by GA McKevett
Dirk grinned. “Oh, yeah. No problem. I’d be glad to keep both eyes on him.”
The instant La Cross went out the door and closed it behind her, Dirk was on his feet. He walked over to the chair where she had been sitting, turned it around, and straddled the back.
“Now this is more like it,” he said to Hank, who didn’t seem to approve of this change in circumstances. “You’ve heard of the good cop/bad cop routine, Hank, my man? Well, the chief there—she was the good cop. Catch my drift?”
Hank stopped fooling around with his ponytail and squirmed in his seat. He reached for the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket; then he seemed to think better of it and started drumming his fingers on his thighs instead.
“Yeah, so what?” he said, trying to sound tough.
Savannah thought he would have sounded a lot badder if his voice hadn’t been quavering.
“You go beatin’ around the bush with me, the way you were with her the past forty-five minutes, and I’ll show you ‘what,’ ” Dirk told him.
“You gonna . . . like . . . hurt me or somethin’?” Hank tried to smirk, but his upper lip quivered and the effect was sadly compromised.
“Well, let’s see now,” Dirk said, leaning over the table toward him. “I work out at the gym three hours a day.”
Lie number one, Savannah thought.
“And I run four miles every evening.”
Whopper lie number two.
“And I box at a club in South Central LA every weekend.”
Wow! Monster lie number three! Savannah was impressed. Ol’ Dirk was on a roll.
“And you,” Dirk continued, “wipe off sinks and toilets with a dirty rag, and in your spare time, you throw bedspreads on the ground. So, who do you reckon would come out on top if we decided to tussle in here?”
Hank reached for the cigarette pack again. This time, he pulled it half out of his pocket; then he shoved it back in with a highly agitated look on his face.
Savannah had to admire his fortitude. If ever there was a time to break your New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, this would be it. Most smokers in an interrogation hot seat would have had smoke rolling out of practically every orifice of their body by now.
“I told that chief gal how my prints got on that Jeep, and that’s all I’ve got to say to you, too.”
“Yeah, but we both know that’s a crock, so let’s get real. We’re burnin’ daylight here, and we’ve gotta get past the ‘I didn’t do it’ BS and on to the ‘why I did it’ part.”
Behind her crossed leg, Savannah had been composing another text. She pushed the button to “send.”
Dirk’s phone jingled. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at it. “Oh,” he said. “I think this is what we’ve been waiting for.”
Hank looked worried as Dirk opened the text and read it aloud: “ ‘Suspect Jordan’s DNA recovered from steering wheel and inside driver handle of Jeep—Moonlight Magnolia Laboratories, McGill, Georgia.’ ”
Dirk smiled at Hank. “ ‘Suspect Jordan.’ Now, buddy, we both know that’s you. And DNA. You can’t get any better than that.”
“When I was . . . um . . . leaning in the window looking, I mighta touched the steering wheel and that handle.”
Dirk slammed his fist down on the table, and Hank jumped like he’d been shot with Granny’s Taser prongs in his backside.
“Don’t you even start with that, boy!” Dirk shouted at him. “You killed that pretty young TV reporter and you’re going away for first-degree murder. You better start telling me why, or you’re looking at the death penalty here.”
Lie number four, Savannah thought. No special circumstances had been proven yet.
However, the lie seemed to work even better on Hank than on most folks. Savannah wondered if, perhaps, he had a needle phobia. His face turned a distinct shade of white as he grabbed for the cigarettes in his pocket, started to tear into the pack, then caught himself and quickly shoved them back into his pocket.
But not quickly enough.
Savannah had caught a glimpse of something odd. It was a ring of clear adhesive tape around the top—the kind she used to wrap birthday and Christmas presents.
What smoker tapes his cigarette pack closed? she wondered. And what smoker could resist taking a good, long drag, when being threatened with capital punishment?
Slowly she rose and walked over to the table.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” she said, standing close to Hank. “But I was just wondering, Mr. Jordan, would you mind? I really need a smoke. Can you spare one?”
For a second, Dirk looked at her like she had lost her mind. Then she saw him glance away and quickly don his poker face. Of course, he didn’t know what she was up to, but he knew enough to go with the flow.
“I . . . um . . . I”—Hank looked like a rat caught in a trap—“I . . . I’m trying to quit,” he offered lamely, his hand resting protectively over the pack in his pocket.
“And I think that’s plumb admirable. I do,” she crooned. “But I’m dyin’ here, so if you don’t mind. Just one.”
Suddenly Dirk was as interested in the mysterious pack as she was. He reached over, brushed Hank’s hand away, and tapped it with his fingertip.
“You don’t wanna give the lady a cigarette, huh, Hank, my man?” he said. “That’s downright ungentlemanly of you.”
At that moment, La Cross opened the door and walked back into the room.
Dirk said to her, “Did you search this fella good before you brought him in?”
La Cross’s feathers ruffled. “Of course we did. We’d never bring a prisoner in without making sure they’re weapon-free.”
“How about contraband-free?” Savannah asked.
“What are you talking about?” La Cross responded.
“He’s got something there in his cigarette pack that he’s guarding like I’d guard a box of Godiva truffles,” Savannah told her. “I think you’d best be finding out what it is.”
“You can’t search my . . . You can’t search nothin’ of mine without no search warrant!” Hank said, clamping both hands over his shirt pocket with all the drama of a bad Shakespearean actor who’d just been run through with a fake sword onstage.
“Of course I can,” La Cross told him as she walked over, placed her hands on his shoulders, and squeezed—hard.
“Ow! That hurts.”
“So put that cigarette pack on the table and it’ll stop hurting,” she told him.
Reluctantly, with a hangdog look on his face, he did as he was told.
Savannah snatched up the pack. A second later, she had it unwrapped.
The thing was stuffed with wads of toilet paper, instead of the drugs she’d expected. Some pot maybe? A few bindles of meth perhaps?
She pulled out one bit of tissue after the other and tossed them onto the table. Dirk and La Cross watched her, confusion mixed with expectation on their faces. Hank looked like he wanted to fall through a crack in the floor and never crawl out again.
Finally, Savannah got to the bottom of the pack; all that remained was a small ball of tissue.
When she took it out, she could feel something hard and round wrapped inside.
“Well, now,” she said. “What have we here?”
Even before she got it completely unwrapped, she knew what it was by the feel and the shape of it.
It was a magnificent engagement ring. The center stone alone was at least two carats of glistening princess-cut diamond.
“Just lookie here! As pretty a little bauble as I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Savannah said, holding it up to the light and turning it this way and that, watching it sparkle.
She stuck it under Hank’s nose. “It appears our friend Hank was getting ready to pop the question to some lucky lady.”
When he didn’t reply, she added, “Oh, wait a minute. If Hank here was to work five years, he couldn’t pay this thing off. In fact, if he were to sell that motel he works in, he couldn’t afford something like this.”<
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“Which means,” Dirk said, taking the ring from her hand, “that he probably came by this in an unscrupulous manner. Whatcha wanna bet?”
Savannah was already texting Tammy. She had a hunch, and she needed proof. Something told her the sunshine girl could get it for her pretty quickly.
“It’s fake,” Hank said. “I won it at the ringtoss on the pier.”
“I don’t think so,” La Cross said, looking it over. “This is a platinum setting and a quality diamond. You stole this.”
“I didn’t steal nothin’, and you can’t prove it!”
“Then why were you carrying it next to your heart there in a cigarette pack?” Savannah asked.
“I bought it!”
“A minute ago, you won it,” Dirk said. “Make up your mind.”
“Just take us to your jeweler,” La Cross told him. “You know, the one you shop at on Rodeo Drive. If he vouches for you, no problem.”
Hank propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t steal it! Really, I’m telling you the truth. I swear to God!”
“Then how did you get it?” Dirk demanded. “And it better be good.”
Hank reached up and pulled long and hard on his ponytail in a nervous gesture, which made Savannah wince. It had to hurt. Finally he said, “Somebody gave it to me, okay?”
“Who?” Dirk asked. “You don’t look to me like a guy who’d be gettin’ diamonds from women. Or men either.”
Savannah’s phone vibrated in her hand. Trembling with anticipation, she read the message from Tammy and opened the two pictures that she had sent, as requested.
It was all she could do not to cheer, cry, and laugh out loud, all at the same time.
“Oh, Hank, Hank,” she said, showing him the first picture, “look at that. Your ass is grass, and the power mowers are a-circlin’!”
Chapter 24
“What is it?” Dirk asked, leaning over and peering at the small picture on Savannah’s phone.
Chief La Cross did the same and looked as puzzled as he did.
But Hank Jordan didn’t look confused. He knew exactly what he was seeing there in that tiny image.
Judging from the pallor of his skin, Savannah wondered which he would do first, throw up or faint.
Savannah turned to Dirk. “That first picture is of Amelia Northrop. It’s her publicity head shot. And you can see that ring there on her hand.”
Dirk held the cell phone practically against his nose and squinted. “Okay, if you say so.”
“Okay. For you old folks without your glasses, here’s the zoom shot.”
She showed them the close-up of Amelia’s hand. There was no mistaking the distinctive design of the ring. It was a match.
Savannah pulled the chair she had been sitting in close to Hank and sat down beside him. Summoning as much fake concern and sincerity as she could muster, she said to him, “I believe you, Hank, when you say you didn’t steal that ring. I believe Amelia gave it to you.”
“Well, I don’t!” La Cross interjected. “He took it off her finger just before he shot her there on the beach.”
Savannah gazed into Hank’s eyes, trying to convey understanding. “I don’t believe that, Chief. It’d be one cold-blooded bastard who’d rip a ring off a lady’s finger right before he killed her. Now just look at this man. He’s not like that.”
“That’s right!” Hank was so happy to have found an ally. “I wouldn’t do something like that. I’m telling you—she gave it to me.”
“How did you meet Mrs. Northrop?” Savannah asked as casually as she could, considering that she would have much preferred to just reach out and squeeze his weasely neck until something cracked.
“She came by the motel one day. Said she’d done some research about the people on the island and I interested her.”
“I’ll bet you did. What happened then?”
“We got to be sorta like friends, and she gave me that ring.”
In her best “Big Sister Mode,” Savannah reached out and adjusted Hank’s collar. “Now, Hank, we know she gave it to you for a reason. Like maybe a payment for something?”
He suddenly looked wary. “Um, no. Nothing like that.”
“Oh, I think it was. In fact, I think Amelia had found out that her husband was being unfaithful to her, so she did some research on people living on the island and came across you.”
Hank just looked from one of them to the other and kept playing with his ponytail, so Savannah pressed on. “After doing a criminal background check on you, she probably thought you’d be her best bet.”
“For what?”
“To kill her husband and his lover. That’s why you wounded Northrop and tried to kill Chief La Cross here. If you’d been a better shot, they’d both be dead, huh?”
When he didn’t reply, Dirk chimed in with his own questions. “What happened, Hankie boy? Did Ms. Northrop get mad at you for blowing it and threaten you somehow? Is that why you chased her on that beach and killed her in cold blood?”
“No! That’s not it at all!”
“Then you’d better fill us in right now on all the gory details,” Savannah told him, “or you’re about to go down as one of the ugliest, meanest killers in history. People all over the country are gonna cheer when you get the needle. You killing a pretty young gal like that for no reason, and all.”
“It wasn’t for no reason! I mean, it wasn’t just me! I’m not going to jail all by myself when—”
“When what, Hank?”
“When killing her wasn’t even my idea!”
The moment he said the words, Savannah could tell he wanted to take them back. But it was too late.
Her face was only a few inches from his. Her eyes were filling his vision when she said, “Murder for hire is one of those ‘special circumstances,’ Hank. Punishable by death. You could get the needle for this if you don’t give Chief La Cross what she needs here.”
A flicker of hope registered on his face. “You mean, if I tell her who hired me, I won’t get the needle?”
La Cross started to speak; Dirk reached over, put his hand on her arm, and squeezed.
“You’ll not only have to tell her who it was, but you’ll have to help us prove it.”
“Like set him up? Wear a wire? Get him to confess?”
“Exactly.”
“And then I won’t get the death penalty?”
“If you aid law enforcement in apprehending all guilty parties in this crime, Mr. Jordan, I’m certain your cooperation will serve to prove your great remorse. I can assure you that your actions will weigh heavily in the scales of justice, on the day you’re sentenced.”
“What?”
She lost her patience. “Who the hell was it? Northrop?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he found out she’d hired me to shoot him and the chief here, and that she’d given me her wedding ring to do it. That really pissed him off.”
“Go figure,” Dirk mumbled.
“He figured out it was me from some paper she’d left there at the house with my name on it. So the day he got out of the hospital, he called me and offered me a hundred grand to do it.”
Jordan shrugged. “I’ve been broke my whole life. You couldn’t expect me to turn down a deal like that!”
“Of course not,” Savannah replied evenly. “How did you get her to go to the beach with you that morning?”
“I was waiting for her outside her house, by her car. I told her we had to talk, that I wanted some more money until I could fence the ring. I got her to take a ride with me.”
“Once you got down to the beach, what happened?”
“I told her what her husband had done, how he’d offered to pay me to kill her. I told her if she wanted to up his ante, I’d consider it.”
Savannah felt her blood temperature plummet. This guy was sitting there, discussing his heinous crime as though describing a fishing trip with his best buddy.
“You saw us?” Savannah asked.
“Sure. I thought about taking you guys out, too, but I figured it’d be easier just to get away from there. I figured she’d croak before she told you anything. She didn’t look like she was gonna make it.”
By then, Savannah’s blood felt like it had reached subzero. She knew she had to get out of that room before she tied into him and tried her best to kill him with her bare hands. Deep in the most primal part of her being—a part she couldn’t deny, but didn’t want to have to see with such stark clarity—she wanted to see him dead. As dead as that young woman on the beach.
She also had to leave because if she didn’t, she was going to tell him that she had just lied to him. Whether he cooperated and helped them nail Northrop or not, he would probably still be facing the death penalty. She wanted to tell him because she wanted to see the look on his face when he realized he’d just been had.
But she didn’t. She didn’t attack him, and she didn’t mock him. Her determination to control that primal part of herself was the only difference between her and the guy in the chair.
And she would be different from him. She would.
“He’s all yours, Chief,” she said.
Then she turned and ran out the door, in desperate need of sunlight and fresh air.
“This is going way better than before,” Granny said as she sat in the big, comfortable passenger seat of Ryan and John’s surveillance van and watched the action through the windshield.
Behind her, manning two different recording devices, were Savannah and Dirk. Chief La Cross was watching through a small side window with a pair of binoculars.
Directly ahead was William Northrop’s big glass house. Hank Jordan was walking up to the front door.
On the lawn a couple of gardeners were raking the flower beds. They looked a heck of a lot like Ryan and John.
Two utility workers examining a nearby telephone pole bore a striking resemblance to the patrolmen Franklin and Rhodes.
“That’s true, Gran. It wouldn’t take much to improve on our last surveillance job,” Savannah replied.
