I was mid-reach for my pain pills when a rap of knuckles sounded at the door.
I grunted.
“Hot as balls out there, ain’t it?” Lieutenant Colson sauntered in and Sunny’s remark about the male obsession with nuts ran through my head.
“You get the AC fixed in your Jeep?” He asked.
“Not yet.”
“You can use the station’s loner if you need to.” He grinned.
The Gray Ghost was a fifteen year old black impala with shoddy wheel alignment, a cracked windshield, and a pair of stains in the backseat that no one claimed to know how they got there.
“I’ll pass.”
He sank into the seat across from me.
“How’s the wife?” I asked, noticing the bags under his eyes.
“Insomnia. Pregnancy insomnia,” he emphasized each word as if pronouncing the rarest disease known to man.
“Can’t you sleep on the couch?”
“She walks. Paces. Circles. Hums sometimes. Through the entire house. Last night she hummed Sweet Caroline while pacing the kitchen for two hours. Guess that’s the name. Anyway, I woke up this morning to an empty jar of peanut butter in the oven, a jug of milk in the pantry, and three guns disassembled on the kitchen table.”
I grinned. Lieutenant Colson was hell on wheels in the office, but it was no secret that when it came to his wife, all bets were off. Bobbi wore the pants in the relationship. Very stretchy pants.
“How much longer do you have to go?”
“Three weeks.”
“You can hold out three weeks.”
Colson shook his head, giving me a look of pity not unlike how Sunny had looked at Brutus. “You really need to get a woman in your life, Jagg.”
“So I can get no sleep?”
“You don’t sleep anyway.”
He got me there.
“No,” he continued, “because if you had one, you’d at least know that when the baby comes, sleep will be even more elusive than with an emotional insomniac.”
“And that’s exactly why I don’t have a woman. Or a baby.”
“There’s more to life than a job, you know. What’s going to happen if you lose this one? What are you left with? A box television and a window AC unit that smells like asshole?”
“You come in here to give me a life lesson, Colson?”
“No.” He leaned forward on his elbows, his gaze sharpening. “I came here as a partner, a co-worker. A friend. You know how I feel about you dropping either Seagrave’s case or the Harper case, regardless if you think they’re connected. Hear me, Jagg. You need to take a step back. Your little attitude with Sunny’s dad and the chief last night did nothing for you. I’m looking out for you, man, same as you would for me.”
“I don’t need it.”
“You need this job. Or a life. Both, preferably.”
“Noted.” Heat began to rise up my neck. I wasn’t in the mood.
“Fine.” He leaned back. “I’ve said my piece. Anyway, I wanted to tell you Bobbi’s brother, Wesley Cross, is going to take a look at the bullet casings from Seagrave’s scene sometime today. Hoping he’ll be able to determine the model of gun that was used. He’s not making any promises, though.”
“And he also knows to compare them to the one found at Sunny’s scene?”
Colson nodded.
“Let me know when you hear something.”
There were three big things this information would give us: One, if the casings found at Seagrave’s matched the ones found at Sunny’s, then it would be undisputed that the cases were linked. Two, if both those casings matched the gun Sunny carried the night of her attack, then she was in a world of trouble. Third, if the casings did not match, and the bullet used to kill Julian did not come from Sunny’s gun, then she was telling the truth and we’d need to buckle down and find this third mystery person.
Colson leaned back in the chair. “Town’s already gotten wind of it. Church is in an uproar, demanding answers, wanting someone’s head. Whispers of witches returning with the full moon is already spreading like wildfire through town. Pun unintended.”
“Well, they’re going to have to keep their stakes at home.”
“No, they’re going to need answers before this thing gets out of hand. People are picketing on the square to cancel the Moon Magic Festival this weekend. It’s a fucking mess, dude. The longer this thing—”
“I get it. I know.”
Colson crossed his ankle over his knee and stared at me a minute. “How is she?”
“Who?”
“Miss Harper.”
I shrugged, keeping my eyes on my computer while taking notice of the defensiveness that sparked at the mere mention of her name. Like she was mine. Only mine. My business.
Not his.
“She must be in a boatload of pain today.”
I narrowed my eyes and looked up. “Say it.”
“You could have given her a ride or called me to take her to her car. You didn’t have to carry the woman down Main Street in the middle of the damn night.”
I’d debated on telling Colson about my visit to Sunny earlier that morning, but that just sealed the deal.
“Why didn’t you take her to her car last night, Colson?”
“Why are you so defensive about her?”
A knock at the door paused the pissing match. It also had me unclenching the fist that had curled into a ball under the desk.
Darby poked his head in. “Oh. Sorry. Am I interr—”
“No. Come in.”
Colson pushed out of the chair, dipped his chin. “Keep me updated.” Yeah, right.
“Same.” Yeah, right.
Darby stepped inside. “How you doing?”
“Shut the door.”
I didn’t wait for the door to click closed before going in.
“Next time you decide to run your mouth to everyone like a gossipy little girl, consider it the last you ever work with me, you got that kid?”
Darby’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I only told them that I saw you helping Sunny to her car last night. That’s all, I promise.”
I surged out of my chair, a sharp pain adding to the fire brewing inside me. “You lie to me again, I’ll have your badge pulled. You saw an opportunity to share information—gossip—and pounced on it in a bullshit effort to make yourself seem important. The fact that I carried Miss Harper to her car has no bearing on the case other than that the woman could barely walk. Gossip doesn’t look good on anyone, kid. Especially a rookie cop. Don’t fucking forget that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way. Why are you here?”
“Two things. Sir.”
I lowered into my chair. Fucking back.
“Sit, Darby. Relax. Just don’t ever gossip about me again.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rookie sank into the chair Colson had just vacated and placed a folder on my desk.
“You asked me to look into Sunny’s ex-boyfriend. The one who attacked her in Dallas years ago.”
And almost killed her.
I picked up the folder and began flipping through.
“Like I told you last night, the guy, Kenzo Rees, got six years in state prison for the attack and previous transgressions. But get this, he got two more added on once inside.”