see more of them around in the future. With gas at nearly four dollars a gallon a bike that gets 200 miles to the gallon is likely to catch on." The little white lie wouldn't hurt, Gina thought.

"What would one of those cost?" Lois could have cared less about the bike, but the blond's tone had changed to friendly when she discussed her bike.

"I built that one from used parts for under fifty dollars," Gina replied.

"Wow that is impressive," the waitress replied.

"Not so much when you realize it will only go about fifteen miles an hour. The same guy who designed that bike also has plans for a much bigger one. I plan to build it next." All that was said between bites of scrambled eggs and link sausage.

"I'm Lois," the waitress informed the blond.

"Gina," She replied extending her hand.

"So how long you been a prison guard?"

"Oh I'm not a guard, I'm head of the medical department out there."

"Oh my a lady doctor," Lois said in awe.

"No not really just a nurse practitioner. I run the medical department, but the local doctor is on call for anything that I can't handle. There won't be much I assure you," Gina replied.

Since there was a natural break in the conversation Gina added, "Well I guess I need to get back. I have done enough sightseeing for one day.


Lois followed Gina to the cash register. She stood beside the hostess as she accepted the ten dollar bill from Gina. Lois could sense that her attention was embarrassing Gina but she couldn't seem to stop. Even before she knew who the bike rider was Lois had been fascinated.

Gina turned without even a goodbye and strode purposefully from the cafe. Strode was the right word, Gina seemed to move more like a man than a woman. Yes there was grace in her movements but also more economy of movement than most women seemed to exhibit.

Lois watched as she swung her log over the bike, then pushed it forward and began to pedal. Without warning a small cloud of white smoke erupted from the engine. The whine of the engine seemed out of place on the bike. Lois watched as the blond and the bike zipped from the parking lot. Both bike and rider were out of sight in seconds, leaving Lois to smile and shake her head.


The small 31cc weed whacker engine pushed the thin blonde at a dangerous speed. Well not dangerous for a car maybe but on the mountain bike converted to motor bike, 30mph was way too fast. At least it was on the small town's poorly maintained streets. The bike was more stable on the country roads but still there were spots that jarred Gina's almost perfect teeth.

Gina loved the feeling of the wind blowing against her skin. She could feel the air even through her lightweight clothes. It was a good thing the state had built a small apartment building outside the prison camp for the staff. The warden would never approve of how she dressed when not working.

That particular morning Gina wore shorts. Shorts that were long enough when she stood, but on the bike they were dangerously short. She also wore an faded blue cotton work shirt. She had at least one button too many open on the shirt, but it was hidden under the windbreaker she wore. Gina liked the way she looked. She would love to have ridden the bike with no helmet. Her spiky blond hair wouldn't have been the things dreams are made of, but it would have felt good to feel the wind in her hair.

The 15 minute car ride back to her apartment took 24 minutes on her bike. Gina hadn't have time to get comfortable in her new home so she was uneasy when she entered. The apartment was half furnished by the state but only the bare essentials. She had appliances in the small kitchen but no table or chairs. She had a western style sofa and chair with exposed wooden frames and big thick cushions but no tables or lamps. Her bedroom had a bed but no dresser or chest of drawers. The apartment was Spartan at best.

The only good thing about the apartment was that the rent came out of her salary. The deduction was less than half what it would have been for a real apartment. The downside was that the apartment was in the middle of nowhere. The prison camp was half a mile down the road. The only town of any size in the area was a two hour drive.

The small town where she had eaten breakfast could be walked through, end to end, in three minutes. She hadn't timed it but one of the guards had. The guards took a perverse pleasure in telling new employees all the bad things about the prison camp. It was remote, the pay was terrible, the hours worse than awful, and employees were always on call in case of a disturbance. Oh yes there had been a prison riot once.

Gina laughed at that one. She couldn't imagine the prisoners of the work camp rioting. After all they were minimum security female inmates.
xx

Gina had just enough time for a shower and a few minutes dedicated to checking her email and catching up on the national and international news on her computer. Her shower that day like her showers on most days was uneventful. She didn't find any new moles, no creepy crawly things, and no lumps in her small breasts,so she was good to go for another day. Since she knew that her spiky hair wilted in the steam of the shower, she washed it three times. She was a bit obsessive compulsive that way. Everything thing had to be super clean for her. It had to do with working with sick people she told anyone who asked.

After her shower she sat naked while checking her email. She had a handful that got deleted immediately. She had absolutely not need for a penis enhancement drug. She had two emails that were of interest,

One was from her brother who was somewhere in Iraq. He always tried to write cheery letters. Gina knew first hand that there was nothing cheery about Iraq. She had done two tours there before deciding that the army was not for her.


The second email she chose to read was from her former commanding officer at the army field hospital in Baghdad's green zone. Col E M Quinn wrote that things there were the same as when she left. Mostly blisters and heat exhaustion from to much basketball. The American military injured and dead had fallen dramatically. It had not always been the case. Gina had been there during the worst of it. Troops choppered in from all over Iraq to be treated for all kinds of injuries. A lot of body parts were chopped off in the bad old days.

She shook her head visibly to clear it of those bloody images. These days she was head of the prison clinic. Even when on her day off she was on call. It was why she carried the prison camp pager in addition to her phone. When the beeper went off she was supposed to call the prison clinic within ten minutes. Yes even if she was in bed with a lover. Gina doubted that it would be a matter of life and death but she supposed that it was possible.

Before she put on her scrubs she filled the bike with the gasoline and oil mixture. The one mile ride to the camp would take about a tablespoon of gasoline, but she had no intension of running out. The woman who sold her the bike (yes a woman had built it just not Gina) had impressed on her the warning to never run out of gasoline. She had also provided the gasoline can and the first half gallon of premix. It was that important she informed her.

With the tank filled, she washed her hands yet again. She put on her white scrubs then opened the door and pushed the bike through. Just as he had stressed that she use the right gas and oil mix, the seller had also stressed the need to start the bike and let it warm up before riding it off. Since the bike had been ridden already she ignored that warning and threw her leg over and began to pedal. By the time she reached the end of the parking lot she dropped the engine onto the tire and it roared to life within a couple of seconds.

The bike buzzed off propelling her to another day's work.



The prison camp was several acres of worthless dirt surrounded by a ten foot chain link fence with barbed wire on top. There were lights at night and guard towers at each corner. It was widely believed that the guards were either sleeping or getting laid within an hour after lights out for the inmates.

As clinic manager Gina's shift was pretty much whatever she wanted it to be. Gina liked her RN happy, so she was pretty flexible. After all she did not have an family to worry about. She did not let her employee take advantage of her though. Every favor she did had to be repaid. In the end she hoped it created respect and loyalty. The only way to know was to wait for trouble to come calling and it always did sooner or later.

The male guard waved her through the chain link gate. It probably should have been closed between entries but it more or less stayed open all day. She rode the bike to the rear of the clinic where she parked it in the clinic manager's space. She would have given the space to the nurse, if there had been a shortage but each of them had a parking space assigned.

The prison camp's clinic was small but no smaller than the emergency room in community hospitals. Gina had an office but didn't see patients there. She saw them in one of the two examining rooms. There was a Registered Nurses who ran the clinic 3 days a week. Gina was on call and also scheduled herself for 2 twelve hours shifts and to fill in for special days off. Since she was on call 24 hours a day, now and then she worked some wicked hours. She could justify the overtime for herself since she really did not plan any overtime it just happened.

Since her RN was experienced, if Emily called her to come in, Gina left home immediately. Usually it was nothing serious but still if the RN didn't feel comfortable with first aid treatments, she was instructed to call.


Gina found the RN who was older sitting behind the reception desk with a cheap romance novel in her hand. She looked up quickly to see Gina. Her reaction was to put the book down. The action was neither defiant nor fearful, she just wanted to focus on her boss.

Emily was in her mid forties. She had spent most of her life working in clinics or as office nurse in a doctor's practice. At age forty like a lot of women who were divorced she began thinking about her future. What would she do later, she for sure did not want to work forever. She decided that it was time to move on to a job with better benefits.

Why she chose the federal department of corrections, she could never answer. The pay was good but the big prisons frightened her. The prison camp was ideal. She didn't worry so much about a woman knifing her for a bottle of pain killers. Oh she had no doubt some would try in other prisons. In the prison camp everyone was well behaved or they found themselves on a bus to one of the more secure facilities. Doing one's time at the cookie camp was the best place in the country, if you had to be locked up.

The camp got it's nickname for the culinary school that it ran. Even though it was a prison, it graduated first class cooks some of whom went on to be first class chefs.

"So Emily how are things?"

"Everything is quiet boss," Emily loved to gently needle her boss.

"You know that you can call me Gina," the younger woman replied.

"Oh I like to call you boss, it keeps the boundaries in place. I get to blame everything on you." Emily said it with a quiet chuckle. Emily waited a moment then asked, "What brings you in on your day off?"

"Paperwork, I have been here a week and already I'm behind on the paper work." Gina walked by Emily then she turned to her office. The office was no more than a oversized janitor's closet. It was painted and nice enough, but it was also too small to be of any use except as a place to write reports. There was no room for an extra chair, so interviews were out of the question. I was the only room in he clinic with a real door that could be closed and locked.

From 2pm until 4pm Gina wrote reports. Most of them consisted of her two weeks of treatments but also inventory reports. It was important that she not be charged for things not on hand. It was an old military rule to do the inventory first thing. In an environment of constant turn over of personal, it was imperative to be charged for only what you actually had, not what the last person said they left behind.




Gina stretched then left the small office. "Well I'm headed home, is there anything you need before I go?"

"No, it been very quiet here today. I had a slight burn to clean up but that's all." Emily looked at the clock, then spoke again. "It's almost dinner time, why not stay and have your dinner here?"

One would expect prison food to be garbage and it probably was in most prisons. It could be even at the cookie camp in the main dining hall. In the staff dining area the food was as good as you would get in a first class restaurant. The cooking class provided the meals for the staff. Since it was minimum security and the inmates wanted to make a good impression, there had never been a poisoning. Gina smiled inside at that thought. Too many years in the military had made her a skeptic.

"What's on the menu?" she asked.

"Tonight they are doing a steak hash. It is probably from the left over meat from Sunday's steak dinner. These girls make great food even from left overs."

"Sure, why not. I'll meet you in the dining room. I need to see the AW to make sure we are doing what they want. No sense letting problems fester," Gina replied.



The Assistant Warden's office was in the administration building about fifty twenty yards away. It, like all the other buildings, was no more than concrete blocks covered with stucco. The administration building was two stories where the clinic was a single small free standing building.

The inside of the building was again like the clinic just plain walls with Spartan furnishings. The whole thing was designed to be utilitarian nothing more. The AW's office was as plain as her own. It was large enough to have a visitor's chair, which she sat in after having knocked and been granted permission to enter.

"So Gina are you getting settled in?" The AW asked it in spite of the fact that Gina had been at the camp for over a month. There was so little to do that settling in had taken about a day and a half.

"Yes everything is fine." she replied.

"So what can I do for you this afternoon?"

"I just stopped by to see if everything is in order. Is there anything that I need to change." From the blank stare Gina learned all she needed to know. No one at the camp had the least bit of interest in her clinic. Keep the inmates alive, the overtime down and all would be well.

"Why wouldn't it be? Is there something I should know?"

"Not at all," Gina responded. "I just wanted to touch base to see if there were any problems."

"Everything is fine," The AW looked down at her the papers on her desk.

Gina had obviously been dismissed. Bitch, Gina thought as she stood to leave.

Gina still had an hour to kill before the dining hall started to serve dinner. Since there was nothing she especially wanted to do, she took a tour of the camp. There was a second fence behind the administration building. Behind the second fence was the actual prison part of the camp. Both she and the duty nurse had a standing pass through the gate. The guard on the gate was a middle aged man, he glanced at her pass only because she was new, then passed her through.

The prison camp was no more than three large two story buildings. The first building was the classroom and dining hall building. The dining hall was divided into one large room and one smaller staff dining room. The kitchen was open to the main dining room. It would be easier to keep track of the workers that way.

Since the inmates were being trained for restaurant jobs, the staff dining room was run like a restaurant. Complete with inmate hostess and waitresses. The jobs rotated between inmates.

The second floor of the building held the classrooms. Some of the classrooms were kitchens and some were filled with desks. All the women enrolled in the culinary school also had to attend high school classes in the second education building.

Gina walked past the dinning hall and culinary school to the second building in line. It was the gym and general education classrooms. The camp in addition to teaching high school and some community college courses, also had apprentice programs. They were much smaller but necessary as well. Some of the women just didn't want to be chefs.

Actually Gina's motorized bicycle came from one of the shops. Several of the programs at the camp made money. The camp sold baked goods on line as well as to a wholesaler who sold and delivered them to supermarkets in the area.

The small machine shop turned out motorized bicycles. Those were sold at a local market by an off duty guard and on line as well through the prison's web site.


Gina found herself outside the shop where here buzz bomb was born. Since she had time to kill she went inside. Once inside the door she counted the number of bikes under construction. There were nine in various stages of construction. Some were being built with helper engines like hers, and others looked more like antique motorcycles.

The larger motorcycle style bikes wouldn't provide the exercise that Gina craved. She didn't want to pedal her bike all over town, but she did want to get a little exercise. The engine assist bike did that. She could ride it downhill and on the flat just like a motorcycle but inclines of any real size required that she pedal. Even that small percentage of exercise was more than she got riding in her car. Beside which it was just plain fun to go around town on the bike. People noticed her more than if she had been in a fancy sports car.

Gina saw the inmate she had intended to see sitting with a coke can in her hand. One of the big pluses to working in one of the shops was the availability of the coke machine, and the pay that made buying them possible.

"How's that hand Rita?" she asked when she was still a few feet away.

"The hand is fine how is your buzzer?"

"It runs like hell, thanks to you."

"Well if the cops stop you for that busted muffler don't roll over on me sweetie."

"Who me?" Gina smiled the conspirators smile.

"What you doin' slummin'?"

"Just waiting for the dining hall to open," Gina replied.

"Don't get too chummy with the trash hon. You just might find yourself out of a job."

"What, I can't stop to check on a patient?" Gina smiled. She had been warned that the inmates would use any excuse to cause her trouble. Sexual harassment was the latest inmate tool.

.

"Well I guess that you can check and you did. You are gonna'' have to go now or the others will think you have the hots for me." Rita had a suggestive smile as she said that words.

"I have the hots for the bike you built me. That's about as close as I'm ever gonna'' get," Gina's smile was very open and friendly. She knew how to handle people. Generally people reacted favorably to her innocent looks. Gina was far from innocent but she was a good actress. "I guess I should take your advice. I can go hang out at the gym for a few more minutes."

Gina entered the gym from the front. Most of the inmates would have entered from the rear. It had to do with logistics. It was just closer for them since their lives were lived mostly inside the complex not skirting it from the outside. It was a subtle difference but it was a huge one. The inmates lived their lives inside the three main buildings and the exercise yard behind them.

The Gym was smaller than it looked from the outside. There were no bleachers for the fans. If there were any gawkers they stood on the sidelines. The gym was laid out for basketball but could be pressed into action for most any other sport. There just wasn't any interest in volley ball or dodge ball.

Gina stood on the side to watch six very muscular women playing three on three basketball. The six women were in excellent shape. Anyone of them could have kicked her ass in a second. They likely had no interest in whipping' up on the new clinic manager. Or maybe it was the guard with her tazer and stick that protected Gina. Either way she got a few minutes to watch the women shooting, dribbling, and fouling each other most egregiously.

Every building on the campus had a fire bell. The fire bell also rang when the dining hall opened for meals. The staff dining hall opened on the same schedule as the inmates. It made sense to have extra guards around when most of the inmates were in one place. Four of the guards were blocking the doors to the dining hall. They also monitored the crowd. Should trouble break out a simple whistle blast would bring all the guards from their excellent dinner to assist.


The evening's dinner was a different style of meat loaf as well as the steak hash. The inmates cooked fancy foods for the guards now and then, but they also had to cook ordinary food as well. Some might catch on with an upscale restaurant but most would wind up working in a hash house. The meat loaf was made in small loaf pans then removed and deep fried. When it was removed from the boiling oil, the loaf had browned outside but not quite done inside. It went immediately into a microwave to finish cooking inside.

Gina knew how it was prepared because part of her job was to do a sanitation inspection of the kitchen weekly. She had only done three inspections but on one of them they were cooking meat loaf. It seemed that meat loaf was a favorite of the inmates and staff. Gina was impressed with the taste of the slice on her plate. Equally impressive were the tangy mashed potatoes. She was not so thrilled with the salad. There was nothing wrong with it, but a salad is just a salad unless it is fancied up. The salad that night wasn't.

Her desert was a piece of cheese cake. Good cheese cake isn't hard to make of course, but great cheese cake is. It was a great cheesecake

Gina left Emily in the dining hall, then walked to her bike. The bike roared to life after only a few pedals. She left through the front gate. The guard was almost, the last person to see Gina alive. The only person to see her afterward was her killer.

Emily set the wheels in motion when Gina didn't show up for her shift that next day. Emily only knew because the AW called her at home to fill in. Gina didn't answer her page or phone all morning. It was noon when Emily made the call to the police.

The local Sheriff made the initial search. It turned up nothing. There was no way to tell from her bare apartment when she had last be inside it. None of the neighbors who all worked at the camp could remember seeing her the night before. But then why would they everyone minded their own business.

The Sheriff's investigator made a lot of calls and interviewed a lot of people. Finally the story of her disappearance made it to the paper. The bike is what got the tip line started. People remembered seeing a woman on a motorized bike putting around town. It was hard to get the dates and times straight until the call came from a woman who wouldn't give her name. She had seen a bike like the one on TV but a young man was riding it.

Since the timing was right the Sheriff's deputies began their search. The bike rider wasn't hard to find. They just went to the location where the woman had seen the bike rider and he rode the bike past them.

"Hey kid," the deputy said, "where'd you get the bike?"

"I didn't steal it." He was just the right amount of defensiveness for the area.

"Nobody said you did, yet?" the deputy replied.

"I found the bike Friday morning out on the highway. Looked like somebody just threw it away."

"Right it was your lucky day huh?"

"I thought it was yeah. When it started right up I was really surprised."

"I bet. Maybe you better come with us." Suggested the older of the two deputies who hadn't spoken previously.

"But I ain't done nothing."

"Then let's go see where you found the bike."

The three of them rode to a spot about a hundred yards from a beer joint. I wasn't an especially rough one as those places go. It was more the hamburger and beer joint, than the pure beer joint. In other words there wouldn't be a dozen of men hanging around getting drunk. Just one or two, the others would be in for a beer and burger.

After the deputies called it in, the crime scene guys met them at the site. They also were told to pick up the bike from the street where it was left.

A uniformed officer drove the kid home while the two detectives went to the beer joint in search of a witness.


"Hey you." The younger of the two detective shouted over the juke box. When the middle aged man wearing a pair of jeans and an unbuttoned plaid shirt turned, he added, "Yeah you."

"What you want?" Even without the badge he would have recognized the two men as cops.

"Where you here last night?"

"Yeah I'm here most nights." He smiled at the two men beside him.

"He sure is officer." The younger of his buddies volunteered.

"You ever seen a woman on a motor bike go by?" The older detective asked.

"Woman on a motorcycle don't think so."

"Not a motorcycle, a bicycle with a motor on it."

"You mean the chick on the buzz bomb. Yeah I seen her."

"Did you see her last night."

"Twice," Open shirt replied.

"When was the last time?"

"Late not sure the time but it was late for sure."

"You mean she was riding that bike after dark?" The detective asked.

"Okay, I heard it go by. I didn't look out it was dark and I was out back in the parking lot. But you can hear that thing all the way to town. Ain't no way it was anybody else."

"It's loud huh?"

"Yeah it's real loud."

"What were you doing out back?"

"Smoking a cigarette. I like the fresh air when I smoke."

"Probably weed," the older detective said to the younger one. Open shirt didn't deny it.


So if he could be believed, Gina went home and then went out again. Since there was no sign of a struggle at her apartment the cops were still in search of a missing person. The bike turning up in a less than perfect part of town was worrisome though.

The cops got a hit on Gina's credit card Late Sunday night. The hit was in the larger town a few miles away. Someone had bought gas with it. The local cops picked up the surveillance tape and had it waiting for the two Sheriff's detectives.
The tape showed a large man pumping gas. His face was easily recognizable.

"Man that guy is stupid. I always said Michael had no sense a-tole" It was the younger of the officers.

"He ain't stupid, he just don't watch TV. Everybody who watches crime stoppers knows we get these tapes." The older detective said it with a laugh.

Michael was a small time hustler. Finding him took less than two hours.

"Hey man what you doin' hasslin' me?" He asked it once he sat in front of the detective teem.

"Oh let's see you are on tape using the credit card of a woman who has gone missing. Did you think we wouldn't check."

"I want a lawyer," Michael did at least watch a little TV after all.

The public defender was all about coping a plead. It was what PDs did. "How about he tells you what he knows and this goes away."

"No way, he tells us the truth and we drop the felony change and go with a simple misdemeanor credit card fraud. Otherwise we start laying the missing woman at his door." The PD didn't seem impressed.

"Eddie listen to me," the assistant District Attorney suggested strongly. "If he doesn't cooperate the FBI is gonna'' be all over this."

"Why? They have no jurisdiction here."

"Wrong, the woman worked at the federal prison camp. If you mess with a federal employee the FBI can just take the case, If we don't make an arrest soon, they are gonna'' take over."

"He found the card?" the PD suggested after whispering to his client.

"He might want to rethink that, Cause he better be able to prove it or we ain't buying." That was the sheriff's detective.

"He bought the card from a kid named Redbone. Redbone said he found the card down in the hood. If my client thought the card belong to a dead woman he would never have used it. He knows how things work. You don't hardly even look for a lost or stolen card."

"I know Redbone," The younger detective told the ADA.


Finding the young man named Redbone took a week. Redbone put his ass in the wind, when he saw the crime stoppers TV spot. He was a street wise kid and knew the cops would be onto him very soon.

It took a week for him to exhaust all his money and run out of couches to sleep on. At the end of a week he went back to his own hood to try to raise enough money to relocate to another state where he had extended family. The law had him within a day. Someone rolled him up for the crime stopper reward. Street hustlers had a few friends but not as many as they thought.

"All I wanted was that bike. Damn thing wasn't near as much fun as she thought," he said that to the detective when accused of harming Gina. "If she had just give up the damn bike, I wouldn't have done it. It's her fault not mine. She made me."

"So what did she make you do?" The detectives asked.

"I cut her man. She tried to fight me and I cut her."

"So where is she now?"

"Out behind her apartment. I though you would have found her by now. She is in a hole back there."

The cops shook their heads collectively. They had been searching where the bike was found. Not in the woods behind her apartment building.

"So you rode off on the bike. Why did you dump it?"

"For on thing the bike was gonna'' be hot. I knowed that, and for another on that big old hill out there, I had to work my ass off to get up it. I thought the bike would just zip me up it, but I had to pedal like hell to get up there. About half way up I got off the bike and dumped it in the woods. I called my boy Lex to come get me. This whole damn thing was just a mistake. You ain't charge me are you man?"

"Oh yeah Redbone, we are going to charge you."

According to the M.E. Gina's bleeding had all been internal. It was why there was so little blood at the apartment. They found spots with luminal while building the case, but it was such a small amount that the detectives looking for a missing person hadn't even noticed it. It was not an obvious crime scene by any means.