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“What?” he asked, telling himself that he was noticing every nuance about her because he noticed everything about everyone, because he was a good detective.
“I just bit my tongue,” she said. “It’s swollen and getting in my way.”
“You want to hang up? We can talk tomorrow.”
“No. Unless you want to. I know it’s late.”
He should let her rest. He didn’t want to let her go. She was hurt. And alone.
“Are you in bed?”
“Lying on the couch. I don’t have a television in my room and I plan on taking it easy in the morning. Lionel says he’ll fire me if I show up at the station before Monday.”
“Okay, you lie there, I’ll talk.”
“Good, I’ve been waiting to hear how things went with Jack Colton.” Ramsey half smiled and half frowned at the way she sounded with her usual bravado returning, but a thick tongue and painkillers still in her system.
The woman was an enigma. A female version of himself— the parts he liked.
Still, he didn’t like her being hurt. And alone. Didn’t like the idea that she lived every day with the same dangers he took on.
And he knew there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about any of it.
So he focused on work. Just as he’d always done.
He told her about his interview with Colton.
“So what’s your take on him? You still like him for doing it?”
“Let’s just say I’m not convinced he didn’t do it,” he told her. He’d been thinking about Colton on and off all day. “He could be telling the truth. All of the signs are there. His handshake was firm and confident. He looked me straight in the eye. He only blinked out of sequence once during the entire interview.”
“When?”
He remembered exactly. “When I asked him about stopping for gas when he came upon the accident.”
“What was his answer?”
He told her about Colton using the gas stop to legally cut through the station to avoid traffic and the red light.
“Sounds valid.”
“Yeah. He’s got an answer for everything.”
“Because he’s telling the truth?”
“Or because he’s smart and he’s one step ahead of us. He knows what we’re going to ask before we ask and he has his answers all prepared. He’s had twenty-five years to work on his stories.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
He wanted to know what hers said. “That he might be telling the truth, but your scarcity-mentality theory keeps coming back to me, too. If he’s being driven by a base need for safety and security and being chased by the belief that he’ll never have enough, he could be capable of saying anything, in good conscience, because he feels justified in doing so since he’s never had enough of anything.”
“And yet, he has a conscience. Which would explain why he feels guilty about Frank Whittier. His actions created a scarcity for Frank.”
“Exactly.”
“And his lack of fear of being found out? How do you explain that?”
“He’s confident that whatever he’s hidden, and where he’s hidden it, is undiscoverable.”
