LITMIR.BIZ

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sobs.

      This was bad.

      “I am not coming in!”

      Two

      In the mock Tuscan villa down the hill from Dr. Pierce Carver’s four-acre lot and mansion, Amanda Jones, who was a light sleeper, especially when Ralph was out of town on business, was awakened by the faint but persistent sound of her neighbor’s car alarm.

      She sat up and listened.

      When it didn’t stop, she grew frightened and went to the window. Pierce was anal about his Porsche.

      No matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see much of Carver’s property through the thick cedar and oak. Suddenly, two black figures burst out of the darkness from the direction of the Carvers’ house and raced down the strip of road that wound in front of both their houses.

      Since she wasn’t about to turn off her own house alarm and go out in the dark and investigate, or even step out onto her upstairs balcony, which had such spectacular views of the sparkling city far below, she went back to her bedside table and called Pierce’s place. When his answering machine picked up on the first ring, she hung up without leaving a message. Then she dialed 911.

      Michael Nash had a bad case of brain fog. Not great when you’re Homicide and you’ve got a body upstairs with a paring knife in his Adam’s apple, and two punks in black with blood on their shoes handcuffed to a tree in the victim’s front yard.

      The body was probably that of Dr. Pierce Carver. Who the hell else could it be?

      Funny, the rich jerk just happened to be somebody Michael had something in common with—namely a woman. Rose Marie Castle, to be exact. Nash knew Carver was a prick because Rose Marie had told him so and quite heatedly—after Michael had ticketed her for stalking the bastard with her Beamer last year. Apparently, Carver had dumped her for a younger model, Anita Somebody from Guatemala. Rosie never had taken failure well.

      Not that Michael wanted to think about Rosie or that night ever again because, as usual, she’d twisted him around her little finger and had made a fool out of him.

      Carver and she had probably deserved each other. Rosie was trouble, always had been and probably always would be. She’d cut Michael’s heart out on more than one occasion. Just not with a paring knife.

      Hell, maybe he should count his blessings.

      But murder? Rosie couldn’t have anything to do with this. Still, she’d been royally pissed at the guy.

      Michael glanced up from his notebook and said a silent prayer for the dead man in the house. Not that he was sure there was anybody up there to listen. Still, his mother had taken him to church when he was a kid. Old habits died hard.

      Michael glanced at the punks handcuffed to the tree and then at his watch. It was late, nearly 2:00 a.m. He lacked the energy to deal with their lies.

      Liars! He hated liars!

      Too bad, Nash. Everybody lied to cops. The murderers lied because they had to. Witnesses lied to cover up all sorts of minor peccadilloes that as often as not had nothing to do with the case. Everybody else lied just for the sheer joy of it.

      His head was pounding as he approached the punks again. His eyes felt grainy. On top of that he was sweltering out here even at this hour.

      Michael needed to share a cold beer with Ronnie Bob at The Tavern before heading home, where he would’ve loved to zone out channel surfing. Maybe watch a tiger eat a zebra or a rattler pounce on a mouse before he passed out on his couch.

      Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the shifty-eyed kids in the faded black T-shirts and ragged jeans, slouching against the tree trunk. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

      Even though Michael didn’t think they had a damn thing to do with the murder, the older kid had a prior for car theft. No, they’d been after the Porsche and had set off the car alarm that had alerted Amanda Jones down the hill.

      “You just got out of a detention center for stealing cars,” Michael began. “Am I right—Paulo—”

      “Pablo.” The kid spat the name.

      “Sorry.” Feeling the kid’s hatred, Michael scratched through the u and jotted a b on top of it. “Pablo.”

      “We was joggin’.” This from Raul.

      Michael’s thick, black brows shot together in a lethal frown. “Right. And you two live…where? Eight miles from here? East Austin. My old neighborhood.”

       Rosie’s, too. Not that she liked to admit it even now that it was becoming rather gentrified.

      “It’s a free country,” Pablo spat.

      Michael was lifting his head to stare at the kid again when Ronnie Bob Keith’s florid face appeared at the front door. Keith’s smirk was a mile wide as he waved a plastic Baggie.

      Michael loped toward his partner.

      “Raul dropped his wallet. They were up there, all right. Their bloody footprints are everywhere. Talk about contaminating the scene!”

      Michael returned with the evidence. Clenching the Baggie, he eyeballed the older kid. “Pablo, my men just found your little brother’s wallet in a pool of blood by a man with a knife in his throat, and you don’t know nothing?”

      “Right.”

      “How about you—Raul?”

      Raul started shaking and refused to look up from the ground.

      Michael continued to stare at Pablo. The youth was too tall and too skinny for his large frame. He wore a dirty red bandana. A greasy dark braid hung down the middle of his back. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and eased his weight from one foot to the other, his soulless eyes gazing anywhere but at Raul or Michael.

      Michael wanted to know what the kids knew, what they’d seen, but he was going to have to take them downtown and separate them.

      Sweat dripped from his brow onto his notepad as he sucked in a long, exasperated breath. “Kid, we’re getting nowhere fast.”

      “I told you all I know.”

      The fog in Michael’s brain thickened. He held up the wallet again. “You’re going to change your bullshit story before I’m through.”

      Pablo stared at his dirty athletic shoes.

       “Damn it! You were all over the house! Did you see anybody else? Hear anything?”

      “Man, I don’t have to take this. I’m only sixteen.”

      “Kids like you get tried as adults all the time. You think about that—Paulo.”

      “Pablo! You think I’m just a kid, but I know my rights. We don’t have to talk to no cop without our lawyer.”

      “All right. Have it your way.” Michael left them and headed toward the house.

      “Hey! You! Come back here! Let us go!”

      As their screams grew louder, Michael took the stairs beneath the brilliant chandelier two at a time.

      To hell with them!

      Finally, Beth had made it back to the hospital.

      Maybe it was the late hour, maybe Rosie was just exhausted, maybe she’d seen too many scenes on TV where women got assaulted in parking garages, or maybe it was aftershocks from her ugly run-in with Pierce—whatever, Rosie had a bad case of the jitters as she climbed the concrete stairs to the fourth floor in the hospital parking garage. She was nearly to her Beamer when her cell phone rang.

      Climbing faster, she dug for it in her purse, and for her keys, too, only to panic when she read Yolie’s home phone number in the little blue window.

      It

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