Dangerous to Touch

“Why?”

“I thought we could drive him around. Walk him along the river, maybe. See if he…smells anything.”

She released the tailgate. “Why would you waste your time? You don’t believe me.” When he made no reply, she gave the dog a brisk order in a foreign language. Blue jumped up and went inside the carrier.

“You speak German?”

“No.” Realizing she just had, she said, “I’ve picked up a few commands. A lot of people train their dogs that way, and he’s part shepherd.”

“Really? I thought he was half wolf, half hyena.”

She shot him a dirty look as she shut the kennel door.

“What did you say to him?”

“Get in,” she decided.

She’d said “up,” but he didn’t bother to correct her. “So how about tomorrow?”

“We could go early, before the kennel opens,” she offered with a tense shrug. “It would be cooler.”

“Five-thirty?”

“I guess,” she said in a resigned voice.

“I’ll come by your house,” he tossed over his shoulder as he walked away.

“Don’t you need my address?” she called after him.

He shook his head, because he already had it. By late afternoon, he’d not only located her small, two-story residence, he’d familiarized himself with every square inch of it. The covert-entry search warrant he’d obtained allowed him to rifle through her personal belongings at his leisure. Sidney would be notified of the “sneak and peek” search when she was no longer under investigation.

Unfortunately there was nothing incriminating inside.

Nothing interesting, either. All of her clothes were well-worn, casual and inexpensive, from her pocket T-shirts to her simple cotton bikini briefs.

The place was quaint and spotless, with mismatched furniture, unusual knickknacks and colorful accents. She saved things like birthday cards and photos in a disorganized drawer, as if she meant to go through them later. Flipping through the photos, he saw a great-looking blonde with two dark-haired girls and a middle-aged couple who must have been Sidney’s parents.

There was no indication of a man in her life, but she had a smush-faced little cat, sitting proprietarily atop her wrought-iron bed. The powder-blue chenille bedspread looked as soft as a cloud, the hardwood flooring was polished to a dull shine and the pale yellow paint was warm and unassuming.

It was…cozy.

On impulse, he reached out to place his palm on the pillow where he imagined she put her head. His hand stood out against the white pillowcase, obscenely dark and masculine in the feminine space, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled with awareness.

It was just like his mother’s house, he realized with horror. Nothing new, nothing matching, nothing expensive and a sense of complacent loneliness that tugged at the heartstrings.

He jerked his hand away from the pillow, unsettled by the revelation. Sidney’s cat startled at the sudden movement, flying off the bed and losing her footing on the slippery floor as she rounded the corner. Berating himself for the moment of sentimentality, he went downstairs and attached a listening device to the cordless phone on his way out.

In addition to the search warrant, a judge had signed his request to run video and audio surveillance. If the killer was in contact with Sidney, feeding her specific details about the murders, that made her an accessory after the fact.

If she was telling the truth…

Marc shook his head, because he couldn’t fathom it. Maybe he was a cynic, but at least he wasn’t a sucker. There was one born every day, his father had always said, and he’d been a master at spotting them. He claimed there was nothing more rewarding than pulling off the perfect con. Marc respectfully disagreed. Catching the player at his game was far sweeter.

So why did the thought of arresting Sidney leave a bitter taste in his mouth?

Deputy Chief Stokes had given him the authority to run full surveillance, if not the budget. He’d booked a cheap hotel room less than a block away, but he couldn’t get a visual on her back door from there. They couldn’t afford to have undercover officers parked on the street in front of her house or hanging around the beach behind it.

He grabbed the white hard hat he kept in the trunk of his car for assuming alternative identities and climbed the telephone pole closest to her house, hoping anyone who saw him would think he was a well-dressed phone company employee.

Near the top, he saw the angle gave him a bird’s-eye view into her backyard. It was a miniscule space with an array of potted plants and a large outdoor shower, probably for washing off sand from the beach. He set up a small, nondescript video camera, similar to the ones that come with your basic home computer nowadays, but of marginally better quality, and made sure it was pointed toward her back door.

With that done, he returned to the hotel room, engaged the feed for the bugs and the video camera and waited.

Detective Lacy arrived after he’d done all the work, but she brought excellent takeout so he didn’t fault her.

“I was thinking,” she said around a mouthful of mu shu pork, “maybe she’s not faking.”

Marc gave her an expression that meant she was incredibly naïve, and kept eating his beef and broccoli.

“I mean, how did she know about the scarf?”

“Your face is an open book,” he said, because he didn’t know, either.

She grunted in disbelief. “Next time you’re going to pull a stunt like that, could you let me in on it? I almost died of embarrassment.”

“How was I supposed to know you had kinky stuff in your locker? It was the only article of clothing I could find in there besides a uniform.”

“Well, I don’t see how she could have known—unless she talked to Gina.” She narrowed her eyes. “They did smile at each other.”

Marc laughed at her display of jealousy. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“She’s straight.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” he said, aware that he sounded very arrogant.

Lacy crossed her arms over her chest. “Not every woman is after your schlong, Marcos.”

“Well, if I stick with the ones who are,” he said lightly, taking no offense, “I still have a variety to choose from.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

“What?”

“Fulfilling a badge-and-holster fantasy for jaded bimbos?”