“Because a guy who attempted murder is going to hang around in the café wearing a T-shirt and no coat? I can’t just go up to people and demand they bare their forearms for my examination.”
“You can’t?”
She shook her head. Then she pulled two evidence bags from her pocket. “Hold ’em out.”
I did, and she put the bags over my hands then secured them at my wrists with rubber bands. “What I can do is have Ross scrape your fingernails for DNA, and if this nut is in the system…” She clapped her hands together so loudly I started, and my plastic bags rattled. “We got ’im.”
“What system?”
“The Combined DNA Index System, CODEX for short.”
“FBI?”
“What was your first clue?”
“The acronym?”
Her lips twitched. “It’s a federal thing.”
My surprise that she knew what an acronym was must have shown on my face.
“I’m good with letters,” she said. “R-E-B-O-U-N-D!”
Now my lips twitched. “I’m sure you’re good with more than that.”
The amusement in her iris-blue eyes faded. “Is that a ‘cheerleaders are sluts’ dig?”
“I didn’t mean it to be.”
I hadn’t known that was a thing. Cheerleaders were pretty far out of my social circle in high school. I hadn’t cared; I’d had Owen. I’d gone to a college with over forty thousand students. Add over twenty thousand in faculty and staff, and that was one huge campus. Cheerleaders? I’d seen a few, but I certainly didn’t know them.
“I meant that I doubt you’d be the police chief just because you can spell to a beat.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
I suppose someone like Deb had a tough time being taken seriously as a cop. That she was the police chief at all said she wasn’t as blond as she looked.
Silence descended. I tried to figure out how to suggest she send the ring to the FBI without sounding like I was telling her her business, or insinuating she was stupid.
Or explaining that the wolf had told me to.
“That ring—” I began.
“I should probably show that to the feds too.”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
Chapter 11
Dale Carstairs had to be over twenty years older than Owen, but his legs worked a lot better. By the time Owen and Reggie climbed into the rental truck, the taillights of the man’s pickup blared red several hundred yards in the distance.
“One of her patients probably freaked out,” Owen said. “Or the owner of one of her patients had a stroke. Fell on the steps. Tripped on the curb.”
Reggie’s huff sounded disgusted. Owen had to agree. He was reaching, and he knew it. But the idea of the police chief driving that fast to Becca’s place because Becca was hurt made it hard for him to breathe.
He raced down Carstairs Avenue faster than he should have. People lined the sidewalk, staring toward the clinic. The police cruiser was parked as badly as Dale Carstairs’s truck. Since neither Chief Deb, Carstairs, nor Becca were anywhere to be seen, Owen parked his just as badly and climbed out.
He considered taking along the Beretta he’d removed from his backpack on the way to Stone Lake, then shoved under the driver’s seat. However, while he had the requisite permits to carry and conceal the weapon, as a soldier he knew just how foolish it would be to walk into an unknown situation carrying one. Chief Deb might shoot him, and he’d deserve it. He took Reggie instead.
Considering the size of the crowd, he snapped a leash onto the dog’s collar. Nevertheless, when they stepped onto the sidewalk, the gawkers inched back. Reggie was intimidating. He was supposed to be.
A second cruiser slid to a stop on the other side of the street, and Billy Gardiner climbed out. He was younger than Owen by at least three years, which made him twenty-five or less. His full beard made him appear ten years older. Always had.
When they were teenagers, Billy stopped shaving on the first day of football practice in August and didn’t start again until they lost a game. In Three Harbors that meant mid-November. Owen couldn’t recall the last time they hadn’t won the D-3 state championship. From the number of years tacked onto the WELCOME TO THREE HARBORS—HOME OF THE STATE CHAMPION CENTURIONS sign, no one else probably remembered it either.
“What’s going on, Prof?” The question came from the crowd as Billy looked both ways and hustled across Carstairs Avenue.
Out-of-towners might think “prof” was short for professor; however, Billy had earned the nickname “the Prophet,” not because of his ability to predict anything, but because of the nearly chest length of his straggly black beard by the end of every football season.
He stepped onto the sidewalk next to Owen, frowning at the bizarre parking lot in front of the clinic. His fingers stroked the parking ticket booklet peeking out of his shirt pocket. However, since Chief Deb appeared to be the instigator of the parking misbehavior, he left the booklet where it was.