LITMIR.BIZ

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all the chores one had to do in order to keep on top of life, there’d been precious little time for her to peruse the media accounts of the murders. But she knew Miller had been preying on single women in their late twenties and early thirties.

      Kate frowned. “You’d need more,” she decided.

      “Who are you, Freud?”

      That snapped her spine straight again. “You’d see death in your line of work nearly every day, I would imagine. But you don’t run about—what did you call it?—cold-cocking suspects all the time. Or do you?”

      “Tell you what, you’re better with these crunchy things than you are with analysis.”

      Her stomach rolled again at the bite in his tone. “You don’t like me.”

      “Do you like me?”

      “Not particularly.”

      Well, she was honest, he thought. He almost grinned. But she’d done it again. Words like particularly didn’t belong in general conversation. Then Raphael heard himself answer her and he felt a dull inner pang even as his words hit the room.

      “We were bringing Miller out of the van,” he said, “for his arraignment. I’d taken him in the first place, so I wanted to be part of the detail. He knew all about me through his spree, during the whole investigation. He made it his business to know who was closing in on him. So he turned around just as he was being led through the courthouse doors. He looked at me, and he said—”

      Miller had said what Raphael hadn’t yet told anyone.

      Raphael hadn’t made excuses for his behavior that day. What he’d done, he’d done. And he’d taken the fall. He clamped his mouth shut.

      This had all the melodrama of an excellent story, Kate thought. “He said what?” she breathed.

      “Don’t tell me,” Montiel drawled. “You’re heavy into cop shows.”

      Kate blinked. How had he guessed? She almost denied it, but what would be the point? “Books, mostly. There’s a certain element of escapism there.”

      “Element? Damn it, can’t you just talk?”

      “I am talking!”

      “No. You’re giving a lesson in vocabulary!” And he didn’t know why it bothered him so much. Maybe it was just his overall mood. But he doubted it.

      “I was just asking a question.” She sniffed.

      Raphael found himself answering her—again. “He told me that Anna was the best of the lot. He told me how she screamed. Damn it, he picked her because she was associated with me!”

      There was a stretch of silence in the kitchen, drawn out enough to thin the air. Kate’s heart hurtled over a beat. “Anna Lombardo?” One of Miller’s victims, she remembered. Maybe the last. And then Kate understood. She cleared her throat carefully. “You knew Anna.”

      “Yeah.” He took a knife from a drawer and cut into the steak. “I knew Anna. We’d been seeing each other.”

      “You loved her.” It was, she thought, a heartbreaking story.

      But Montiel laughed in a raw sound before he chewed and swallowed. “Not yet.”

      “I don’t understand.”

      “I’d only met her two weeks before she died.” But maybe it could have been something, he thought. They’d never know. Miller had strangled her with piano wire.

      “Montiel.”

      The voice came from the kitchen door. They both turned sharply, almost guiltily, as though they’d been caught in the act of something they shouldn’t have been doing. It was that man, Kate realized. Plattsmier. And the other one, Fox. Both stepped into the kitchen. Kate watched the three of them confer near the doorway.

      Something was happening.

      There was a lot of gesturing. Then something changed in Montiel’s expression. His jaw hardened. His eyes went thin, but just before they did, Kate saw them shine like glass.

      He turned to her. “Clean up your stuff, Betty Crocker. You’ve got five minutes, then I’m taking you home.”

      Kate came off the stool. “I don’t need a ride.”

      “Good. Because you’re not getting one.”

      Her heart was hammering almost as hard as it had done when she’d found the body. The air in the kitchen felt suddenly humid and heavy, and it made it hard for her to breathe again. “Then I don’t understand what you’re implying.”

      “I’m implying that I’ll follow you in my own vehicle.”

      “To where?”

      “To your home. We just covered that.”

      “But it’s not necessary.”

      “It is if I’m going with you. I’m not leaving my Explorer here. And it looks as though you’ve got yourself one damned overqualified baby-sitter.”

      With that, he threw the fork he had been holding into the sink. It bounced right out again with the force of his strength. Impossibly, it landed prongs-down in a single scallion.

      Kate closed her eyes briefly. It was that kind of a night.

      Chapter 2

      Kate broke all her own rules. She chucked the shells from the oysters Rockefeller into her client’s trash—he was hardly in a position to pass on word of her unprofessionalism. She dumped the rock salt back into its bag without checking off a use on her master list. She did a cursory cleanup and grabbed a wine bottle off the counter on her way out the back door. She paused in the alley and chugged from it.

      Then she looked around quickly to make sure no one—heaven forbid, Montiel—had seen her. She was alone.

      Everything went out of her. Kate leaned weakly against her panel van. What had happened here tonight? And why was it necessary for that cop to follow her home? Kate could not remember a plot she’d ever read that had involved the authorities baby-sitting a witness, unless that witness had turned State’s evidence. But she didn’t have any evidence to turn.

      Suddenly, her heart nosedived into her stomach. Was she actually a suspect? Did they think she had killed that man?

      She needed a lawyer.

      “Okay, Betty Crocker, lead the way.”

      Kate came away from the van quickly as Montiel left the kitchen door and came into the alley. She tucked the wine bottle behind her. “Do I need a lawyer?”

      “What for?” He jiggled the handle of her panel van. “Unlock this thing.”

      “Absolutely not.”

      He turned back to her slowly. There was a streetlight on a nearby corner. It flung mild light into the alley, just enough that she could see something tic at his jaw.

      “You don’t want to push me right now.”

      Kate held her ground but her voice quavered a little. “I simply want a few explanations before I allow you in my vehicle—and besides, you said you had your own.”

      “I do. It’s out on Willings. You’re going to drive me around. And damn it, you’re going to stop elocuting while you do it.”

      When she opened her mouth to protest, he came toward her and he did it fast. Kate gave an involuntary cry and took a step in retreat. She brought her hand up to ward him off.

      Unfortunately, it was the one with the wine in it.

      His gaze flashed to it. “Misdemeanor. Slap on the wrist if you have no priors.”

      “What?”

      “For stealing the wine. Is that why you wanted a lawyer?”

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