He leaned into me and his lips brushed the shell of my ear. "Feeling playful?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." "Watch your back, babe. I will get even."

Chapter Fourteen

Ranger reached around me and took the bond agreement I'd been holding. "Roger Pitch," Ranger read aloud. "Charged with assault with a deadly weapon and attempted robbery. Tried to hold up a convenience store. Attempted to shoot the clerk. Fortunately for the clerk, Pitch's gun misfired and Pitch took out his own thumb."

I could feel Ranger laughing behind me as he turned to the second page. Connie and I were smiling, too. We all knew Roger Pitch. He deserved to have one less thumb.

"Vinnie wrote a five-figure bond that wasn't totally secured because there seemed to be a low risk of flight," Ranger said.

"Pitch was a local guy with only one thumb. What could go wrong?" Vinnie yelled from his inner office, his words muffled behind his closed door.

"Goddamnit," Connie said, opening drawers, looking under her desk. "He's got me wired again. I hate when he does that." She found the bug and dumped it into a cup of coffee.

"Pitch didn't flee," Connie said. "He's just refusing to show up for court. He's at home, watching television, beating on his wife when things get boring."

"He's only a couple blocks from here," Ranger said. "We can pick him up and I'll call someone in to shuttle him over to the station."

Roger Pitch was mean as a snake and twice as stupid. Not someone I wanted to tangle with. "Yeah, but Connie has other files. Maybe there's something more fun."

"Pitch is a fun guy," Ranger said.

"He's a shooter."

"Not anymore," Connie said. "He blew this thumb clear to Connecticut. His hand's going to be bandaged."

Connie was right about Pitch's hand being bandaged. The incident happened three weeks ago, but the hand was still wrapped in big wads of gauze.

Pitch answered the door when Ranger and I knocked and he calmly accepted that we were bond enforcement. "I guess I forgot my date," he said. "It's all these pain pills they got me on. Can't remember a damn thing. Lucky I don't put my pants on my head in the morning."

Ranger and I were both dressed for the visit in full Super Hero Utility Belts. Sidearms strapped to our legs, handcuffs tucked into the belt, pepper spray and stun gun at the ready. Plus Ranger had a two-pound Maglite, just in case we needed to see in the dark. The lite could also crack a head open like a walnut, but walnut cracking was a little illegal, so Ranger saved it for special occasions.

"Let me just shut the television off," Pitch said. And then he whirled around, slammed the door shut, and threw the lock.

"Fuck," Ranger said.

Ranger didn't often curse and he rarely raised his voice. The fuck had been entirely conversational. Like he was now mildly inconvenienced. He put his Bates boot to the door and the door popped open to reveal Pitch at the end of the hall with a gun in his left hand.

"You're just a couple amateur pussies," Pitch yelled.

Ranger gave me a hard shove to the shoulder that knocked me off the small front stoop into a scraggly hydrangea bush. Then he stepped to the side of the door and drew his gun.

Pitch squeezed one off, but he was shooting with his left hand and clearly he wasn't ambidextrous because the round hit the hall ceiling. The second round bit into the wall.

"Goddamn," Pitch shrieked. "Piece of shit gun!"

Pitch had destroyed his thumb with a semiautomatic. And I guess one misfire was enough for him because he was now holding a revolver. The revolver held six rounds and Pitch fired them all off at us.

Ranger and I were counting shots. I was counting while I was trying to disengage from the hydrangea. There was silence after the sixth shot. Ranger stepped into the doorway, gun drawn, and told Pitch to drop his weapon. I climbed onto the porch and saw that Pitch was trying to get another round into the chamber. Problem was, he couldn't do it with the bandaged hand, so he had the gun rammed between his legs and he was fumbling with his left hand.

Ranger gave his head a small disbelieving shake. Like Pitch was so pathetic he was an embarrassment to felons the world over.

Pitch gave up on the gun, threw it at Ranger, and ran into the kitchen.

Ranger turned to me and smiled. "And you said he wasn't going to be fun."

"Maybe you should shoot him or something," I said.

Ranger ambled into the kitchen where Pitch was rummaging in a junk drawer, presumably looking for a weapon. Pitch came up with a screwdriver and lunged at Ranger. Ranger grabbed Pitch by the front of his shirt and threw him about twelve feet across the room. Pitch hit the wall and slid to the floor like a glob of slime.

Ranger cuffed Pitch to the refrigerator and called Tank. "Send someone over," Ranger said. "I have a delivery."

We stayed to watch Pitch get taken away by yet another of the Merry Men, we secured the house, and we walked out to the car.

"You could have told me to move instead of dumping me in the bushes," I said to Ranger.

"It was one of those instinct things. Keeping you out of harm's way."

"Yeah, right. Maybe more like getting even with me for sending the Apusenjas out to talk to you."

Ranger opened the passenger side door for me. "When I get even it's going to be something much more rewarding than dumping you in the bushes."

I buckled myself in and looked at my watch. "My sister came home today with the baby. I should stop around and see how she's doing."

"Tank's going to be glad he broke his leg when he finds out how I spent my afternoon."

"You don't like babies?"

"I come from a big family. I'm used to babies."

"Well then?"

"My grandmother is a little Cuban woman who cooks all day and speaks Spanish. Your grandmother watches pay-per-view porn."

"She used to watch the Weather Channel, but she said there wasn't enough action."

"Maybe you should check the dose on her hormone replacement. Last time I saw her she was trying to imagine me naked."

I burst out laughing. "That's what happens when you're a hottie. Women imagine you naked. Lula imagines you naked. Connie imagines you naked. Two-hundred-year-old Mrs. Bestler imagines you naked."

"How about you?"

"I don't have to imagine. I've seen you naked. Your naked body's burned into my brain."

Ranger turned onto my parents' street. "I'm going to wait in the car. And if you send your grandma out to harass me, I swear. . ."

"Yeah?"

"I don't know what I swear. I can't think of anything awful enough to do to you that wouldn't leave you maimed or psychologically scarred."

"Nice to know there are boundaries."

Ranger parked in front of my parents' house and got out of the car.

"I thought you weren't coming in," I said.

"I'm not. I'm going to stay out here. I can't see the entire street if I sit in the car."

Grandma Mazur opened the front door for me. "Is that Ranger with you? Isn't he coming in?"

"He thinks he's coming down with a cold. Doesn't want to infect everyone."

"Isn't that thoughtful! He's such a nice young man. Lots of times men aren't nice like that when they're hot-looking. Maybe I'll bring him something from the kitchen."

"No! He just ate. He's not hungry. And you can't take a chance on getting infected. What if you got sick and gave the cold to the baby?"

"Oh yeah. Well, you tell him I was asking about him."

"You bet."

Valerie was on the couch, nursing the baby. The girls were watching Valerie. My father was in his chair, concentrating on CNN.

My mother came in from the kitchen, took a look at me, and made the sign of the cross. "Your arm is bandaged, you have grass stains on your pants, and pieces of some sort of bush are stuck in your hair. And Ranger is outside, wearing a gun." She looked more closely. "Is that a wig?"

"It's my real hair. I got it cut."

With the exception of the baby, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

"Sometimes it's fun to change things," I said. "Right? What do you think?"

"It's . . . cute," Valerie said.

"I wouldn't mind wearing my hair like that," Grandma said. "I bet it'd look real good if it was pink."

The phone rang.

"It's Lois Kelner across the street," Grandma Mazur said. "She wants to know if we're being invaded. She said it looks to her like there's one of them terrorists in our driveway."

"It's just Ranger," I said.

"I know that," Grandma said, "but Lois is calling the army."

My mother did another sign of the cross.

"Maybe you should get Ranger out of the driveway," Valerie said. "Paratroopers landing on the roof would upset the baby."

Grandma's eyes lit. "Paratroopers! Wouldn't that be something."

"I'll try to get back later," I told everyone. I stopped in front of the hall mirror to pick the branches out of my hair and to take a close look at the cut. I'd never before thought of myself as cute. Sometimes I felt sexy. And sometimes I felt downright fat and stupid. Cute was a new one.

I opened the front door and waved at Ranger. "Visit's over."

"That was fast."

"The woman who lives across the street thinks you're a terrorist. She said she was calling the army."

"You have plenty of time then," Ranger said. "It'll take the army a while to mobilize."

Ranger drove me back to Morelli's house. We clipped Bob to his leash, I stuffed a couple plastic sandwich bags into my jeans pocket, and we ambled down the street after Bob. Me and the terrorist out for a stroll with the dog.

"I feel like I should be doing something to find the carnation killer," I said.

"You have state and local police working on it now. They have a lot of resources and they have some good stuff to trace back. The photos, the emails, the flowers. And now they have interrelated murders. They can reexamine them and look for commonality. And they'll go back through case histories to see if they can find other victims of the game. Your job right now is to stay alive."

I glanced over at Ranger. He'd gone through three of the victims' apartments. Plus Bart's townhouse. "Have you been through Klein's house?"

"I went through last night while the police were there."

"The police allowed you access?"

"I have friends."

"Morelli?"

"Juniak."

Joe Juniak used to be police chief. He was elected mayor of Trenton and now was running for governor.

"Klein lived with his parents," Ranger said. "His room was a typical kid's room. Messy, posters of rock bands, small arsenal under his bed, and a personal stash of pot in his underwear drawer."

"You think that's a typical kid's room?"

"It was in my neighborhood."

"What about a computer?"

"Klein had a laptop. His parents said he took it everywhere with him. It wasn't in his room and it wasn't in his truck.