LITMIR.BIZ

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him, warming him as it wove its path.

      Lots of things come to mind, lady.

      Outgoing and gregarious, Troy still possessed a healthy dose of prudence. Rather than allow them to be heard, he kept the words that instantly rose to his lips safely locked away in his head. He and the woman were in mixed company and he had no idea how the blond vision in the bland uniform might react to an honest response her question had generated. He never forgot whose son he was. The weight of the family name was not something he bore lightly. So far, none of the Cavanaugh men had ever been accused of verbal sexual harassment, however unintentional. He didn’t intend to be the first.

      So instead of saying what was on his mind and seeing where it might lead, he buried his curiosity and followed protocol. That meant asking questions and making noises like a homicide detective. “You the first one on the scene?”

      Delene gestured to the two men on either side of her. “All three of us were.”

      Troy looked at the men, particularly the older of the two. The one built like an armored tank. He glanced over his shoulder at the doorway before commenting. “Must have been a tight fit.”

      She took immediate exception at his light tone, thinking it a dig against Jorge. She didn’t like an outsider making fun of the man.

      Her answer was crisp, putting distance between them. “Jorge took down the door. For all intents and purposes, we came in together.” She nodded toward the body on the rug. “We found him like this.”

      Troy nodded thoughtfully. “And why were you looking for him?”

      Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kara make her way over to the crime scene investigator. She was going to get the man’s take on the evidence he’d discovered and processed so far.

      Despite coming from two very different places in life, and Kara’s obvious initial preconceived notions about how he had risen up so quickly through the ranks, they worked well together. Divide and conquer was the way they approached a case. So far, neither one of them had any real complaints about the other. Aside from a very short sizing-up period, there’d been no attempt to establish territory, no squabbling about which of them was to be the top dog. They operated as a team.

      “Standard procedure,” Adrian told him, cutting in. It was obvious to Troy that the taller of the two men was feeling somewhat protective of the woman. “We were conducting an early morning raid.” When Troy looked at him for further elaboration, he added, “Just to make sure his i’s were dotted and his t’s were crossed.”

      Troy frowned, eyeing the pathetic shell of a man on the floor. “I don’t know about his i’s and his t’s, but I’ve got a hunch he wasn’t looking to get a bullet in his head.”

      After taking plastic gloves out of his pocket, Troy put them on, then squatted down beside the body. Very gently he lifted the victim’s head. He examined the point of entry, then looked to see if there was an exit wound. There wasn’t.

      “A bullet he seems to be hanging on to.” More for the medical examiner to do, he thought as he placed Clyde’s head back down in the position he’d found it. Behind him he heard a sharp intake of breath.

      “I’m not through in here, yet,” CSI Sam Connor said waspishly. By his expression, it was evident Sam thought of the body as his property.

      On his feet again, Troy raised his gloved hands in the air, silently showing the man that he was no longer touching the body. Because he’d gotten what appeared to be a drop of blood on one of the gloves, Troy stripped them off and rolled the tainted one inside of the second glove before putting both in his pocket.

      “How about you?” He directed the question and his eyes back to the woman from the county. “Are you through here yet, Officer…” Troy paused, reading the neat little letters affixed over the woman’s breast pocket. He lingered, longer than he should have, taking in the very enticing, very inviting swell of her full chest before raising his eyes to her face. “D’Angelo,” he concluded.

      Delene glanced at the man whose lifeless body was now surrounded by a chalk outline. Pity tugged at her heart. In the final analysis, she felt sorry for the dead man she’d interacted with a handful of times. Clyde had been a lower-life form, but he’d still been a human being, and as such, didn’t deserve to be so casually eliminated. She doubted if his executioner had even given his death so much as a passing thought.

      If he’d been killed by whom she thought he’d been killed, it was in part her fault. But mostly Clyde’s.

      She nodded in reply to the detective’s question. “He’s way past caring about anything we might find in the motel room that might be in violation of his probation.”

      Was that emotion he heard in her voice? Her expression remained steely. Troy decided he’d imagined the trace of sorrow. He shook his head as he looked at the victim. There appeared to be no signs of struggle. The messy room seemed to be just that, a messy room. Probably never even knew what hit him, Troy thought.

      “Really must have ticked someone off,” he commented, then looked at the probation officers, his glance sweeping over all three. “Any ideas?”

      The question surprised Delene. All the detectives she’d ever come across in this job acted as if they’d been first in line when brains had been handed out and everyone else had been a distant second, if not third or fourth. They rarely asked for opinions, preferring to come up with their own.

      Slipping her hands into her back pockets, she thought of the daughter Clyde had once admitted to her that he’d fathered. The girl, Rachel, was about four or five now. She deserved to know that her father was gone. Trouble was, Delene had no idea how to find the girl and her mother.

      “You might think about sending someone to question Miguel Mendoza,” she finally told the detective.

      Troy raised his eyebrows at the familiar name. “The Miguel Mendoza?”

      When the woman nodded, saying nothing further, Troy asked, “Why?” He’d assumed the dead man was just a junkie. There were track marks on his arms. To say that Mendoza might have a hand in it meant that the victim hadn’t just been on the receiving end of drugs, he’d been pushing them, as well. “This guy caught skimming?”

      The moment he said it, the suggestion seemed ludicrous. Troy looked around at the dead man’s living conditions. Fast-food wrappers littered various corners of the room, clothes beyond dirty discarded beside them. If the dead man had been keeping some of the money he made pushing drugs, he had to have used it to buy more drugs for himself. It had certainly not been used to better his lifestyle.

      Delene paused before answering. The police detective with the broad shoulders and his much shorter partner seemed perfectly capable of doing their own legwork, chasing down their own leads. But she saw no harm in sharing information. Clyde’s deal with the D.A. would come out soon enough, even if her part wouldn’t. She doubted if the D.A. had noted down that she had been the one to ultimately convince Clyde to turn a corner and try to make something of himself for his daughter’s sake. She felt it was part of her job, to help rehabilitate those who had a spark of potential for leading an honest life.

      Delene glanced up at the detective with the engaging smile. He hadn’t just dismissed her and her team as being annoying and in the way. He’d spoken to her, to them, as if they were all on the same side. So for the moment she would be.

      “Clyde was going to testify against Mendoza in court.”

      “Clyde?” Troy looked at the inert body, trying to picture the man responding to the name. He didn’t look like a Clyde. He didn’t look very much like anything at all. Except dead.

      “Clyde Petrie,” Delene provided. “He was involved with drugs since he was fourteen. At seventeen he dropped out of school, thought he’d make a better living for himself by pushing drugs instead of doing something that his high school diploma might land him. He was picked up twice for dealing. Managed to elude jail both times. Second time landed him on probation. It made him

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