Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

She felt way guilty. Damn priests! Guilt. That was their Job One, even when they’d left it far behind.

“He loved her,” Matt said. “Still does. He’s not my enemy but he is yours. Why?”

“He cuts corners, he hides out. He manipulates this town and this police force for his own reasons. He’s gotta fall. He’s gotta go down.”

“For his sins? Or yours?”

“You’re defending him?”

Matt nodded. Smiled. “Yeah. If he’s innocent. What are you after him for now? Temple said you two had declared a truce.”

“She’s told you about the dangling dead at the New Millennium?”

“She’s mentioned it in passing.” He smiled privately as he sipped the beer.

Molina’s nerves twanged. Something had changed there. What?

“Let’s sit,” she said, setting an example. It forced him into the role of a guest in her house, on her sofa.

“I admit,” she said, “that dead bodies raining from the ceiling look like Kinsella’s MO.”

“Come on. Just one, isn’t it? There was one at the Goliath the night his performance run ended more than two years ago. The only thing to tie him to that was that he vanished for a year. Why’d he come back if he was a murderer?”

“Sheer gall. That man stops at nothing.”

“Probably true, but that’s not a jailable offense. Neither does Lance Armstrong.”

“Except Kinsella didn’t beat cancer. He is cancer.”

Matt pulled back, surprised. “I can’t believe how much you really hate him. Personally, I mean. Why? I’m the one you think is entitled to despise him.”

“See this house you’re sitting in? See my teenage daughter run outside, fancy free? That man has been in here. When we haven’t been. Prowling. Playing games with my wardrobe. My mind. The last time was really sick, but he got too cocky. His taunting little note mentioned something only he and I could know about.”

“Carmen?” Matt had tabled the beer. The slice of lime lay on its pottery dish like a sick green grin. “You’re being stalked? For how long?”

“A few weeks.”

“And you’re sure it’s . . . Max?”

“Absolutely.”

“What’s the point?”

“Sickness. It’s sexually . . . taunting. Items left in my closet, on my bed. Now a trail of rose petals to my bedroom, and Mariah’s! Radios playing. The last ‘gift’ was a sleazy teddy.”

While Matt looked blank, Carmen found herself laughing, giddy at leavening her tension with some unexpected comic relief.

“God, I sure know it’s not you! Not a stuffed bear, like you’re thinking! A teddy is a sex-shop staple, a see-through . . . uh, bathing suit. Red, black, lace.”

Matt frowned. “Sounds like a sort of valentine.”

“A sick, threatening valentine only a stalker would slink into a woman’s house to leave.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Matt was trying to lighten the mood, but his warm brown eyes were deeply concerned now.

She relaxed a little.

“So,” Matt said, “you’ve been dealing with this on your own for how long now?”

“A few weeks.”

“Can’t you of all people sic the law on this?”

“No.”

“You won’t lose face by admitting to your peers that you have a stalker. I’ve seen those two, Alch and Su. They’d go to the wall for you.”

She blinked back unlieutenant-like tears. So good to hear an outsider confirm her unit’s loyalty. But police work was not like anything else. Loyalty would never overlook irregularity. And Carmen had done some damn irregular things lately while trying to keep her daughter safe and the creep at bay.

“I couldn’t go to the wall for me in their places, Matt,” she admitted.

He blew out a breath that indicated he understood the extent of what she was confessing. He was a hell of a counselor, quick to get it, slow to judge. Why hadn’t she confided in him before? Too close to the woman in the case, Temple Barr. Just how close these days, anyway? He radiated a certain secret serenity she hadn’t noticed before. She was pretty quick to understand too.

Had the scales in the eternal triangle tipped Matt’s way in, say, the last few weeks? Had that made Kinsella go over the edge, and for Molina instead?

“You’ve always had your suspicions about Max,” Matt said.

Suddenly, he was referring to a man he’d always called by his last name by his first. What was this?

“Surely,” Matt went on, “your staff knows that, could make discreet inquiries.”

“There is nothing discreet to be done when it comes to Max Kinsella,” she said, her voice as tough as Kevlar. She sighed, grabbed her beer and took a long, long swallow to rinse the recent words out of her mouth.

He raised sun-bleached eyebrows but said nothing.

“I can’t call on anyone in the department because the note that nails him as my stalker refers to an . . . incident I’m not crazy to open up to anyone official. In fact, I must be crazy trusting you. You swear on the seal of the confessional—?”

“I’m not really a priest anymore, Carmen.”

“But you’d hate yourself if you betrayed a confidence. Maybe there is still a little corner of Hell for someone like that, someone who’d betray a serious confidence?”

“A large corner. Unless someone else’s life was at stake, or something.”

“I suppose you think I’m just a neurotic woman, after all—”