Megan
After greeting Officer Eklund and his K-9 Brutus in the hallway, I led Brigit down the corridor to the detective’s office and rapped on the door-frame. Rap-rap.
Detective Bustamente sat behind his desk. With his portly build, wrinkled clothing, and laid-back manner, it might be tempting to write the guy off as lazy and dim. Doing so would be a grave error. While he might not give his attire much attention, he didn’t miss a detail when it came to his investigations. He reserved his energy for his work. And while he might appear relaxed, he was always exercising his mental muscle.
He looked up from the tower of files on his desk. “Good mornin’, ladies. How was your shift?”
“It was…” Confusing? Perplexing? Disturbing? I went with, “Interesting.”
Knowing Detective Bustamente was always good for a scratch, Brigit circled around the desk, plunked her hindquarters down at his feet, and looked up at him.
He reached out both hands to scratch behind her ears and lowered his nose to hers. “How are you, Sergeant Brigit?”
My partner wagged her tail and licked his cheek to let him know she was doing just fine, thanks, and hoped he was doing the same.
I set the separately bagged bricks and shoes on the desk and slid into one of the chairs. When Bustamente turned his attention from my partner to me, I launched into a quick review of the night’s events. “I took a call last night and I’m not sure what to make of it.” I explained about the brick and the footprints at Adriana’s place, then moved on to the shoes and bricks at Ryan’s. “It looked obvious to me at first. Like he’d thrown the brick through the window and hadn’t made any effort to hide the evidence of his guilt. But then he told me he’d left his shoes at Adriana’s when they’d broken up, and that she’d attacked him last week. He had claw marks on his neck that he claimed were made by her. But when I went back to her house to ask about things, she said she’d never attacked him and that he was into some unusual sexual activities, and that’s probably how he got the claw marks.”
“Kinky sex, huh?” Bustamente didn’t bat an eye. After all his years on the job, nothing surprised him anymore.
I went on. “Adriana said she didn’t bother fighting the protective order because it would have cost money to hire an attorney and she didn’t mind being ordered to stay away from someone she didn’t want to see, anyway. Also, she couldn’t take off from work on the day of the hearing.”
“That sounds like a valid explanation.” He seemed to mull things over for a moment. “Either of them got a record?”
“No.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Was last night the first time we’ve been called?”
I shook my head. “Ryan called the police after Adriana allegedly attacked him. Adriana said she called a few days ago when someone threw a tennis ball at her car during the night and set off the alarm. Officer Mackey handled the call.”
“And?”
“Adriana says he told her there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant any follow-up.”
Bustamente reached for his keyboard, tapped a few keys, and leaned in to read Officer Mackey’s report. Having perused the short post before leaving Adriana’s house the first time, I knew it would be of little help. Mackey had put in a minimum amount of information, and had managed to misspell at least one word per sentence. Victim reports car alarm going of. Beleives that her ex-boyfriend thru tennis bal at car. No wintesses.
The detective snorted. “Mackey’s no Hemingway, that’s for sure.” Bustamente was silent for a long moment, nodding slowly as the wheels of his mind seemed to be turning. He held out a hand. “Let me see the photo you took of the footprints.”
I retrieved my phone from my pocket, pulled up the first photo on the screen, and handed it to him.
He stared down at the photo for a few seconds before tweaking the screen to enlarge the pic. “These prints seem exceptionally complete and clear.” He looked up at me. “It hasn’t rained recently. Where did the mud come from?”
“Adriana’s garden,” I said. “She raises her own vegetables. She works as a dietitian at a rehab center. Her ex claims she’s an excessive health nut.”
“Tomato, tomahto,” Bustamente said. He turned his attention to the bagged shoes. “What’s that squished on the sole?”
“A tomato,” I said. “Or a tomahto. From her garden. I didn’t tell her I’d found the shoes at Downey’s apartment. He claimed he’d left them at her house when they broke up weeks ago and that she must have brought them back last night to frame him. I suppose it’s possible he might have left them outside since they were muddy, but his apartment was a pigsty. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would worry much about mud on his shoes. He also said he would have worn booties over his shoes if he were going to be creeping around her place. He uses them on his job as a cable installer.”
Bustamente tilted his head to one side, then the other, as if mentally weighing the evidence and arguments. When his head went straight again, I supposed it meant he, too, wasn’t yet leaning one way or the other. He eyed the smushed blob of tomato for a moment before gesturing to my partner. “Did you have Brigit track?”
“I did. She didn’t seem to find a trail leading out of the backyard. Either the culprit climbed over the side fence or—”
“The culprit was Adriana herself so the trail led right back to her side door.”
“Exactly.”
He glanced down at Brigit. “Too bad you can’t tell us if you smelled Downey at the house.”
She cocked her head as if trying to understand him. It wasn’t the first time I wished she spoke English so we could communicate better. She knew more than she could tell us. I knew it.
Bustamente patted her head before turning back to me. “I’ll send a crime scene tech out to take a closer look at the footprints.”
“Great. I’ll let Adriana know someone’s coming.”
“When’s your next shift?” he asked.
“Tonight. I told Adriana I’d keep a close eye on her place and ask the other officers to do the same. Of course I’ll tell them to keep an eye on Ryan’s apartment, too.”
“All righty. I’ll give this some thought.” The detective twirled a finger in the air. “Let’s circle back later.”
When I left Bustamente’s office, I made a quick detour into the administrative area shared by the street officers. Brigit lay at my feet while I ran both Adriana’s and Ryan’s names through the Internet. The night’s events had left me befuddled. Might as well see what I could find out about them, see if it might help me make sense of things, get a better understanding about who they were.
The search gave me several links for Ryan Downey. The guy was an open book, though hardly a literary masterpiece. More like a picture pop-up book. His Facebook page included photos of him posing with big-breasted women dressed in tight-fitting comic-character costumes that showed lots of leg and cleavage. All wore heavy makeup and some wore colored wigs. Bright pink. Purple. One was blue, similar to my roommate’s hair. There were a couple recent pictures of him with his arm draped around an unidentified woman with blond hair. He’d also shared dozens of photos of his Camaro, far more than others were interested in judging by the pitiful lack of likes and comments on the latter few.
According to his Facebook profile, he claimed to be in a relationship with a woman he’d identified only as “My Beautiful Blonde Boo.” Was she the young woman in the posted pics? He hadn’t tagged the photos on his page or provided names in his posts. Hmm. When I’d interviewed Ryan, he hadn’t mentioned having a new girlfriend. But I hadn’t specifically asked about his current romantic involvements, either. Was he really dating someone new? Or had he only made the entry to irritate Adriana if she happened to look at his page? Something else to ponder.
Ryan had also posted several photos of him with his nephew. Toby, right? The kid sure was a cutie. There they were blowing bubbles in a park. Another featured Toby feeding ducks by a pond. The Police and Firefighters Memorial wall in the background told me the photo had been taken at Trinity Park. Ryan had shared a photo originally posted by a Randy Downey—Ryan’s older brother?—that showed Toby playing on a playground with a dozen other kids. A sign in the background identified the adjacent building as the Southside Recreation Center. The post read: Toby having fun with friends at Camp Fort Worth! When I was a kid, I’d attended one of the city’s summer day camps myself, though my camp had been at the rec center closer to my parents’ house in the Arlington Heights area.
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of Ryan, but at least he appeared to be a fun and involved uncle. Similar photos of costumed women, his car, and his nephew showed up on Ryan’s Instagram account. His name also popped up in regard to a local high school’s robotics team. Evidently he’d been on the team himself years ago and still helped out as an adviser on design and electronics. Maybe his technical savvy was where his confidence came from, what made him feel self-assured and superior.
While I learned quite a bit about Ryan—his public persona, at least—Adriana was an entirely different story. When I ran her name through the browser, virtually nothing came up. It was almost as if she didn’t exist. She had no Facebook page, no Twitter or Instagram accounts. She didn’t Snapchat and had no Pinterest. I would’ve expected her to at least be sharing some kind of healthy hummus recipes, maybe one for that zucchini bread she’d made for Ryan. The only entry I found for her was a listing on the staff of the rehab center.
Given the lack of information online, it looked like Adriana had taken pains to protect her privacy. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s not like her home was all that inviting. She seemed to be the kind of person who kept to herself, an introvert. Of course there was nothing inherently wrong with that. I’d been a bit of a loner myself as a young girl, quietly reading my books under a tree rather than jumping rope on the playground. With my stutter, I couldn’t trust my mouth to say the chants right. Different strokes for different folks. But Adriana’s reserve did make it harder to get a feel for her, to know what she was thinking, what made her tick. What she might, or might not, be capable of where an ex was concerned.
So long as I was on the computer, I figured I might as well enter my reports on the incident at Adriana’s place and the Lollipop Bandit. Once they were in the system, I became curious. Had the lollipop thief struck before, or was this morning’s heist his first offense?
I pulled up the search page and typed in a selection of alternative key terms. Tootsie Roll Pop. Lollipop. Sucker. Grape. Scrubs. Medical uniform. Nurse. The machine whirred for a second or two after my finger tapped the enter key, then spat out a list of seven reports. A quick scan of the reports told me that five of them were irrelevant. The other two reports told me that the man in the scrubs was a repeat offender. Per the information contained in these reports, both of which had been filed within the last month, a man in scrubs had been spotted pocketing grape Tootsie Pops at not only a convenience store on Pennsylvania Avenue, but also a pharmacy on Henderson.
Like the gas station he’d hit this morning, both locations were within a few blocks of Cook Children’s Hospital. The reports indicated that the man’s head was covered with a cap, his face with a surgical mask. The first report indicated another customer had witnessed the theft and reported it to the store management, but the thief had left the building in the meantime. The second report stated that a store employee who’d been stocking sodas nearby had seen the man slip the lollipops into his pocket, but that the man had taken off running when confronted. Though the stocker had chased the thief out into the parking lot, he gave up when the thief turned a corner a block down. Given that nobody had been injured or threatened and the value of the property taken was nominal, the responding officers had filed the reports but performed no follow-up.
While I knew those of us in law enforcement had to set priorities, the type A personality in me wouldn’t feel satisfied until we caught the guy, even if all he got was a slap on the wrists for his sucker stealing. I’d definitely be keeping an eye out for the masked bandit while I went about my patrols.
On the way out of the station, I stopped at the bulletin board to check the schedule. Looked like Derek would be working the night shift tonight, too. While I normally groaned when I discovered he was working my same schedule, it would be helpful tonight. I’d be able to catch him and discuss his earlier visit to Adriana’s house.
Our current shift complete, Brigit and I drove home. The house we shared with Frankie and Zoe, Frankie’s fluffy calico cat, was a modest-sized bungalow-style home with a broad, deep porch. The wood was mauve with ivory trim, the front door painted navy blue to provide a touch of contrast. A giant magnolia tree lorded over the front yard, shading the lawn too much for grass to grow. An ivy ground covering was doing its best to hide the bare spots. A prefab single-car detached garage had been added some time after the house had originally been built, though Frankie and I used it for storage only, parking our cars in the driveway. A six-foot wooden privacy fence enclosed the backyard, giving Brigit a safe place to romp, dig, and do her dirty business, and me a nice, shady place to read in the hammock Seth had bought me as a gift.
I pulled my blue metallic Smart Car to the curb in front of the house. No sense blocking Frankie’s red Juke in the driveway. She’d just have to wake me up to move my car later when she left the house.
Brigit and I went inside to find Frankie sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of Fruity Pebbles on the table in front of her and Zoe on her lap. While Zoe was a fluffy ball of white, orange, and black fur, Frankie’s blue hair matched her eyes and the azure flakes in her bowl, as well.
“Hey,” she said in greeting around a mouthful of cereal. “How was your shift?”
“Weird.” I gave her the Cliff’s Notes version of what had transpired. “I’m totally befuddled. What do you think?”
“That you’re the only person I know who uses words like ‘befuddled.’”
I gave her my cut-the-crap look.
She lifted her shoulders. “Hard to say. On one hand, who in their right mind would throw a brick through their own window? It would be a pain to deal with and it probably wouldn’t be cheap to get it fixed, either. But on the other hand, would the guy really risk making a false police report about being attacked? And I guess the judge must have believed he was in some kind of danger or they wouldn’t have given him a protective order. Then again, if Adriana didn’t show up to court to defend herself, the judge probably figured it couldn’t hurt to issue the order, just in case.”
In other words, she found the situation as confusing as I did. It was impossible to tell which way was up. Enforcing the law was my job, but how could I enforce it when I wasn’t sure who to enforce it against? Turning to more positive topics, I said, “I’ve got some good news for you.”
Zoe hopped up onto the table as Frankie raised a hopeful brow. “Oh, yeah?”
“Seth’s station has an opening. He said he’d put in a good word for you.”
Her face brightened. “That would be great! I’ll get my application in right away.”
While Brigit took a drink from her water bowl—slurp, slurp, slurp—I reached over to give Zoe a scratch at the base of her tail, the same spot that was pure bliss for Brigit. Zoe lifted her hindquarters to press them into my hand and began to purr. When I pulled my hand back a moment later, she went from appreciative to angry in one second flat, standing up, swatting at my arm, and issuing an insistent meow.
“Sorry, girl,” I told the cat. “I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed.”
After brushing my teeth and washing my face, I headed to the bedroom, changed into my pajamas, and pulled my curtains tight. I’d had to buy the heavy, room-darkening kind. It wasn’t easy to fall asleep in the daytime without fooling your biorhythms into thinking it was night. On occasion, I drank a glass of wine to relax myself, but a glass of chardonnay didn’t sound enticing at all at the moment. I tossed and turned for a bit, but finally ventured into dreamland.
Around three in the afternoon, I began to stir. Something warm was pressed up against my back. At first I assumed it was Brigit, but when I realized there was a heavy human arm draped over me, too, I knew it had to be Seth. He must’ve come over after his twenty-four-hour shift was up. While I had yet to give him a key to the house, he knew we kept an emergency spare on a hook inside Brigit’s doghouse out back. Still, him coming over like this was something new. In a way, it wasn’t unlike Adriana having a key made to Ryan’s apartment without his permission. But unlike that situation, I was happy Seth was here.
I raised my head to look around. Brigit and Blast were curled up together on her bed on the floor. Zoe had joined the dogs, stretched out along the edge of the cushion.
My stirring roused Seth and he lifted his head from the pillow. “Hey,” he said, his voice gravelly from sleep.
I turned to face him. “Who do you think you are, sneaking into a woman’s bed without her permission?” Just because I didn’t mind didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him a little hell about it. No sense letting the guy think he could take me for granted.
His kissable mouth spread in a sexy grin. “I’m the male version of Goldilocks,” he said, “and this bed felt just right.”
I felt myself warm at his words. Our relationship had been through some initial ups and downs. Given his rough childhood, Seth didn’t trust or get attached easily. But somewhere along the way his defenses had broken down. I had no idea where our relationship might lead, but for the time being I was quite happy with the way things were. Besides, what woman in her right mind would complain about waking up to find a sexy firefighter in her bed? Still, it was fun to razz the guy a little. “I could have you arrested, you know.”
“For what?”
“Breaking and entering.”
“I didn’t break in. I used a key. A key you told me about.”
He had me there. “I only told you where I hid the key in case there was an emergency.”
“There was an emergency.” He slid me a grin. “I needed ten cc’s of Megan Luz, stat.”
“Okay, but you still entered.”
“I’ve heard of people being charged with B and E,” Seth said, “but never just E.”
“When it’s just E we call it trespassing.”
He sat up and raised his palms. “All right. If you want me to go, I will.”
When he went to slip out of the bed I pounced on him and pinned him to the mattress. “Not so fast, mister.”
He nuzzled my ear. “How about we commit a crime of passion?”
“Misdemeanor or felony?”
“Felony. First degree.”
We spent the next half hour committing crimes in which we took turns playing the role of perpetrator and willing victim. When we finished, we collapsed onto our respective sides of the bed.
“How bad was the fire last night?” I asked.
“The fire itself wasn’t too bad,” he said. “The problem was getting to it. It was in a warehouse and there were wooden pallets and rusty pipes and all kinds of junk around the building. I wrenched my back moving a barrel.”
“Turn over,” I told him. “I’ll rub it for you.”
He rolled over, exposing the army eagle tattoo that spanned his broad shoulders and the scars across his lower back that he’d earned when running from a grenade thrown by a young boy in Afghanistan. It was like a horrific diary entry eternally etched on Seth’s skin.
Forcing that awful thought aside, I wriggled to my knees on the bed next to him and began massaging his shoulders, rubbing my thumbs over the eagle’s feathers. “How’s that feel?”
Seth moaned in delight. “Like heaven.”
“Guess that makes me an angel, then.” My mind flashed back to the fictional vixens on Ryan’s wall. I supposed it made sense for me to be some type of angelic superhero. After all, my last name—Luz—meant “light” in Spanish. I only hope I wouldn’t be like Lucifer, the other angel of light, and fall from grace, ending up in hell. Then again, hell couldn’t be much hotter than the brutal Texas summers.
I reached over into the drawer of my nightstand and retrieved the peppermint pain-relief cream. I always kept a tube handy. Between chasing suspects who were trying to flee and the repetitive hand motions of traffic duty, cops constantly found themselves with a wrenched muscle or tight tendon.
I squeezed a dollop onto the small of Seth’s back and worked it around his lower lumbar before moving up his spine. As I rubbed his sore back, I told him what Adriana had said when I returned to her house, about Ryan’s penchant for role-play.
“A crotchless tiger costume?” he said. “Did you ask where I can get you one?”
I grabbed my pillow and put it over his head.
His muffled voice came from beneath. “What’s your next move?”
Lest I suffocate the guy, I removed the pillow. “The supervisor on duty said I made the right call not to arrest anyone. We got Detective Bustamente involved. The detective had some suspicions about the footprints and sent a crime scene tech to the house to take a look.”
My hands burning from the cream, I slid off the bed to go wash them.
When I returned to the bedroom, Seth had turned over onto his back. “Let me take you to dinner before your shift.”
He’d get no argument from me. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but that theory worked just as well on a woman.
We cleaned ourselves up and left the dogs canoodling on the couch while we went out for an early dinner of Mexican food. As much as I would’ve loved a margarita, I wasn’t sure the effects would wear off before I had to leave for my shift, so I settled for eating half my body weight in guacamole instead. I made a mental note to take Brigit for some long walks during tonight’s shift to burn off the calories.
On the drive back to my place, I asked Seth to swing by the W1 station. Detective Bustamente’s car was still in the lot. Good. “Mind if I run in for a minute? I want to see if he’s heard anything from the crime scene techs yet.”
“No problem.” Seth slowed, turned down the next side street, and circled back, pulling to the curb just past the front doors to let me out.
I scurried inside and down the hall to the detective’s office. I found him toying with a red rubber band, stretching it every which way between his fingers as he stared off into space, probably contemplating an investigation. When he spotted me in his door, he asked, “Who and why would someone steal two hundred bowling balls?”
I vaguely remembered dispatch announcing an alarm call late last night at the Cowtown Bowl ’n’ Roll, a combination bowling alley and roller-skating rink. I’d been dealing with a speeder on Rosedale at the time. I’d assumed it was like most other such calls, a false alarm. Looked like my assumption was wrong.
“Fraternity prank?” I suggested. “Maybe a competitor trying to put them out of business?” I had no idea how much it would cost to replace two hundred bowling balls, but it wouldn’t be cheap.
He pointed a finger at me. “You’re thinking like a detective, Officer Luz.”
“What did the crime scene tech think of the footprints at Miss Valdez’s house?”
“He couldn’t conclusively say the prints were real or faked,” the detective said, “but he thought the ones in the garden soil might have been too deep to have been made naturally. It also looked like additional dirt had been spread in that particular part of the garden to ensure a good print.”
“So it’s likely Adriana made them?”
“Let’s say it’s ‘possible.’ It’s also possible Ryan faked them to make Adriana appear vindictive, to throw suspicion off himself.”
“What about the brick? Any fingerprints on it?”
“Two sets,” he said. “One set matched prints that were found on the rubber toe of the shoe. Our best guess is that they’re Mr. Downey’s. The other set were small, like a child’s.”
“Ryan’s nephew.” It made sense that Toby might have touched the brick while they were painting the model.
“That’s what I’m thinking, too.”
If Adriana had been trying to frame Ryan, it looked like she’d been smart enough to keep her prints off the brick and shoes. “Did you contact Miss Valdez and tell her the results?” I asked.
“I figured I’d let you handle that task,” Bustamente said with a wry smile. “After all, you’re wanting to get into detective work someday. You might as well get a taste of it now. Consider it an opportunity to expand your skills.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Who do you think you’re fooling?”
He chuckled. “Certainly not a smart young woman such as yourself.”
He’d pushed his dirty work off on me. I wasn’t much looking forward to giving Adriana the news, but Bustamente was right. I better get used to uncomfortable conversations if I wanted to be a successful detective. And I knew he’d only asked me to handle the task because he was swamped and because he trusted me to do a good job. It was an implicit compliment, really.
I raised a hand in good-bye. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“Good luck, Officer Luz.”
As I headed back down the hall, I passed Officer Hinojosa.
“Sucking up to the detectives again?” Hinojosa asked.
“Not sucking up,” I snapped. “Doing my job.”
He chortled. “Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.”
Seth and I drove back to my house. I would have liked to plop myself down on the sofa with Seth and our dogs and watch television until it was time for me to get ready for my shift. But duty called and I, being the dedicated cop I was, had to answer.
I walked Seth and Blast to the door. While Seth gave me a kiss good-bye, Blast did the same to Brigit, licking at her mouth. I wondered if he could taste Brutus and realized Brigit had cheated on him and gone to first base with a coworker. If he could, he didn’t seem to mind. I guess dogs don’t get jealous. Humans, on the other hand, were prone to intense jealousy. Exhibit A was Adriana and Ryan. One of them didn’t seem to be able to get over the other. But who was the one who couldn’t let go?
I touched my index finger to Seth’s chin dimple. “Thanks for dinner.” I followed up with another warm kiss.
When we finally broke apart, Seth gave my long, dark locks a final twist, said, “See ya,” and headed out to his car.
* * *
I dressed in my uniform and pulled my hair back into my usual tight, professional-looking bun. “Let’s go, partner!” I called to Brigit. She bounded up and trotted after me as I exited the house.
After running by the station to get our cruiser, we headed to Adriana’s house. I clipped a leash to Brigit’s collar, gave her a moment or two to sniff around the mailbox and porch, and led her to the front door. Knock-knock-knock.
“Hello, Officer Luz.”
I nearly jumped out of my tactical sneakers when a voice came from behind the oleander bushes to my left. Had one of those creepy gnomes from out back come to life? I reflexively whipped my baton from my belt and flicked it open. SNAP! Working as a cop had put me in some dangerous situations, and quick reflexes could mean the difference between life and death. They could also mean the difference between appearing in control or out of it. Right now, I was afraid I appeared to be totally out of it.
Adriana’s face peeked out from between limbs she’d pushed aside. Her eyes went to my baton.
“Hello, Miss Valdez.” Attempting to appear calm and nonchalant, I twirled the baton in my fingers, just as I’d done with my performance baton back when I’d been a twirler for my high school’s marching band. Swish-swish-swish. Yep, just playing with my baton. You didn’t scare the bejesus out of me popping out of that bush. Nope. I stepped down from the porch, leading Brigit with me, before collapsing my baton and returning it to my belt. “What are you doing back there?”
She held up an extension cord, looking at it rather than me. “Plugging in my new lights.” She disappeared for a moment as she stuck the plug into an outdoor outlet, reappearing a moment later as she slipped out from between the bushes. She pointed up to a floodlight mounted on the corner of her house. “That’s motion-activated,” she said. “I put a couple of them out back, too. They’ll light up the whole yard if anyone goes back there again.”
She’d followed my instructions. I fought the urge to pat her on the head and toss her a liver treat and a “good girl!” But it also made me wonder. Would she be going to all this trouble if she’d been the one to throw the brick?
I gestured to the thick bushes. “You might want to cut these bushes back, too. They make a good place for someone to hide.” Obviously.
“I’ll get right on that,” she said.
Brigit sniffed along the edge of the porch, dropping to her belly and shoving her nose through a spot where the wood had rotted, leaving a gap of several inches.
Adriana glanced at Brigit before turning back to me. As before, her focus was slightly askance. “What did the crime scene person say? Are you going to search Ryan’s apartment?”
Brigit began to claw at the wood, trying to get at something under the porch. I ordered her back to my side and grasped the leash near her collar, holding her close. When I responded to Adriana, I chose my words carefully, watching her closely to see how she would react. “The footprint analysis was inconclusive,” I said.
Her eyes flashed, but was it with fear or fury? “Inconclusive? What does that mean?”
“It means the tech couldn’t be certain if the footprints had been made naturally by a person walking in your backyard.”
Her face contorted in confusion. “How else would footprints be made?”
I raised one shoulder. “He said that given the parameters, it’s possible they had been fabricated.”
“Fabricated?” She spat out the word as if it was a bug she’d accidentally ingested. “He thinks the prints were faked?”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “But the bottom line is a good defense attorney could make a sustainable argument to that effect, especially given that Ryan has an alibi and already successfully sought a protective order against you. We need to build a better case if we’re going to search Ryan’s place and bring him in on charges.”
She sputtered, her eyes looking wild as she threw her hands in the air. “I don’t believe this! I’m being treated like a criminal when I’m the victim here!”
I raised a conciliatory palm in an attempt to calm and appease her. “I’ll be watching out for you, Miss Valdez. I promise.”
Yep. I’ll definitely be watching out for you.