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“Kiss my ass. I’m tired of stepping into a landfill every time I get to work.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Does your house look like this?”
“Hell, no. My wife cleans my house.”
“I hope you’re giving her more for her troubles than your shriveled dick.”
Ackerman shot a bird.
Webb sat in his chair and sighed loudly. He was restless. “Did Lincoln reach out yet?” District attorney Shepherd Lincoln—he of two last names, in keeping with his reputation as a pompous ass—was notoriously slow and inconsiderate of other peoples’ time.
“Haven’t heard anything. Relax, he’ll get to it.”
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t the messiness that was getting to him. He was unsatisfied. An arrest had been made, the case was considered solved, but it was still unsatisfying. “We’re missing something, man.”
Ackerman looked up from his book and shook his head. “I told you you were getting too attached to these kids. And now look at you.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what? The DNA matches, the rag matches, the dog hair matches. We have him on record lying his ass off about even talking to her that night. What more could you possibly want?”
Webb slammed a folder on the desk and leaned all the way back in his chair until his body was almost parallel to the floor. “A motive?”
“He was obsessed with her, saw his chance and raped her at the party, and then he had to kill her to cover it up. It’s not rocket science.”
“The techs didn’t find anything, though,” Webb complained.
“The guy is into some weird shit, porn-wise. I’ve never even heard of pregnancy porn.”
Webb rolled his eyes. “Yes, you have.”
“Okay, I have. But I’ve never watched that shit.”
“To be fair, everybody in that house uses the computer. We can’t prove it was him.”
Ackerman shrugged and turned his attention back to his book.
“There’s something in these files, Brad. Something that’s the answer to this shit. I can feel it.”
“We say that on every case that seems too easy.”
“I know.”
Was that it? Some things in life don’t feel real unless there’s a struggle behind them. That’s why women like bad boys and men like bitches. Because easy doesn’t feel right to people with emotional problems. And if there’s any group on earth with an assortment of emotional problems, it’s cops.
Ackerman spoke up again, saying, “What’s on your mind, Vaughn?”
“You’ve seen him. He’s scrawny. Old girl was almost 140 pounds. She was solid. He’s probably a buck twenty-five soaking wet. And he said he doesn’t lift.”
Ackerman raised his eyebrows. “So what then, she killed herself?”
Webb scratched his chin. “Somebody put her up there. I know it. You know it. Or somebodies. What if two of them were working together?”
“I think it doesn’t matter at this point. We charged him, he’s going to trial, and the case is down. Let it go.”
