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Sean pulled his knees to his chest and curled on his side on the small bunk in the cell. The ancient metal frame and thin mattress had clearly been designed in an era when the average man’s height was considerably less than his own. With unadorned gray walls and a single dim light overhead, there was nothing to look at.
He wanted his pills, a drink—anything that would block out his memories of how he’d ended up here. He could feel Tamara’s weight against him as he’d lifted her from the floor to the couch in the capitol bathroom, her blood soaking through his jacket to his shirt.
Sean rolled onto his back and rubbed his hands over his face, his forehead, then his temples, willing the image away. His hands were cold, and it worked, a little, the feel of his own touch.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. He didn’t stand. There was nowhere to go. But the movement did something, tripped a switch in his brain.
Some good might come of his arrest, the speed of it. The finality.
If he didn’t fight it, if the police investigation stopped here, Tamara’s secret could remain safe.
Forever.
* * *
SAM WATSON, CHIEF OF homicide at the Sacramento Police Department, leaned his considerable bulk back in his desk chair as though to distance himself from bad news. Beneath his bald dome, his sharp green eyes focused on the two officers.
“Let’s have it,” he said. “The update on the Tamara Barnes murder,”
Detective Carlos Sifuentes had his computer tablet powered up, ready to retrieve his case notes.
“Sean Verston had motive and opportunity. His history shows obsessive jealousy relative to the victim. He has been placed at the crime scene through his prints and also by his own admission, although he says Ms. Barnes had already been stabbed when he got there. He disappeared after the murder. We found him through an APB on his car, a 1982 gold and white Camaro. According to his roommates he hadn’t been home overnight. He had his passport with him.” Sifuentes scrolled further down the screen. “If Mr. Verston strangled the victim bare-handed we’d be done. But death was caused by a single stab wound through her heart, with no recovery of the weapon. We’ve searched the capitol building, of course, and Verston’s apartment and car. He may have dumped it leaving the scene. We’re looking. Or maybe he flushed the weapon, in which case it’s long gone through the Sacramento sewers.”
Chief Watson circled his index finger in the air, indicating to Sifuentes to speed it up.
Sifuentes spoke faster. “Forensics estimates the blade was roughly half an inch wide, four inches in length—if the handle could be detached, perhaps . . . But I’ve seen a quarter sit at the bottom of a toilet for a long time through many flushes, so I don’t see how . . .”
The chief’s eyes seemed to simmer, turning a deeper green, which Alibi Morning Sun tracked as trouble.
Morning Sun cut in. “That’s it, Chief.”
Watson leaned forward, grasping a pencil with both hands as though to snap it in two. It remained intact, but at risk.
“So if I get you right, all the evidence points to Verston, nothing’s come up to contradict that. Still, it’s circumstantial. He was there, he had reasons to kill the victim. He disappeared, he was a flight risk, so he was promptly taken into custody.” Watson threw the pencil down on his desk. “With DA Sharpton’s reelection coming up in June, he can’t afford a screw-up. Especially not on a homicide that occurred steps from the governor’s office in the capitol building.” Watson jabbed his finger in Sifuentes’s direction, then glared at Alibi. “I want a weapon or a witness. You’re gonna give me an airtight road to a conviction of this Verston kid, nothing left in the wind. Understood?”