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  “It don’t matter,” he said. “There’s enough evidence to lock him up ‘til someone’s gotta chew his food for him.”

  “He’ll find a way around it.”

  “I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

  I smiled at him, heart thumping with excitement. “You can do that?”

  He turned, hooked his elbows behind him on the bar and watched me with the kind of growing confidence that only guys like Jim Beam can inspire.

  “You know what would really piss him off?” he asked.

  I caught his gaze in a cunning half nelson. “If I slept with the man who set him up?”

  He straightened, sobering with alarming speed. “I didn’t say nothing about setting him up.”

  I nodded knowingly and took a casual sip of my drink, but my pulse was still racing. “Kudos to you for not having to brag.”

  He narrowed his eyes again. “I take it you wouldn’t cry too hard to learn he’d been framed.”

  “I think I’d manage to carry on.”

  “That’s—”

  “Coggins,” someone called.

  I cursed in silence and turned to my left. A man was sifting through the crowd toward the bar.

  He was tall and blond and too good looking to be 3D. It took me a moment to recognize him as the other cop who had invaded my office just a few days before. Maybe the mental delay was caused by the ingestion of alcohol. My tolerance for intoxicating beverages is just below that of a flea’s. Nevertheless, his name popped unexpectedly into my head: Eric Albertson. Was he somehow involved in this? Maybe Coggins wasn't the culprit at all.

  “Hey.” He nodded toward the bartender before clapping a friendly hand on his partner’s shoulder.

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” Coggins said.

  Albertson grinned before turning to the bartender. “I’ll have the same as him,” he said, then, “What’s up?” he asked. “You make some kind of pact with the devil or something?”

  Coggins scowled.

  Albertson nodded with faux surreptitiousness toward me, and the other grudgingly caught on.

  “Oh, this is…” He paused, searching for my name.

  “Christina McMullen,” I said, and reached for Albertson’s hand. I showed him the bald headed twins, but he just nodded, manfully keeping his gaze above my clavicle.

  “Nice to meet you.”

  We all waited a beat.

  “She’s the shrink,” Coggins explained finally. He didn’t seem all that thrilled to see his buddy. Boobs can do that to fellas.

  “What?”

  “We met in my office a couple days ago,” I reminded him.

  Albertson scowled, then opened his eyes wide and leaned back from the bar a little. “Jesus! When we picked up Lieutenant Rivera. Christ!” He canted his head a little, studying me. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

  “It was.”

  “I’m sorry." He almost managed to cover his wince, but both embarrassment and regret were just visible in his sea foam eyes. "That was a bad deal. I hate to do that to a fellow officer. It's especially hard with someone from my own shop. Rivera is hard working and conscienscious. Not everyone is." He shook his head once as if deep in thought before shifting his eyes back to me. "You two must be pretty tight?”

  “She’s his ex,” Coggins said.

  Albertson raised his brows and lifted his freshly arrived drink from the bar. “No.”

  I drank simultaneously, resentful to think I could have purchased two peanut buster parfaits for less cash. “It’s true.”

  “His ex.”

  “Yup.”

  “Christ, I’d hate to see you if you were in love.”

  I canted my head at him.

  “You throw a pretty mean elbow for an ex.”

  “It’s Irish,” I said, and when he scowled a question, I explained. “My elbow.”

  He laughed. Go, me.

  “Well, I have to get to bed. It was very nice seeing you again, Officer Albertson." I nodded in his direction, but kept my boobage to myself this time. I couldn't think of any reason to cozy up to him. "And you, Mr. Coggins… I'm always up for a lively…debate." I glanced up through my lashes, granting him my craftiest smile and hoping he was still coherent enough to sniff out the pheromones I was shoveling toward him with the subtlety of a backstreet brawler. "Maybe we could continue our discussion some other time." I shrugged one shoulder, showcasing Leftie and feeling his gaze slip into my cleavage like marbles down a drain. "I'll debate anything from picture frames to politics," I said and pivoting on one sassy heel, hoped to hell that he'd feel the need to brag about how he'd set up the dark lieutenant while simultaneously outwitting his politically savvy sire.

  Chapter 12

  I don’t suffer from stress, but recent circumstances suggest that I may be a carrier.

  —Chrissy McMullen, after one of her more harrowing conversations with Lieutenant Jack Rivera

  “Captain Kindred?” I unfolded from my Saturn and speed-walked after Rivera’s superior officer. The asphalt burned beneath my feet like a dry heat sauna. I was wearing three-inch heels, a form-fitting silk blouse and a black pencil skirt. Speed walking is a relative term.

  The captain glanced over his shoulder. His face was made of leftover hound dog and yesterday’s woes. I thought I saw him curse silently, but I must have been wrong; he doesn’t know me well enough to hate me yet.

  “Captain, do you have a minute?”

  “I’m extremely busy,” he said, and emphasized his point by continuing to walk away. But I’ve been put off by more determined men.

  I grabbed his sleeve. He swung toward me, looking dark, peeved and intimidatingly large.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said.

  There was a momentary pause during which he seemed to resign himself to a certain amount of annoyance. “I assume you’re talking about Lieutenant Rivera?” He sounded tired and annoyed but managed not to roll his eyes. Maybe I should have been impressed by his self-restraint but I was pretty tired myself. After my visit to the Pain Reliever on the previous evening, I had spent most of the night searching the internet for information about Coggins. Cops, it seems, are fairly public characters.

  On the other hand, I still hadn't heard a word on the news about the attempt on Andrews's life. I had no idea who was keeping that under wraps or how they were doing it.

  “You know he's innocent,” I said.

  “The department is reserving judgment until—”

  I made a pssting noise, like a hissing air hose or a dog relieving himself on hot asphalt. I was fairly familiar with that sound. “Listen, I spoke to Officer Coggins.”

  “You what?” His tone suggested he was fully awake now. Awake and listening.

  “I think he set Rivera up.” Maybe I should have waited to see if Coggins came around to offer more information but I was already beginning to doubt my own sex appeal and his ability to understand my heavy-handed invitation while under the influence. So here I was.

  Captain Kindred stared at me for several more seconds then pulled out of my grip and strode with determined haste toward the building.

  “I have reason to believe they had a dispute over a woman,” I said, and caught up in five strides. I was pacing along beside him in a matter of moments. “Stacy Marquet. She and Coggins were engaged. But then she met Rivera.” I shrugged, willing to let him believe it was water under the bridge so far as I was concerned. “I think Officer Coggins is carrying a grudge and…”

  “Ms. McMullen!” Kindred stopped so abruptly that I almost torpedoed past him on my pretty, but hopelessly impractical shoes. “The department is fully capable of handling this situation.”

  I stared up at him, heart pumping adrenaline into my system at a rate which should have alarmed me…or him. “Then why is he still incarcerated?”

  “The legal system is a long, involved—”

  “He’s innocent,” I said. “You and I both know—”

  “It takes a good deal of time and manpower
to—”

  “Coggins has means, motive and—”

  “Don’t do it!” he warned, and shoved a dark, blunt index finger toward my face. “Don’t you get involved in this or I’ll make sure you never interfere with so much as a traffic ticket—”

  “He deeply resents Rivera’s—”

  “Good God,” he said, and now he did roll his eyes. “He told me you would be a pain in the ass.”

  “What do you mean would be?” I snorted. “Coggins doesn’t know me well enough to understand just how much of a pain I can—”

  “Rivera!” he snapped. “That was Lieutenant Rivera's assessment."

  “Well…” I gave him a pissy expression. “Rivera and I have had our share of disagreements, but that doesn’t mean I can allow him to languish in jail while the true culprit lives his life with impunity.”

  The captain stared at me as if I'd grown a second head, then, “Go home,” he said.

  “I wish I could, but justice-"

  “If you want justice why don’t you leave me alone and let me do my job?” he asked, and pivoted away.

  “Because you suck at your job!” I snapped.

  He turned toward me like an angry bull, burly head lowered. “What’d you say?”

  I swallowed, realized a bit belatedly that while I was not a small woman, small was a relative term. I tried a smile. “I said, I would suck at your job.” The smile wobbled on my face. “If I… If I had your job.” He was still glaring. “If I had your job, I would suck at it.”

  The furrows in his forehead were deep enough to lose small pets in. His scowl was like a black hole. “Go home,” he repeated, and turned away again, but I dashed around him, then spun about, dancing backward while I speed-talked.

  “I feel quite strongly that Coggins is somehow involved.”

  He shook his head once, like a grizzly trying to rid himself of gnats. “You can feel whatever you like.”

  “He deeply resents Lieutenant Rivera.”

  “You worry about everyone who doesn’t like your boyfriend, you’re not going to get much sleep at night.”

  “The lieutenant is no longer my boyfriend, Captain, but that fact is not pertinent in this particular situation. Officer Coggins said he’s been waiting for the day Rivera was arrested.”

  Kindred stopped. So I had finally gotten his attention, I thought, but then he snorted and continued belligerently on toward the cop shop.

  “You’ve been watching too much Matlock,” he said.

  I do love Matlock, but I didn’t think that statement was necessarily a testament to my clear-headed deductions. “Can you think of anyone else who might bear the lieutenant ill will?”

  “Besides you?” he asked.

  I tripped in my backward journey, then righted myself and stared at him in shock. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I may have clasped my hand to my heart in weak-assed surprise.

  “I’m a mental health practitioner,” I said, though in all honesty I have no idea why I thought that made a difference. After all, Dr. David Hawkins, one of L.A.'s most noted mental health practitioners, had once tried to fillet me with a stainless steel kitchen knife.

  Apparently it didn't make much of an impact on the captain, because he chuckled a little as he strode past me.

  Nevertheless, I shouted, “I can help you," at his retreating back.

  “Don’t,” he said, and disappeared into his chosen sanctuary.

  “I’m a psychologist,” I said again, but I wasn’t panting it to an oversized black man with a hound dog face this time. Now I sat with regal aplomb in my office. A young woman I still referred to as Emily occupied my client couch. There were scars on her right wrist. The ones on her soul were less visible but more deadly. “And I can honestly tell you that you’re not as screwed up as you think you are.”

  “Really?” She crossed her disgustingly slim legs at the ankle and settled back against the cushion behind her. She still dressed as prim as a church lady, but since she’d begun coming a year of so before, she’d unwound a little. Eventually, she’d even admitted her real name. “Give me a for instance.”

  “You know I can’t discuss my other clients.”

  “Don’t use their names,” she said. “Just the situations.”

  I thought about that for a second. This might very well be a game I shouldn’t play, but the girl was too serious for her age. In fact, she was too serious for any age. “On three separate instances, clients have shown me their genitalia.”

  She made a face. “Ohhhh, please tell me they weren’t sitting on this couch.”

  I laughed, shrugged. “You can’t imagine how grateful I am that you remain fully dressed at all times.”

  “My pleasure,” she said, and uncrossing her legs, toed off her practical little pumps to tuck her feet under her bottom. The relaxed gesture was unprecedented, but I refrained from breaking out the champagne. “The thing is…” She pulled another face, and a fraction of her old angst stole in. “The thing is…”

  “What’s the thing?” I asked.

  “It’s the people one cares for the most who disappoint to the greatest degree.” Her gaze found mine. I remembered her showing up for the first time. She’d talked about her over-zealous but proud parents, who gave her the best of everything in an effort to make her as spectacular as themselves. It had been a lie from the word go. “Those are the ones who do the most profound job of messing with your mind.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She shrugged. The movement should have been casual. It was not.

  “Aggie Christian called me an ice queen. Mr. Marshall gave me an A when I clearly deserved an A plus, and Will…”

  I waited.

  She sighed. “Will dumped me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and maybe I kind of was, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Will was never going to be right for her. Never smart enough or driven enough or understanding enough. Emily demanded a lot of energy, emotional and otherwise, and always would. Maybe that’s why I liked her so well.

  “He didn’t even have a reason.”

  “How was your weekend away together?” I asked.

  “I didn’t go.” She shook her head. “I had to prepare for Introduction to Drama.”

  I raised a brow.

  “Literature,” she said. “It’s my most challenging subject. I mean, there’s no right or wrong. Not really. You can’t get a straight answer.”

  “I thought you didn’t start college until the middle of September.”

  She gave me a pinched nosed expression. “That’s the kind of attitude that’ll get you an A minus,” she said.

  I opened my mouth to object, but she raised a prim hand and hurried on. “That’s not the point anyway. It’s…” She shook her head. “We’re too young to get serious. But it just proves that it’s the people who are supposed to care about you that…” She paused, glanced out the window toward the coffee shop that housed my favorite frosted scones.

  “That what?” I asked.

  “That screw you the worst,” she said.

  From the mouths of babes… I sighed. “That is, sometimes, unfortunately true.”

  “I think it’s always true.”

  I took a deep mental breath and jumped in. “Have you seen your mother lately?”

  She smoothed out a wrinkle in her skirt. It would have been invisible to the average eye, but Emily wasn’t average. “I’ve been so busy. Studying for the ACTs, checking into medical schools. Mom knows how important it is that I have exemplary grades in order to succeed.” She shifted her eyes to mine and held my gaze, daring me to object. “She told me not to bother visiting her until I had time.”

  The room went quiet.

  “In other words,” I said. “You don’t know where she is.”

  “Of course I—” she began, then clenched her jaw and stared out the window again. I had the feeling she wasn’t thinking about frosted scones. “Damn her,” she whispered, and we were off and running.<
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  Four hours and two clients later, I was home.

  After three days of begging me to be careful, Laney had returned to Matamata. The emptiness of the house filled me like a dark cloud. Thoughts and worries and fears chased themselves around in my brain like half-starved piranhas.

  Emily was right. It was the people you care about the most who can do the most harm. My parents, for instance, had done a fairly stellar job of making me into the nut-case I could sometimes be. Dr. David Hawkins had been something of a personal hero before he'd tried to kill me with that filet knife, and Lieutenant Rivera…

  I sighed as my mind rambled on. It didn't really matter any longer how I had felt about the lieutenant. The question was who had hated him enough to frame him. Or maybe… I scrunched up my face as I settled onto the couch and stroked Harlequin's floppy ears. Maybe the question wasn't who hated him, but who cared about him.

  I was just about ready to fetch a pad of paper to begin listing his old flames when the phone blurted from the kitchen, startling me from my musings. I picked up on the fifth ring, voice a little breathless.

  “Christina?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Joel.”

  I remained silent, thinking, my heart beating a dull tattoo in my chest.

  “Joel Coggins,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d like to get together for a drink sometime.”

  Chapter 13

  When a man talks dirty to a woman, it's sexual harassment. When a woman talks dirty to a man, it's $3.95 a minute.

  —One of Chrissy’s illustrious clients, who was certain he was not a sex addict but would just as soon remain anonymous anyway

  I told myself once again that it didn’t matter whether Rivera had been as faithful as a Labrador or as loose as a goose; I was absolutely certain he was innocent. And if he wasn’t innocent, there was a high likelihood that he had acted as he did in an effort to keep me safe.

  Okay, maybe I wasn’t as absolutely certain as I would like to believe. And maybe that’s why I placed a call to Officer Tavis.