Nick rested his feet on the desk drawer. “Why’s that?” he said.
“Because she got back with Dewey. That man just loved her so much, Mr. DiSalvo. He wanted to marry her, adopt her kids. And she kept tellin’ him no.” She looked around for an ashtray, found it on the corner of his desk, and flicked the ash from her cigarette.
“Did she love Dewey?” he said. “Or was it one-sided?”
“Who wouldn’t love Dewey? I mean, he’s a big ole cuddly teddy bear.” Her eyes, hard and glassy until now, softened. “But Wanita,” she said, “had somethin’ else goin’ on.”
His interest sharpened, and he dropped his feet to the floor. “Something else?”
Mary Lou eyed him steadily. “She had herself a sugar daddy.”
It explained the house. It explained a lot of things. “Who?” he said.
“She wouldn’t tell me. Somebody important. Somebody with money to burn and an upstandin’ reputation in the community. Not to mention a wife.”
“What did she tell you about him?”
“That he treated her good. That he paid for her house. Bought her little trinkets. Took care of her.”
“And you have no idea who he was? Not even a guess?”
“Well,” she said, “and remember, this is just my own opinion. But she used to drop little hints every so often, just to drive me crazy, you know? About how his wife was such a gracious lady, but a real cold fish in the sack, if you know what I mean. And I got the impression that maybe she was talkin’ about Judge Kevin McAllister.”
“Ah, yes, the infamous Judge McAllister. He does get around, doesn’t he?”
There was a knock on the door. “Yes?” he said.
Bucky Stimpson opened the door and stuck his head through the crack. “Sorry to interrupt, Chief, but I thought you’d probably want to know about this right away. Wilford Austin called a few minutes ago, said he found a gun in his cornfield, not far from the crime scene. I went out and picked it up. It’s a .38, and I don’t know how we could’ve missed it. I swear, Chief, we went over that whole area with a fine-tooth comb, and there was no gun there Friday night.”
The back of his neck began itching again. “Mrs. Elkson,” he said, standing and coming around the desk to shake Mary Lou’s hand. “Thanks for coming in. If you think of anything else, anything at all that you think might help us, give me a call.”
She shuffled out, eyeing Bucky nervously. Bucky shut the door behind her and sat down in the chair across from Nick. For a long moment, they just looked at each other. “Well?” Nick said softly.
Bucky’s youthful face darkened. He sighed. “The gun,” he said, “belongs to Dewey Webb.”
“Dust it for prints,” he said, “and send somebody out to print Austin. He probably had his hands all over the damn thing.”
“I already thought of it, sir. Also pulled a copy of Dewey’s prints from when he was arrested a couple years back for DWI. We got us a couple of real clear prints, Chief. They both belong to Dewey.”
“Shit.”
“My sentiments exactly. I called the ballistics folks in Raleigh. Got me a cousin that works up there. He says if we’re willin’ to tote the gun up there, he’ll check it out right away, see if it matches up to the slug Doc Ellsworth pulled out of Wanita.”
Nick eyed him carefully, from the shock of red hair atop his head to the toes of his polished black shoes. “Officer,” he said, “what’s your salary?”
“A little over twenty thousand, sir. Why?”
“I think it’s about time I talked to the city council about giving you a raise.”
He drove the gun to Raleigh himself, cooled his heels drinking the State’s pathetic excuse for coffee while Bucky’s cousin Lester checked out the gun. He was thumbing through a dog-eared copy of
Soldier of Fortune
magazine when Lester Stimpson emerged from the lab, holding two bullets. “See how this one’s scored on the top?” Stimpson said, holding up the first one. He held up the second bullet. “Same pattern here. And this funny little mark’s on both of them. Same distance from the tip, measured precisely.”
Nick rubbed his chin. “Both fired from the same gun,” he said.
Lester’s grin was identical to Bucky’s. “Piece of cake,” he said, and snapped his fingers.
He used the phone in Lester’s office to call the station. Rowena answered on the first ring. “Why are you still there?” he said.
“You don’t really think I could sleep tonight without knowin’ what the lab said?”
“Rowena, you never fail to astound me. Bucky still around?”
“He’s right here, waitin’ with me.”
“Good. Tell him to go on out and pick up Dewey. Bring him in and book him.”
“Oh, my Lord and Savior. What are we chargin’ him with?”
“Murder one,” he said grimly, and hung up the phone.
Chapter Twelve
When the first thwack hit the screen, she was sleeping deeply, engrossed in a crazy dream where she and Michael grappled with her wallpapering shears. Then, in the way of dreams, Michael’s face changed and he became Nick DiSalvo, and he took the shears from her hand and shoved her hard onto the bed and away from the body on the floor.
The second thwack took a few moments to sink into her subconscious. And then, slowly, reluctantly, she eased out of sleep.
The third time, she realized that somebody had tossed a hard object against her window screen. On the floor at the foot of the bed, Elvis raised his head, pricked his ears, and growled menacingly. She got up from the bed, wrapped her robe around her, and padded cautiously to the window.
“Hey, McAllister,” Nick DiSalvo said from the shadows at the edge of the lawn. “You snore loud enough to wake the dead.”
Her stomach turned inside out. A bittersweet joy went ricocheting through her, and she quickly tamed it into submission. She knelt in front of the sill and raised the window screen. “It wasn’t me snoring,” she said, “it was Elvis. What in hell are you doing here, DiSalvo?”
“I thought it was time we had a talk.”
Standing there in the shadows beneath her window, hands in his pockets, face turned skyward and moonlight illuminating his badge, he looked like a twelve-year-old playing dress-up. “It’s the middle of the night,” she said.
He leaned back to see her better. “It’s eleven-thirty,” he said. “Hardly the middle of the night.”
“What do you want?”
“I told you, McAllister. I want to talk to you.”
She glanced toward the driveway, saw that her Toyota was the only vehicle parked there. “How’d you get here?” she said.
“I walked. I am capable of walking, you know.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You must be a desperate man.”
“I have information that you might find interesting, McAllister. “But I’m not standing here and yelling up at your window all night. The neighbors’ll call the cops. And how would we explain that?”
“I can just imagine the headline.
Police Chief Arrested for Violating Peeping Tom Ordinance
. Have you been drinking again, DiSalvo?”
“I’m as sober as the day I was born. Are you going to let me in, McAllister, or do I have to wake the neighbors and cause an embarrassing scene?”
She glanced across the street, where Minnie Rawlings still had a lamp burning in her living room window. “Come around the back,” she said.
Elvis followed her downstairs, where she let DiSalvo in through the kitchen door. “You’re insane,” she said, locking the door behind him and snapping shut the blind. “Skulking around in the bushes like a common criminal. Where’s Janine?”
“She’s not home tonight. She’s staying over with Caroline’s niece.”
Kathryn snapped on the light over the sink. “What did you throw against the screen, anyway?”
“Acorns,” he said. “I picked ‘em up off your front lawn. Listen, we need to talk.”
“Fine,” she said, crossing her arms. “You talk, and I’ll listen.”
“I thought you might be interested in hearing that your status as our number-one suspect just changed. You’ve been dropped to number two. We just arrested Dewey Webb for Wanita Crumley’s murder.”
It took a moment for the significance of his words to sink in. Swiping her hair back from her face with one hand, she said, “Dewey Webb?
Dewey Webb
?”
“They’d been seeing each other. The gun that killed her belonged to Dewey. So did the only set of prints on it.”
“But
—
” She tried to take this in, tried to reconcile it with what she knew in her gut. “Damn it, Nick, I’m not crazy. I know that whoever killed Wanita killed Michael, too. What possible reason could Dewey have for wanting Michael dead?”
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said, “but it could be that he found out Michael had been fooling around with his woman, and he killed him in a jealous rage.”
“That’s preposterous. Michael was not fooling around with Wanita Crumley. Besides, the timing’s all wrong. Michael’s been dead for four years.”
“Wanita wasn’t exactly known for her fidelity. If he caught her once, he could have caught her again. Only this time, he decided to get rid of the source of all his troubles.”
“I don’t buy it, DiSalvo.”
“I’m just playing devil’s advocate,” he said. “I don’t really think Dewey killed Wanita, any more than you do. But the evidence all points to him. His prints were on the damn gun that killed her. I had to arrest him. I didn’t have a choice.”
She considered it. “Do you think somebody set him up? The way I was set up?”
“I don’t have thing one to go on,” he said. “Except
—
” He stepped closer, caught her hand in his and brought it to his mouth. Kissed her fingers. “I have this spot,” he said, “at the back of my neck. Right about
—
” He touched her fingers to the warm place where his hair grew down to meet his collar. “There. It itches like crazy whenever I’m on to something. When something’s not what it seems to be. And this whole mess has it itching like a dog at a flea circus.”
Of their own volition, her fingers played in his hair. “So,” she said softly, “do you have any suspects in mind?”
He nudged her cheek with his nose. His breath warm against her ear, he said, “One or two.”
Breathlessly, she said, “I swore I wouldn’t let you in the house again.”
“I remember,” he said against the side of her neck. “I was there.”
“All you do is complicate my life. I don’t have time for an affair.”
“Mmn. A woman on a mission.”
“Besides,” she added, “you confuse the hell out of me.”
He touched his tongue to the pulse point at the base of her throat, sending her vital signs skyrocketing. “And you’ve done wonders for my image,” he said, “since you landed here in Elba.”
“See what I’m saying?”
“Mmn.” His mouth, leisurely and erotic, skimmed over her flesh, making its presence felt in every erogenous zone she possessed. “The mayor’s ready to fire me,” he said, “and the rest of the town wants to lynch me.”
“So the best possible thing for both of us,” she said, leaning back to give him easier access, “is to forget all about each other. Move on with our lives.”
He drew the tip of his tongue down into the hollow between her breasts, and she gasped. “You’re probably right,” he said.
“Nick?”
He traced a damp path up her jaw to the spot just beneath her ear. “Yeah?”
“I’ve never kissed a man wearing a gun and a badge.”
He drew his head back and looked at her with those melted chocolate eyes. And smiled. “This must be your lucky day,” he said.
He sprawled naked across her bed, moonlight illuminating the blurred lines of his body. She lay beneath him, supremely content, his face buried in her hair, his breath warm on her neck, her fingers tracing continuous patterns on the sleek flesh of his shoulders. Their clothes were tossed haphazardly around the room. His pager lay on the bedside table, beside his gun in its holster. Beyond the closed door, Elvis snored softly in the hallway. “What are we going to do?” she said.
“Hmn?”
“You and me. This is crazy. A cop and a convicted felon.”
“The conviction was overturned,” he mumbled. “Christ, I’m starting to sound like a broken record.”
She ran both hands down his back, past his shoulder blades. “Rub,” he said.
“What?”
“My back. Rub.”
She worked at his smooth, warm flesh with her palms, her fingertips, her knuckles, while he groaned in pleasure. “Magic hands,” he said.
She nibbled at his shoulder. “You think that’s good,” she said, “wait ‘til you see what else I can do.”
He turned his head and their eyes met. They studied each other at length, and then he drew her mouth to his and he kissed her, his lips warm and damp and pliable. The kiss deepened, and she wrapped a leg around his thigh and drew him, already hard, deep inside her.
“Kat,” he whispered. “Oh, Christ, Kat.”
She cupped her hands around his rock-hard biceps, stroked the smooth flesh with the pads of her thumbs, drew her fingers through the thick pelt of hair on his chest. “Tell me,” he said near her ear. “Tell me you like this as much as I do.”
He was hot and slick inside her, and she gasped aloud in delight. Her hands found his face, and she ran her fingertips over his cheeks. “There were times,” she said, her voice husky, “when I thought I’d never do this again. Never feel this way again.”
A fine sheen of sweat slickened their bodies and glued them together. She arched her back and he moaned softly, and she went liquid inside. “Nick,” she breathed. “Oh, Nick.”
He lowered his head and ran his tongue down her throat, past her collarbone, to her breast. Greedy for more, she arched against him, wrapped herself around him in a frantic attempt to swallow him whole.
“Kathryn,” he said hoarsely.
“What?” she said.
“I’m about ready to explode here, baby.”
“Just a little longer. Just a little
—
”
The sound of glass shattering ripped through them, giving a whole new meaning to the term
coitus interruptus
. Still gasping, still connected, they looked at each other as Elvis began frantically barking. “What the hell was that?” he said.
“I don’t know. A window. I
—
”
“Stay here.” He rolled away from her and out of bed, removed his gun from its holster, and edged to the bedroom door.
“Nick,” she whispered.
“Quiet.” He opened the door silently, stood there listening for a moment, and stepped through it.
“Nick!” she hissed.
“If you move one step out of that bed,” he said, “I’ll take you over my knee and whale the tar out of you.”
He disappeared down the hall, and she picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1. “This is Kathryn McAllister,” she said. “Somebody just broke into my house.”
She threw on her robe and went after him. Elvis had stopped barking, and she found Nick on his knees in the living room. She stepped on a squeaky floorboard, and he spun around, gun pointed directly at her heart. “Jesus Christ, woman!” he said, lowering the gun. “Do you ever do anything you’re told?”
“What is it?” she said. “What happened?”
“It’s another gift. This one came through your living room window. Watch the glass, it’s everywhere.” He stood up and held it out to her, an old chimney brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it with a rubber band. In blood-red letters, it said SINNER REPENT.
“Charming,” she said.
“Quite. You’d better shut the dog in the kitchen before he gets cut.”
In the distance, a siren began to wail. DiSalvo looked at her suspiciously. “Tell me you didn’t call the cops,” he said.
“Of course I called the cops!”
“Damn it, McAllister! When are you going to get it through your head that I
am
the cops?”
Lights flashing, siren screaming, a patrol car barreled into her driveway. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, “but unless you’re into exhibitionism, you might want to consider putting some pants on.”
He looked down at himself, realized he was still naked, and cursed. He stormed off upstairs to get dressed, and Kathryn flicked on the porch light and opened the door for the police.
Linda Barden was a real professional, a cop right to the marrow in her bones. When Nick returned, carrying his shirt in his hand, she didn’t bat an eye. “Evening, boss,” she said.
The man had a ferocious scowl. “You didn’t see me here tonight. That’s a direct order.”
“I never saw a thing. What happened?”
“Some joker decided to send us a message. Tossed a brick through the window with a little note attached.”
Linda read the note and nodded slowly. “That would probably be the same joker,” she said, “who painted WHORE OF BABYLON down the front of the house.”
“What?” Forgetting his earlier order, Nick yanked open the door and stalked outside, barefoot and shirtless. “Damn,” he said. “Damn, damn, damn!”
The lettering was crude and spidery, spray painted in blood red on the white wooden siding. “Do you think this was the same person who sprayed your Blazer?” Kathryn said.
Linda raised her eyebrows. “Somebody vandalized your Blazer?”
“You don’t need to know about it,” he snapped.
Linda met Kathryn’s eyes and winked. “Yes, sir,” she said. “By the way, Chief
—
”
“What?” he barked.
Linda grinned. “Nice pecs,” she said.
They got the glass picked up, and he patched the window with a sheet of newspaper until she could get it repaired in the morning. When the patrol car left, he felt curiously deflated. “Well,” Kathryn said, “that certainly spoiled the mood, wouldn’t you say?”
“No kidding. Listen, you got any decaf in the house?”