That was the effect he’d always had on me: when he looked at me, I became acutely aware of being female-and that he was male, with all the corresponding bits and parts. You know: Tab A fits into Slot B. If I got close to him, all I could think about were tabs and slots.
He picked up the pen I’d been writing with and tapped it in a rapid tattoo on his desktop. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say.”
“I haven’t liked anything you’ve said, so that isn’t a big surprise.”
“Give it a rest,” he advised in a hard tone. “This isn’t about us.”
“I didn’t assume it was. And there is no ‘us.’ ” I just could not give him an inch, the benefit of the doubt, or a break. I didn’t want to deal with him. I wanted Detective MacInnes back.
Evidently Wyatt decided that trying to reason with me was a lost cause. It isn’t; I’m normally very reasonable… except where he’s concerned. For whatever reason, he didn’t pick up that verbal gauntlet. “We try to control all the information that’s given to the press about a murder, but sometimes it isn’t possible. To do an investigation, we have to talk to people and ask if anyone saw a man driving a dark four-door sedan in the vicinity of the crime. That’s already begun. Now, we kept the reporters away from the crime scene, but they were right outside the tape with their telephoto lenses and cameras.”
“And?” I wasn’t getting his point.
“It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and come up with you as a witness. We were in your place of business, you were with us, you left in my car-”
“Considering that scene, they probably think I’m the suspect.”
One corner of his mouth quirked as he remembered the struggle to put me in his car. “No, they probably just think you were very upset by what happened.” He tapped the pen against the desk again. “I can’t keep them from naming you. If a suspect was seen, obviously there was a witness. Your identity is just as obvious. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow.”
“Why is that a prob- Oh.” I was being named in the newspapers as the witness to a murder. The person who would most likely worry was none other than the murderer himself. What do killers do to protect themselves? They kill whoever is threatening them, that’s what.
I stared at him, appalled. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah,” he said. “My thoughts exactly.”
Chapter Five
A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. Well, at least six or seven, anyway, because a thousand thoughts are a lot. Try counting your own thoughts and see how long it takes you to get to a thousand. Regardless of that, none of my thoughts were good.
“But I’m not even a good witness!” I wailed. “I couldn’t identify him if my life depended on it.” Again, not a good thought, because it just might.
“He doesn’t know that.”
“Maybe he was her boyfriend. It’s usually the boyfriend or husband, isn’t it? Maybe it was a crime of passion and he isn’t really a murderer at heart, and when you pick him up he’ll confess.” That wasn’t impossible, was it? Or too much to ask?
“Maybe,” he said, but his expression wasn’t all that hopeful.
“But what if he wasn’t her boyfriend? What if it’s drugs or something?” I got up and began to pace his office, which didn’t have enough room for serious pacing and had way too many obstacles, like file cabinets and stacks of books. I dodged around things more than paced. “I can’t leave the country. You won’t let me even leave town, which under these circumstances is a really crappy position to hold, you know.”
Not that he could stop me, I realized, not without arresting me or taking me into protective custody, and since I couldn’t identify the killer, I don’t think he could justify that to a judge. So why had he even told me not to leave town? And why was he telling me this when the most obvious, most intelligent response would be to get the hell out of Dodge?
He ignored my comment on his edict. “The odds are you’re right, and the reason Ms. Goodwin was murdered was a personal one. With luck we’ll have this wrapped up in a day or two.”
“A day or two,” I repeated. A lot could happen in a day or two. For one thing, I could get dead. No way was I going to hang around for that to happen. Despite what Lieutenant Bloodsworth had told me, I was leaving town. To hell with his permission, which I was fairly certain I didn’t need anyway; by the time he found out I was gone, it would be too late. I would tell Siana to get in touch with him and tell him that if he needed me, he could contact Siana, because of course I’d tell my family where I was. Great Bods would be closed for a day or so anyway, so I might as well take a short vacation. I hadn’t indulged my inner beach bunny in a couple of years; she was due.
When I got home I’d grab a couple of hours’ sleep, if I could. If I couldn’t, I’d pack. I’d be ready to go whenever my car was delivered to me.
“I can’t spare any patrolmen for guard duty, and I couldn’t justify it anyway in the absence of a credible threat-not to mention you aren’t exactly a witness, since you can’t identify anyone.” He leaned back in his chair and gave me a brooding look. “I’ll issue a statement to the press that ‘unnamed witnesses’ saw a man leaving the scene. That should take any focus off of you.”
“Hey, that’ll work!” I said, cheering up. If there was more than one witness, then killing me wouldn’t serve any purpose, right? Not that I intended to hang around to find out. Now that I’d thought of it, a few nice, lazy days at the beach sounded great. I had this great turquoise bikini I’d bought last year and hadn’t had a chance to wear. Tiffany-my inner beach bunny-was practically purring in anticipation.
I stood up, picked up the notepad before he could stop me, and ripped off the top page. Like I was going to forget his list of transgressions, right? As I neatly folded the page I said, “I’m ready to go home now. Really, Lieutenant Bloodsworth, you could have told me all this at Great Bods, you know. You didn’t have to manhandle me in front of everyone and drag me down here just to prove you’re a big macho cop.” I made grunting noises like Tim Allen, which I probably shouldn’t have.
He just looked amused, and motioned with his fingers. “Hand it over.”
I snorted. “Get real. Even if you tore it up, do you think I wouldn’t remember what’s on the list?”
“That isn’t the point. Hand it over.”
Instead I tucked the list into my bag and zipped it. “Then what is the point, because I’m missing something here.”
He got to his feet with a smooth, powerful grace that reminded me what an athlete he was. “The point,” he said as he came around the desk and calmly took my bag away from me, “is that the men in your life probably let you get away with murder-figuratively speaking-because you’re so damned cute, but I’m not going to go down that road. You’re in my territory and I said hand over the list, so if you don’t do it, I’ll have to take it away from you. That’s the point.”