"Don't you try to jolly me out of being mad. Agent Lewis called to tell me you were on your way, and then he had the gall to tell me not to worry, said he and Tucker were right behind you and he'd keep an eye out for any bad guys. He told me not to worry about Georgie either, she was sound asleep."
He reached out his hands to shake her, saw she really wasn't in very good shape, and backed off. To cap it off, she was shivering beneath her black leather jacket. The early morning was cold, the sky filled with gray clouds pressing down signaling rain. He pulled off his own leather jacket and laid it around her shoulders. "No, be quiet. I'll be fine. Okay, Erin, this better be good-what the devil are you doing here? Where'd you stash Georgie?"
"Don't yell at me, you'll wake her up," and Erin nodded over her shoulder.
Naturally, he had to look into the back seat to see his daughter lying on her side, her face against her open palm, two blankets tucked securely around her, covering her to her ears. She was dead to the world. She was a good sleeper, his kid. "I've been wondering how you knew where to come."
She had the nerve to shrug. "No biggie. After you left, I called Sherlock and she told me what happened." She waved her hand toward the big house. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to disturb Georgie, but I had to come, and I knew I couldn't leave her. She never woke up, Bowie, and I worried about that, after last night when she was so upset with us for yelling at each other." She paused a brief moment, tried another smile. "I don't know how you thought of it so fast, but telling her I was an idiot and you were going to make me iron her clothes for her really calmed her fast. That was well done."
He opened his mouth to blast her again, but what came out was, "You wait, Georgie will hold you to it."
"Yeah, she just might." Erin said, looking back toward the house. "What happened here, Bowie, it's unbelievable. Jane Ann's husband, he was alive, you interviewed him, you even knew the minute he ran away at that rest stop. And now he's just-dead, like I almost was.
"I talked with Jane Ann Royal Wednesday with Sherlock, and she was open and smart and sophisticated. She knew what her husband was, and laughed about it, showed off her tennis instructor. All buff and young, she told us, that's how she liked them, but she loved her sons, Bowie, you could tell that right away."
She was talking really fast now, and Bowie let her. She was scared and shocked to her heels, and she needed to get it all out.
"I had to come, Bowie," she said again. "Sherlock only had time to tell me the basics because someone was calling her."
She shivered in his jacket and pulled it closer. He held on to his mad like a lifeline. "Then how did you know-" He kicked the tire on one of the local officer's patrol cars. "You heard my cell and you listened, didn't you?"
"It's not every night you jerk awake to Bing belting out 'Jingle Bells.' How could I not listen through the thin apartment walls? Actually, you didn't say all that much. I only heard there was trouble and that's why I called Sherlock."
He looked very close to snarling. "I don't understand why it took you so long to get here. You should have been on my heels."
"I had to take a pain med, let it kick in, and there was Georgie. I'm okay now, really. Agent Lewis and Agent Tucker are right over there, standing against their car. They stuck with me all the way here. I'm not an idiot, Bowie, I wouldn't ever put Georgie in danger. Would you stop being pissed off and tell me what happened? Look at Chief Amos, he's coming this way. He looks pretty shaken."
Chief of Police Clifford Amos looked more than shaken, he looked like he'd been run over by a Mack truck. Two murders and a Hummer blowing up in his town in a matter of days. He'd followed Bowie out of the house, noticed him talking, of all things, to Erin Pulaski, his attempted murder victim. He was tired, and he was angry. "Here now," he called out, "what are you doing here? You're a civilian, you've gotta leave. You shouldn't even be able to walk, not after that Hummer of yours blew itself up all over one of my neighborhoods. You asking to get yourself killed?"
Bowie saw Erin was ready to smart-mouth the chief of police, and that was something he surely didn't need at the crack of dawn. He knew the chief was scared, as well as angry; he was scared himself. He said, "Sorry about this, Chief. I should have told you. I asked her to come. She's acting as a consultant for us. She and Agent Sherlock interviewed Mrs. Royal. We need her here."
Chief Amos wasn't happy to hear that, but he preferred standing here stripping the hide off this damned dance teacher to being back in that stomach-twisting blood-and-gore crime scene. At least Caskie Royal wasn't lying in the middle of those sheets anymore, his brains splattered on the washing machine. He felt bile rise in his throat just thinking of it. He hadn't puked when he'd seen that German guy, Helmut Blauvelt, naked, his face bludgeoned to bits, no fingers, just bloody stumps, but it was close, and he'd sure enough been off his feed for nearly a day. Now this. Seeing Caskie Royal was different because he'd known him. He was a snooty bastard, but now he was very dead, and his pretty wife was rocking back and forth on an antique chair in the living room, whimpering and crying, and nobody knew anything, including him. Why was this bloody nightmare happening in his town? The FBI had flown in here looking all smart and sharp in a black FBI helicopter and taken over, and their guy from New Haven had moved right into his police station, and what had they done? Big zero, that's what. That big guy Savich had played with his computer and the rest of them had just talked to people-talk, talk, talk, no action-and now there was another murder in his town.
And now this dance teacher was hanging around. Who would want to kill her? Nothing about anything made any sense. He said to himself more than to anyone else, "A female shouldn't drive a muscle car like that Hummer unless she can handle it, which you couldn't, now could you?"
Erin just looked at him. Thank God she didn't say anything. He was tired, knew he was tired, running off at the mouth like that, saying things that would get Loraine Briggs, one of his deputies, ratting him out to Corrine. That nearly made him shudder. It was time to apply himself, to get things straight, but he knew to his bones he didn't know how to deal with this case, didn't have a clue what to do next. He said to Agent Bowie Richards, his voice belligerent, "I suppose you're going to tell me this is your case too, aren't you?" He knew he sounded intimidating, tough as nails, like The Man in Charge. Maybe he'd sounded too intimidating and Richards would fold, which was the last thing he wanted Richards to do. He waited, saying a little prayer. What he wanted more than anything was to go home and crawl into his bed and sleep until Wheel of Fortune came on tonight and his wife made him his favorite pot roast with new potatoes. He wanted to think about all this, but from a distance.