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“I don’t care if you have the Holy Grail,” he retorted, his tone harsh. “Not now.”
“It’s about the skeleton you found.”
A small niggle of concern wormed its way through Tate’s heart. Maybe he should find out what she knew.
“Make it quick.”
Lia licked her lips. “I think I saw her the night she died.”
Tate hissed in shock. “What?”
Lia glanced up the steep hill, her gaze locked on the nearby bridge.
“Fifteen years ago I was walking home from a party in the middle of the night and I saw a woman up there.”
Tate forced himself to take a deep breath. No need to panic. “You risked contaminating my crime scene to tell me that you stumbled home drunk in the middle of the night fifteen years ago and thought you’d seen something in the pitch dark?”
Her green eyes flashed with outrage. “I wasn’t drunk, and there was enough moonlight to know it was a woman.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No. When she caught sight of me, she turned and jumped off the railing.”
Tate’s momentary urge to throw up vanished at her clipped words. She knew nothing.
“Sounds like a figment of your imagination.”
“I know what I saw.”
Tate clicked his tongue, not having to fake his surge of impatience. “Even if it wasn’t a drunken illusion, we don’t know if this woman jumped off the bridge or off a passing train or if she was wandering along the tracks and tripped over and broke her neck. We don’t even know how long she’s been here. She could have died a hundred years ago. So, if you don’t mind . . .”
“I recognize the badge.”
The nausea returned. “What?”
“The woman I saw jump from the bridge was wearing a leather jacket with a gold badge pinned on the front.” She pointed to a place over her left breast. “Right there.”
Tate’s brows snapped together. “How do you know about the jacket?”
“Wayne Neilson showed me a photo of the skeleton.”
“Shit.” Tate knew those stupid kids were going to be trouble as soon as he caught sight of the skeleton. “I told those boys to erase any pictures they took.”
Lia shrugged. “By now they’re being shared around social media.”
She was right, of course. And worse was the knowledge that once the pictures started circulating, the local interest story would quickly become a shit show.
“Damned Internet,” he muttered.
“Do you want to hear what I saw that night?” the woman stubbornly demanded.
“Not now, Lia,” he snapped. “If you want to make some sort of formal report, you can come to the office on Monday. Right now, I’m too busy.”
“This is ridiculous.”
She threw her hands up in the air, but thank God she turned to climb up the steep incline. He couldn’t deal with Lia Porter. Not now.
After waiting until she was out of sight, Tate pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his coat. He’d sent a quick text the moment he recognized who had been found. Now he needed to share that this was going to be more than a passing inconvenience.
