"You don't know when to shut your mouth, do you?" Ramirez asked. He surged forward, reaching for his cuffs. "If you'd kept your mouth shut, I wouldn't have to arrest you."

"Arrest me?" Adam said. "For what?"

Ramirez didn't bother with an answer. He grabbed Adam by the shoulder and tried to spin him around, pulling his arm back to cuff him. Adam, however, wasn't having it. He jerked away and held his hand out-not pushing Ramirez, but keeping him at bay.

"Get your hand off of me," Ramirez said as calmly as he could.

"You're not arresting me," Adam said. "I didn't do anything."

"You've been hostile and rude from the moment you answered your door."

"My girlfriend just died...burned right the f.u.c.k up! Of course I've been rude!"

"Oh, now you care about her dying?"

Adam gave a slight shove then, nearly making Ramirez fall down the stairs. Avery saw the look on Adam's face; he knew he had messed up with that one action. Ramirez responded by quickly squatting and launching himself into Adam. Both men stumbled backward and slammed into the closed front door.

Avery would have handled things totally differently but she saw where Ramirez was coming from. The guy did seem shady. She didn't think he was the killer, but he was certainly worth looking into...only not like this.

By the time she had dashed up the few steps and to the small stoop of a porch, Ramirez had Adam Wentz pushed face-first against the door and was slapping his cuffs on him.

"You're under arrest," Ramirez said.

"For what?" Adam asked, his face still pressed against the door.

"I'll have to check the books for the proper terminology for being an a.s.shole," Ramirez said. "Accosting an officer won't look good, either."

Avery stepped back for a moment as Ramirez led Adam Wentz down the stairs and to the car. Adam did not put up a fight. Avery wondered if this was some sort of resigned defeat on his part or just being smart and making sure he didn't get himself into any further trouble. She watched as Ramirez shut the door on Wentz and then opened his own door to get in.

Avery stood at the hood of the car and nodded him over. "Come here," she said.

"Yeah?" he asked, closing the door and meeting her in front of the car.

"You could have handled that better," she said. "This was an unnecessary arrest."

"You don't think he's guilty?"

"I don't. He's certainly worth further questioning, but not worthy of what just happened. If he's a smart man-and that's probably a stretch, let's be honest-he could go after you with a lawyer."

"Are you...what? Are you upset about this?"

"A little."

"He was being really rude and inappropriate with you."

"I've had tons of people be rude and inappropriate to me in this line of work," Avery countered. "This is no different. I have to wonder if you might not have cared quite as much if we weren't sleeping together."

He looked offended at first but then grinned at her. She was a bit disarmed by it because, even in the midst of her frustration with him, it was d.a.m.ned s.e.xy.

"Maybe I wouldn't have," he said. "But it's done now. Let's take him back to the A1 and see what we can get out of him."

Without allowing her time for a response, he went got into the car on the pa.s.senger side. Avery looked into the back of the car and saw that Wentz's face was like a stone-perfectly still and cold.

With an uneasy feeling in her stomach, Avery got behind the wheel and took Adam Wentz to A1 headquarters.

CHAPTER NINE.

Half an hour later, Avery looked at Adam Wentz through a two-way mirror. Ramirez was with her, as were Connelly and O'Malley. O'Malley was reading through Wentz's file, grumbling a few words here and there.

"If this cretin is smart enough to kidnap and then burn the body of someone, then I'll do a little dance on a bar tabletop right now," he said. "This guy's a waste of s.p.a.ce. Yeah, he likely deserves to be in jail for some reason, but not for the death of Keisha Lawrence."

"We can't know that for certain," Connelly said. "Not until we've properly questioned him."

"Yeah, good luck with that," Ramirez said. "It's like talking to a brick wall...a very badly tattooed brick wall."

Connelly and O'Malley both looked at Avery. She shrugged and looked back out at Wentz. "I can give it a try, I suppose."

"And do it without Ramirez this time," O'Malley said. "The only thing Wentz has said since we sat him down in there was that Ramirez was too rough with him and arrested him on a bulls.h.i.t charge. Which is technically true. But I can figure things out on that end. We can keep him here for a while."

"I don't think we need to," Avery said. "It's not our guy."

"How about you question him before you jump to such a conclusion?" O'Malley said.

Avery sighed and left the room. Before she entered the interrogation room, she took a moment to collect herself. She hated to play the s.e.xism card but she felt pretty sure that the men in the room she had just left might think more of her opinion if she had a p.e.n.i.s. It was a nice daydream to think that the workplace had evolved beyond such things but at the end of the day, Avery was well aware of the lay of the land.

Wentz will likely see me the same way, she thought. Got to make sure I don't give him a reason to.

She stepped into the interrogation room and closed the door behind her. She wasn't going to play good cop and she wasn't going to play bad cop. She was going to question him like a good little detective and provide enough proof to the men behind the mirror so they could let Wentz go-and so she could get back on the trail of the real killer. If she needed to, she'd get a little forceful but she didn't think it would come to that if she played her cards right.

She took the seat on the other side of the small table he was sitting at, ignoring the hateful look on Adam's face.

"What sort of relationship did you have with Keisha?" Avery asked. "You've said it wasn't a fully committed relationship and you've also insinuated that there was s.e.x involved. Would you say you were emotionally attached to her?"

Adam thought about this for a moment with a lopsided smile on his face. "Honestly...no," he finally answered. "I liked hanging out with her and the s.e.x stuff was really good. But we never lied to each other about what we had, you know? I saw other people and so did she."

"There is a report in your file from about four months ago where she reported you beating her," Avery said. "She later dropped it. Why is that? Did you threaten her?"

"No. We got into an argument and I slapped her. Pretty hard."

"Do you recall what the argument was about?"

"Over the stupid dog," he said. "I hate that dog. She'd bring it over to my place and it always jumped up on the couch. It would beg me to pet it. She brought it over one time when she wasn't feeling well and asked me if I'd walk it. I refused and the d.a.m.n thing ended up p.i.s.sing on my carpet. So I kicked the dog. And she got upset. We got into an argument, some things were said, and I ended up slapping her."

"And what about the other reports of abuse on your report? There are two others and they both come from the same woman."

"My ex-wife. Yeah..."

"Mr. Wentz, I want you to understand that I am not trying to rub your nose in your past. I am simply doing everything I can to help prove that you did not do this. And you have to understand that the way you responded to my partner and I makes things seem a little suspicious."

Adam looked down at the table. Avery noticed his eyes shifting to the left and right. There also seemed to be a relaxed sort of posture to his shoulders, whereas he had been rigid and upright when she had first come in. These were all signs of a sort of resignation-that he was slowly dropping his tough-guy routine.

"I had to go to court for one of the times with my wife," he said. "I got drunk, she complained about it, and I responded by pushing her to the ground. When she came charging after me, I stopped her with my fist."

"Is that why she left you?"

Adam smirked and shook his head. "No. I left her. She wanted kids and I didn't. She'd try to make me feel guilty about it, so I left her. But what does that have to do with Keisha, anyway?"

"Nothing," Avery said. "So back to Keisha then. Did you know her well enough to know what the routine of her days was like?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Walk me through a typical day for her, would you? As well as you can."

He shook his head in disbelief, clearly finding this whole line of questioning over the top. "Her day starts with the d.a.m.n dog. Walks it every morning right when she wakes up, even before breakfast. She works from home as an editor for some sort of proposal center or something. She doesn't really get out too much. Other than coming to my place and maybe a bar every now and again, she was a recluse, you know?"

"When she walked her dog, do you know if there was any regular route she'd take?"

"No clue. Whenever she started talking about the dog, I sort of tuned out."

"When you spoke to her on that last night before she left your apartment, were things on good terms?"

"Yeah. Things have been on good terms for a while now. We've had a pretty good month. Well...had, I guess."

"And I guess if she didn't get out often, she really didn't make many enemies, did she?"

"None that I know of."

Avery nodded and drummed her fingers on the table. "Can I ask you something a little personal?"

"Why not? It's not like you're not going to ask it anyway, right?"

Ignoring his stubbornness, Avery went on. "Why is it that you don't seem too upset? You do understand why someone might find that suspicious, right?"

"Yeah, I do. And you know what, maybe I did cry a little when I got that call. But there's something about the way she was killed...I don't know. It makes it almost unreal. It's so obscene, you know?"

As he said this, he looked dismissively to the table again. Avery was certain that he had worked on his tough-guy persona over the years and that it was finally breaking down in a moment of vulnerability.

Maybe that's why he is coming off as so emotionless during this while ordeal.

"Yes, I think I could understand that," Avery said. "From here, I'm afraid we'll have to reach out to your employer to ask them some questions. Very basic stuff, just to help the investigation along."

"Do whatever," he said, again looking at the table.

She wanted to apologize to him for the way he had been brought in but also knew that if she had caused him to break a bit and discover his grief, he needed to be left alone.

She left the room and reentered the observation room. O'Malley and Connelly were looking at her with confused expressions. Ramirez smiled at her but didn't seem to know how to feel.

"That's it?" O'Malley asked.

"That's it. He's not our guy."

"How can you be so sure?" Connelly asked.

"Several reasons. If he was the killer, he would have admitted it to it by now-or, at the very least, been covert about dropping clues. Someone that kills people the way our guy is doing it wants the attention. More than that, Adam Wentz doesn't fit the profile. He's not motivated enough. A domestic abuse charge on his record does not equate to murderer-who-burns-his-victims."

She could see that her explanation was getting through to them. But she knew Connelly well enough. He'd try to hold on to Wentz for as long as he could...just to have someone sitting in the A1 as a suspect while a hunt was underway for the real killer. It was his way of feeling productive.

"You're sure?" O'Malley asked.

"Almost positive. I was right about the ident.i.ty of the remains we found, right? Why's it so hard to believe I'm right about this? And not only this, but also that we likely have a serial killer on our hands?"

The two superiors exchanged a confounded look which ended with a frustrated smile on O'Malley's face.

"All right, Black," Connelly said. "I'm going to keep Wentz here for a while longer to see if he offers up anything new."

"He won't," she said.

Ignoring her, Connelly added: "In the meantime, why don't you and Ramirez get out there and prove yourself right. Again."

"Gladly," she said.

She glanced through the window again and was not at all surprised to see Adam Wentz with his head in his hands, doing his best to hide the fact that he was finally crying.

CHAPTER TEN.

The day rounded out with no leads and no new clues and, as such, led Avery to the A1's bar of choice later that afternoon, Joe's Pub. She took her usual spot at the bar with Ramirez beside her. A few other cops were with them, drinking beer and watching the Red Sox lose on the TV mounted behind the bar. As was the norm, the little cl.u.s.ter of cops had their own little part of the bar along the far side of the building. It was there that they gathered to talk about current cases and let out their frustrations over beer, darts, and watching the Red Sox or Patriots on TV.

Avery sat there and looked back on her day, seeing if she could dig out any missing pieces from everything that had occurred. She and Ramirez had worked with the guys in Forensics to go over the ashes and the remains but no matter how they looked at it, they had no new information. Avery knew that cases like this usually took some time to come together but still felt as if she was failing. And it had been that looming sense of failure that led her to the bar. She did not drink to drown her sorrows and failures, but to sort them out and find a way to change them.

She wished she could just zone out and enjoy the baseball game on TV or a game of darts in the back of the bar, but she didn't quite work that way, though. While she was well aware of the chatter from her co-workers all around, she remained deep in thought. She was trying to figure out the sort of man who had the patience, the experience, and the twisted mind it took to kidnap someone, burn them, and dump their remains in a public area. She wondered if the location had some significance. She wondered, albeit briefly, if the empty lot was where the killer had abducted Keisha Lawrence. The lot itself hadn't been too far away from her apartment. And if she had been walking her dog when she went missing- These recycled and rehashed thoughts tapered off as she heard one of the nearby officers mention a name that grabbed her interest.

"Did you hear that Desoto is getting out early?" one of the cops said.