"Yes, that's right. But now you're telling me that he wasn't? That he was doing something else?" Charlotte wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. "What did you find out? Well, Ms. Reid? What was he doing?"

Savannah shot a sideways glance at Dirk. He had that frozen-as-an-ice-cream-cone look on his face. A look she'd seen plenty of times before. It meant he had nothing and wasn't going to be any help. She was on her own with this one.

"Um . . . actually . . ." Her own brain went Popsicle on her, too. "Honestly, we don't know for sure what he was doing that morning. But we did uncover a piece of evidence that would probably represent possible cause, so you could bring him in and question him about it."

Chief La Cross stared at Savannah long and hard. Finally she said, "What?"

"Hank Jordan may be the dude who shot at you," Dirk blurted out. "Those prints you lifted off the league's old black Jeep, some of them were his."

The chief looked dumbfounded. "They were?"

"Yes," Savannah told her. "And Dr. Glenn told us the vehicle was stolen for twenty-four hours, then returned."

"The twenty-four-hour period that both you and William were fired on," Dirk added.

"But I don't understand. William was very nearly killed by those shots. Why would he ask me to provide an alibi for someone who tried to murder him?"

"I don't know," Savannah replied, "but I have an idea. Why don't we go pick up Hank Jordan and drag his mangy, sorry b.u.t.t in here and ask him real nice. . . ."

"If that doesn't work," Dirk added, "I'll ask him."

Savannah chuckled and said to La Cross, "And he's not so nice."

La Cross shot Dirk a long, scathing look. "Believe me," she said, "I never thought he was."

As they gathered their things and prepared to leave La Cross's office, both Savannah and Dirk reached down and subconsciously checked the weapons in their shoulder holsters beneath their jackets.

"You two won't be needing those," La Cross said as she pulled her own from a drawer and began to strap it on.

"I beg your pardon," Savannah said. "This man should be considered armed and dangerous. We won't be going after him without our weapons."

"You won't be going at all." La Cross's dark eyes went totally black. "This guy shot at me. He's mine."

"Hey! You wouldn't even know about him if it wasn't for us," Dirk snapped back. "We're coming along."

The chief stepped out into the hallway, stopped, and turned back to them. Her chin was elevated several notches, and her hands were on her hips. "You are welcome to wait here at the station house," she said. "Either in the coffee room or a jail cell. Your pick."

Savannah realized they had met their match. Chief La Cross wasn't going to budge on this one. And Savannah realized that if someone had put a bullet in one of her front yard's trees, while aiming at her head, she'd feel the same way.

"Is the coffee any good?" she asked.

"No. But feel free to make a fresh pot."

With that, La Cross spun on her heel, executing a precision about-face that would have made a U.S. Marine jealous, and marched away.

"Battle-axe," Dirk muttered under his breath.

Savannah nodded. "Yeah. But you have to kinda like her . . . a little bit."

"No, I don't."

Chapter 23.

Savannah and Dirk disposed of a pot-and-a-half of coffee and six donuts between them as they waited for Chief La Cross and her team to return with the prisoner.

Waiting . . . without any nature to soothe the anxiety. It was almost more than Savannah could bear.

As her pulse raced, her blood pressure soared, and her anxiety level broke record highs, it never occurred to her to attribute her physical woes to caffeine or sugar intake. No, of course not. It was all La Cross's fault.

"We could have nabbed him, stuck him in a sweatbox, and squeezed a confession outta him four times by now," she said as she paced back and forth in front of Dirk, who was sitting in one of the coffee room's stylish and comfortable plastic lawn chairs.

"Yes, we coulda," he agreed. But not with anywhere near the amount of frustration and angst she was experiencing.

Years ago, she had noticed that in the face of small, daily irritations, Dirk came unhinged. If the woman ahead of him in line at the grocery store had too many coupons, his life simply wasn't worth living. He would threaten to do great bodily harm to anyone who cut him off in traffic, went twenty miles per hour in a forty zone, or gave him a cheeseburger instead of a hamburger.

But when it mattered-really mattered-he was the quiet in the storm. The guy who couldn't wait three seconds for an Internet page to load on a computer was a great guy to have around when waiting for biopsy results or a life-and-death verdict to be handed down.

"It'll be okay," he said, now as always. "Don't fret. It'll all work out."

" 'Fret'? 'Fret'? Is that what you call this? I 'fret' when a jug of milk in the icebox goes bad. I'm worried sick here. What if we did all this for nothing, and they let him slip through their fingers?"

"They'll get him, Van. Sit down and have another donut."

"You saw how they've handled everything else about this case," Savannah exploded, letting out all the rage and frustration that had been building over the past few days. "They were tripping all over each other there at the beach. For all of her throwing her weight around, the chief didn't come up with a single lead on her own. I swear that's why she was following us. It wasn't to see if we'd committed any crimes. It was to see if we came up with anything, because she doesn't know how to conduct a case on her own. They're a bunch of b.u.mbling idiots around here. This department is a joke. And La Cross is-"

"Not laughing."

Savannah spun around and saw Chief La Cross filling the doorway of the break room, directly behind her. The look on her face told Savannah that she had heard every word. At least . . . all the worst ones.

"We b.u.mbling fools just brought in the prisoner," La Cross continued dryly. "If you two would like to watch the interrogation, follow me."

Savannah gulped. "Yeah, uh . . . thank you."

"You're welcome."

As Chief La Cross turned and strode down the hallway, Dirk and Savannah fell into step behind her. Dirk nudged Savannah and whispered, "See? What'd I tell you? Things just couldn't be better."

As they watched the game of cat and mouse being played between Hank Jordan and Chief La Cross-with the chief playing the role of mouse-Dirk's initial optimism was fading, and Savannah's worst fears were being confirmed.

Things were going badly. Very badly, indeed.

Jordan hadn't demanded a public defender yet. But that was about the only thing that had gone right so far.

He and La Cross sat across from each other, eyeball to eyeball-so to speak-at a small table in the interview room, which Savannah suspected at times might double as a closet.

She and Dirk sat behind La Cross in one corner, watching. Savannah was mentally imagining the blood as it figuratively rolled from their badly bitten tongues, down their chins, and dripped onto their shirtfronts.

This was agony to watch. And it seriously made Savannah wonder how Charlotte La Cross had ever attained her office.

"Are you really going to stick to that stupid story," La Cross was asking him, "about how you just put your hands on that Jeep when you were walking down the sidewalk that day?"

Hank Jordan was leaning back on the rear two legs of his chair. His hands were behind his head, where he was toying with his greasy gray ponytail.

"Yep," he said. "I was walking down the sidewalk there in front of Coconut Jane's Tavern and that old Jeep was parked there. The window was down and I saw one of those big nets, the kind you use to catch animals or b.u.t.terflies or whatever. I was just wondering what it was. So I leaned in and looked. That must be how my prints got on the door."

Savannah groaned internally. La Cross had tipped her hand far too soon by telling him about the prints and then compounding her error by letting him know where they had been lifted.

But the worst mistake she was making was . . . telling her suspect the truth. Every single word the chief had uttered since they'd entered the room was the gospel truth. And both Savannah and Dirk knew you never got anywhere in an interrogation by sticking to the actual facts of the case.

Long ago, Savannah had learned that if there wasn't at least a whiff of pants burning in an interrogation room, you probably weren't making a lot of progress as an interrogator.

She pulled out her phone discreetly and texted Tammy: La Cross personal cell #?

She put the phone on vibrate and waited. Less than two minutes later, Tammy texted back the number. Savannah grinned. The kid was fantastic. Savannah sent her a virtual "hug" and composed another message-this time to Chief La Cross.

Step out for a few. Give Dirk a chance.

She heard the chief's phone chime and saw her glance down at it.

Don't blow it. Don't turn around, Savannah thought. Surely, you have at least one sneaky bone in your body. Use it now.

Chief La Cross sat still for several moments, thinking, saying nothing.

Just when Savannah thought it was a lost cause, La Cross stood, stretched, and turned to Dirk. "I'm going to go get myself a water. I'll be back in a minute. Can you keep an eye on this one for me?"

Dirk grinned. "Oh, yeah. No problem. I'd be glad to keep both eyes on him."

The instant La Cross went out the door and closed it behind her, Dirk was on his feet. He walked over to the chair where she had been sitting, turned it around, and straddled the back.

"Now this is more like it," he said to Hank, who didn't seem to approve of this change in circ.u.mstances. "You've heard of the good cop/bad cop routine, Hank, my man? Well, the chief there-she was the good cop. Catch my drift?"

Hank stopped fooling around with his ponytail and squirmed in his seat. He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket; then he seemed to think better of it and started drumming his fingers on his thighs instead.

"Yeah, so what?" he said, trying to sound tough.

Savannah thought he would have sounded a lot badder if his voice hadn't been quavering.

"You go beatin' around the bush with me, the way you were with her the past forty-five minutes, and I'll show you 'what,' " Dirk told him.

"You gonna . . . like . . . hurt me or somethin'?" Hank tried to smirk, but his upper lip quivered and the effect was sadly compromised.

"Well, let's see now," Dirk said, leaning over the table toward him. "I work out at the gym three hours a day."

Lie number one, Savannah thought.

"And I run four miles every evening."

Whopper lie number two.

"And I box at a club in South Central LA every weekend."

Wow! Monster lie number three! Savannah was impressed. Ol' Dirk was on a roll.

"And you," Dirk continued, "wipe off sinks and toilets with a dirty rag, and in your spare time, you throw bedspreads on the ground. So, who do you reckon would come out on top if we decided to tussle in here?"

Hank reached for the cigarette pack again. This time, he pulled it half out of his pocket; then he shoved it back in with a highly agitated look on his face.

Savannah had to admire his fort.i.tude. If ever there was a time to break your New Year's resolution to quit smoking, this would be it. Most smokers in an interrogation hot seat would have had smoke rolling out of practically every orifice of their body by now.

"I told that chief gal how my prints got on that Jeep, and that's all I've got to say to you, too."

"Yeah, but we both know that's a crock, so let's get real. We're burnin' daylight here, and we've gotta get past the 'I didn't do it' BS and on to the 'why I did it' part."

Behind her crossed leg, Savannah had been composing another text. She pushed the b.u.t.ton to "send."

Dirk's phone jingled. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. "Oh," he said. "I think this is what we've been waiting for."

Hank looked worried as Dirk opened the text and read it aloud: " 'Suspect Jordan's DNA recovered from steering wheel and inside driver handle of Jeep-Moonlight Magnolia Laboratories, McGill, Georgia.' "

Dirk smiled at Hank. " 'Suspect Jordan.' Now, buddy, we both know that's you. And DNA. You can't get any better than that."

"When I was . . . um . . . leaning in the window looking, I mighta touched the steering wheel and that handle."

Dirk slammed his fist down on the table, and Hank jumped like he'd been shot with Granny's Taser p.r.o.ngs in his backside.

"Don't you even start with that, boy!" Dirk shouted at him. "You killed that pretty young TV reporter and you're going away for first-degree murder. You better start telling me why, or you're looking at the death penalty here."

Lie number four, Savannah thought. No special circ.u.mstances had been proven yet.

However, the lie seemed to work even better on Hank than on most folks. Savannah wondered if, perhaps, he had a needle phobia. His face turned a distinct shade of white as he grabbed for the cigarettes in his pocket, started to tear into the pack, then caught himself and quickly shoved them back into his pocket.

But not quickly enough.

Savannah had caught a glimpse of something odd. It was a ring of clear adhesive tape around the top-the kind she used to wrap birthday and Christmas presents.

What smoker tapes his cigarette pack closed? she wondered. And what smoker could resist taking a good, long drag, when being threatened with capital punishment?

Slowly she rose and walked over to the table.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," she said, standing close to Hank. "But I was just wondering, Mr. Jordan, would you mind? I really need a smoke. Can you spare one?"

For a second, Dirk looked at her like she had lost her mind. Then she saw him glance away and quickly don his poker face. Of course, he didn't know what she was up to, but he knew enough to go with the flow.