“It’s all right,” she said as her head popped through the neck of her top. “I’ve got to go anyway.”

He’d met her in one of the hot spots in Market Square last night. She was petite, pretty, and brunette. That was the sum total of what he knew about her. She’d told him some stuff, but the music had been loud, the drinks strong, and he hadn’t really been listening anyway because he hadn’t been that interested in anything she had to say.

He remembered none of their conversation, not even her name. He didn’t specifically recall inviting her back to his place, but he must have. As for the act itself, the only thing he remembered was that he’d made sure to use a condom. Immediately after rolling off her, he’d fallen into a deep sleep.

It wasn’t like him to bring home a stranger, but he’d thought that having sex, even mindless, meaningless sex, would keep him from thinking about Elise Laird.

Silly him.

His distraction must have made itself felt, and that was unfair to any woman. Feeling rotten about it, he said, “Look, you don’t have to race out of here just because I do. Stay. Sleep. Make yourself at home. If this doesn’t take too long, we could go out for breakfast later.”

“No, thanks.”

“Well, then, leave your number.” He tried to inject his voice with a bit of enthusiasm, but was pretty sure he didn’t achieve it. “I’d like to see you again.”

“No, you wouldn’t, but that’s cool.” She moved to the door, where she turned back and smiled. “You were a good fuck. Savich said you probably would be.”

Gordon Ballew was one of those individuals who’d been doomed before he took his first breath. His mother hadn’t been sure who his father was and didn’t consider that it mattered much since she didn’t keep the baby anyway.

Not even a barren couple desperate for an adopted child wanted one with a cleft palate, so from the delivery room Gordie had become a dependent of the state, shuttled from one foster home to another until he was old enough to exit the system and try and fare on his own.

His entire life had been an endless round of ridicule and abuse because of his deformed mouth, defective speech, and diminutive size. Today, at age thirty-three, he might weigh 120 pounds, sopping wet.

Duncan would have felt sorry for Gordie Ballew, except for the fact that he had never tried to improve his lot, had never attempted to reverse the downward spiral that his life had been since he wormed his way out of the birth canal.

Once he bade his last set of foster parents good-bye, he’d been in and out of penal institutions so many times that Duncan figured Gordie considered a cell block home.

He watched him thoughtfully on the video monitor in the room adjacent to the interrogation room, where a member of the counter-narcotics team had been hammering away at him for several hours, without success.

“Has the DEA been notified?”

Another narcotics officer shook his head and gave a sour harrumph. “They’ve been such bastards, blaming us ’cause Freddy Morris got popped, I figure we don’t owe them this.”

“Did we cause Freddy Morris to get popped?” Duncan asked.

“Hell no,” the officer answered with soft but angry emphasis.

“Savich got him past you. All of you.”

The officer grunted agreement without accepting blame. “I don’t see how he coulda done that.”

“He couldn’t,” Duncan said. “Not without help.”

The narc looked at him sharply. “From inside? Are you saying somebody on our team ratted us out?”

It was a touchy subject, one that had been broached before to a barrage of protests from both teams. It was something constantly in the back of Duncan ’s mind, but he dropped it for now.

“Where’s Ballew’s lawyer?”

“Waived one,” the narc told him. “Said he was ready to sign a confession, go straight to jail, do not pass Go.”

DeeDee had been practically dancing in place with impatience. “Are we going to get a crack at him, or what?”

“Be our guest,” the narc said.

As they moved toward the interrogation room, DeeDee asked Duncan, “Were you good cop or bad cop last time we questioned Gordie?”

“Bad. Let’s stick with that.”

“Okay.”

The narc opened the door to the small, dreary room and told the interrogating officer that he had a phone call. “Besides, homicide has a hard-on for our boy here.”

“Homicide?” Gordie squeaked.

The narcotics officer stepped aside to make room for Duncan and DeeDee. “He’s all yours. Y’all have fun.” He strolled out and let the door swing closed behind him.

“Hi, Gordie.” DeeDee took a seat across the small table from him. “How are you?”

“How’s it look?” he mumbled.

Ignoring the attitude behind his reply, she introduced herself by name. “Remember us? My partner there is Duncan Hatcher.”

“I know you.” Gordie cast a wary glance toward Duncan where he was leaning up against the wall, arms folded over his chest, ankles crossed.

“Didn’t the narcs get you anything to drink? What would you like?” She moved as though to get up.

“Sit down, DeeDee,” Duncan said. “He doesn’t need anything to drink.”

DeeDee frowned at him with feigned asperity and dropped back into the chair. “You picked the wrong time to get busted, Gordie. Duncan ’s pissed. He had plans for this morning, but now he’s here with you.”

“Don’t let me keep you, Detective.”

The con’s cheeky courage was short-lived. He shriveled under Duncan ’s hard glare. “Let’s stop screwing around,” he said to DeeDee, “book him for murder two, and I can be on my way.”

“The guy died?” Gordie squealed. “He wasn’t bleeding that much. Swear to God it was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him that bad. He said something about my lip. I was high. It happened before I realized. Oh Jesus. Murder two? I’ll confess to assault, but…Oh Jesus.”

“Relax, Gordie.” Duncan ’s somber tone and the sinister way in which he pushed himself away from the wall and sauntered toward the table didn’t inspire relaxation.

Gordie Ballew began to cry, his knobby shoulders bobbing up and down.

“ Duncan, he needs a Kleenex,” DeeDee said kindly.

“No, he doesn’t.” Duncan sat down on the corner of the table.

Gordie wiped his running nose on his sleeve and looked up at him with patent fear. “He died? I barely swiped him with that broken bottle.”

“The guy you assaulted last night was treated and released.”

Gordie sniffed loudly. He gaped up at Duncan, then looked at DeeDee, who nodded encouragingly. “Then how come y’all’re talking murder two?”

“Another case, Gordie. Freddy Morris.”

His face, flushed with anxiety moments before, turned pale. He licked snot off his misshapen upper lip. His eyes began to dart between them, wild with fear. “You’re crazy, Hatcher. I didn’t have nothing to do with Freddy Morris. Me? You kidding?”

“No. I’m not kidding. You want to change your mind about that lawyer?”

Gordie was too upset for that to register. “I…I never shot nobody. I’m scared of guns. They make me nervous.”

“That’s why we’re not charging you with first degree. We don’t believe you made poor Freddy lie down in that marsh, cut out his tongue, and then popped him in the back of the head with a forty-five.” He pretended to fire a pistol and made a loud noise with his mouth.

Gordie flinched. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“You can hold it.”

“ Duncan,” DeeDee said.

“I said, he can hold it.”

She looked at Gordie with sympathy and raised her shoulders in a helpless shrug.

“Look, Gordie,” Duncan said, “we know, those narcs outside know, the Feds know, we all know you gave Freddy Morris over to Savich.”

“Are you nuts? Savich? He scares me worse than guns. If Freddy had been smarter, he would have been scared of him, too, and kept his trap shut.”

Duncan looked over at DeeDee with a complacent grin, as though expecting her to congratulate him for scoring a point. Too late, Gordie realized that he’d given himself away. Immediately he tried to rectify it. “At least that was the word on the street. I heard that Freddy Morris, uh, you know, was in conversation with y’all. I didn’t have personal knowledge of it.”