A Texas Christmas: True Blue / A Lawman's Christmas: A McKettricks of Texas Novel

“My mother’s gone, too. But my dad’s still alive, and I have three brothers,” he replied with a smile. “My older brother, Garon, is SAC at the San Antonio FBI office.”

“I’ve met him. He’s very nice.” She studied his face. He was a striking man, even with hair that was going silver at the temples. His dark eyes were piercing and steady. He looked intimidating sitting behind a desk. She could only imagine how intimidating he’d look on the job.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” he queried.

“That I never want to break the law in your town.” She chuckled.

He grinned. “Thanks. I try to perfect a suitably intimidating demeanor on the job.”

“It’s quite good.”

He sighed. “I’ll talk to Marquez’s mother and plant clues. I’ll do it discreetly. Nobody will ever know that you mentioned it to me, I promise.”

“Least of all my boss, who’d have me on security details for the rest of my professional life,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t doubt he’d have me transferred as liaison to a police department for real, where he’d make sure I was assigned to duty at school crossings.”

“Hey, now, that’s a nice job,” he protested. “My patrolmen fight over that one.” He said it tongue in cheek. “In fact, the last one enjoyed it so much that he transferred to the fire department. It seems that a first-grader kicked him in the leg, repeatedly.”

Her fine eyebrows arched. “Why?”

“He told the kid to stay in the crosswalk. Seems the kid had a real attitude problem. The teachers couldn’t deal with him, so they finally called us, after the kicking incident. I took the kid home, in the patrol car, and had a long talk with his mother.”

“Oh, dear.”

His face was grim. “She’s a single parent, living alone, no family anywhere, and this kid is one step away from juvy,” he added, referencing the juvenile justice system. “He’s six years old,” he said heavily, “and he already has a record for disobedience and detention at his school.”

“They put little kids in detention in grammar school?” she exclaimed.

“Figure of speech. They call it time-out and he sits in the library. Last time he had to go there, he stood on one of the library tables and recited the Bill of Rights to the head librarian.”

Her eyes widened in amusement. “Not only a troublemaker, but brilliant to boot.”

He nodded. “Everybody’s hoping his poor mother will marry a really tough hombre who can control him before he does something unforgivable and gets an arrest record.”

She laughed. “The things I miss because I never married,” she mused, shaking her head. “It’s not an incentive to become a parent.”

“On the other end of the spectrum, there’s Tippy and me,” he replied with a smile. “I love being a dad.”

“It suits you,” she said.

She got to her feet. “Well, I have to get back to San Antonio. If Sergeant Marquez asks, I had to talk to you about a case, okay?”

“In fact, we really do have a case that might connect,” he said surprisingly. “Sit back down and I’ll tell you about it.”

Chapter Four

Sergeant Marquez came into the office two days later, looking grim. He motioned to Gwen, indicated a chair and closed the door.

She remembered her trip to Cash Grier’s office, and wondered if Grier had had time to talk to her superior officer’s mother and the information had tricked down.

“The cold case squad has a job for us,” he said as he sat down, too.

“What sort of job?”

“They dug up an old murder. It was committed back in 2002 and a man went to prison on evidence largely given by one person. Now it seems the person who gave evidence has been arrested and convicted for a similar crime. They want to know if we can find a connection.”

“Well, by chance, that was the case I just spoke to Chief Grier about down in Jacobsville,” she told him, happy that she could make a legitimate connection to her impromptu trip out of town. “He has an officer who knew the prisoner’s family and could place the man at a party during the murder.”

“Did he give evidence?” he asked.

She shook her head. “He was never called to testify,” she said. “Nobody knows why.”

“Isn’t that interesting.”

“Very. So the cold case squad wants us to wear out some shoe leather on their behalf?”

He grimaced. “They have plenty of manpower, but they’ve got two people out sick, one just transferred to the white collar crime unit and their sergeant said they don’t want to let this case get buried. Especially not when a similar crime was just committed here. Your case. The college woman who was murdered. It needs investigation, and they don’t have enough people.” He smiled. “Besides, there’s the issue of not stepping on the toes of another unit’s investigation.”

“I can understand that.”

“So, we’ll see if we can make a connection, based on available evidence. I’m assigning you as lead detective on this case, as well as on the college freshman murder. Find a connection. Catch the perp. Make me proud.”

She grinned at him. “Actually, that might be possible. I just got some new information from running a check on the photo of that odd man in the murder victim’s camera. The one I mentioned to you?”

“Yes, I recall that.”

She pulled up a file on her phone. “This is him. I used face recognition software to pick him out.” She showed him the mug shot on her phone. “The perp. His name is Mickey Dunagan. He has a rap sheet. It’s a long one. He’s been prosecuted in two aggravated assault cases, never convicted. Here’s the clincher. He has a thing for young college girls. He was arrested for attempted assault a few months ago, on a girl who went to the same college as our victim. I have a detective from our unit en route to question her today, and we’re interviewing people at the apartment complex about the man in the photograph. If his DNA is on file, and I’m betting it is since he’s served time during his trials, and there’s enough DNA from the crime scene to type and match …”

“Good work!” he said fervently.

She grinned. “Thanks, sir.”

“I wish we could get ironclad evidence that he killed the victim.” He grimaced. “Not that ironclad evidence ever got a conviction when some silver-tongued gung-ho public defender got the bit between his teeth.”

“Impressive mixing of metaphors, sir,” she murmured dryly.

He actually made a face at her. “Correct my grammar, get stakeout duty for the next two months.”

“I would never do that!” she protested with wicked, twinkling eyes.

He smiled back. She was very pretty when she smiled. Her mouth was full and lush and sensuous …

He sat back in his chair and forced himself not to notice that. “Get busy.”

“I’ll get on it right now.”

“Just out of curiosity, who was the officer who could place the convicted murderer at a party when the other murder was committed?”

“Officer Dan Travis,” she said. “He’s at the Jacobsville Police Department. I’m going to drive down and talk to him tomorrow.” She checked the notes on her phone. “Dunagan was arrested for assault by a patrolman in South Division named Dave Harris. I’m going to talk to him afterward. He might remember something that would be helpful.”