“Rosewood.”
He grunted, threw the car around a corner, accelerated slightly.
“Tom, what’s going on?”
“Call came in from the sergeant two minutes ago. You’re wanted on an outstanding warrant.” He finally spared a glance at me. “Murder one.”
My eyes widened. I didn’t say anything.
“Gonna argue with me, Charlie? Say you didn’t do it? You’re innocent.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Neither do I,” he stated flatly, and he sounded angry. At himself, me, the situation—I couldn’t tell. “This is what I don’t get: Been chatter over the radio for the past thirty minutes about a break in a major case—string of shootings of child molesters. Finally got a match on the gun, something like that. Bunch of Boston cops been joking that maybe instead of arresting the shooter we should give her a badge.”
Tom took his eyes off the road just long enough to stare at me. “Knew it was you, Charlie. Knew it had to be. The request last night to seize your weapon, the LT pulling your time cards, spending half the night on the phone with a Boston detective—”
“Wait.” I straightened, promptly whacked my head on the underside of the dash. “A string of shootings? Child molesters? What?”
“Yeah, exactly. Because I know for a fact we didn’t seize your weapon last night. Shepherd checked your bag—you were clear.”
I didn’t speak anymore, just listened.
“Which made me wonder,” Tom continued, “how the Boston PD managed to have matched slugs to your handgun. So I called the lab—”
“You called the lab?”
“Sure. I shoot with the head ballistics tech, Jon Cassir, a couple of times a month. So I asked him about it, you know, cop to cop, talking shop. And he said yeah, he’d spent all night shooting into the drum in order to run a ballistics test in a high profile case. Couldn’t pull any prints, though, given the checked rubber grip.”
“Rubber grip?” I was more confused than ever.
Tom slowed the cruiser slightly, blinker on. He tapped the brakes, paused at an intersection. I ducked down again, prayed for invisibility. Then he turned right, accelerating steadily, but killing his light bar, slowing his pace. He seemed to have a specific destination in mind, but I didn’t know where.
“I checked your bag one night,” he said now.
“You rifled through my messenger bag?”
“You took a ten-six. I happened to be looking for you. You weren’t there, but your bag was. So I looked inside.”
“You invaded my—”
“Be grateful, Charlie. I saw your peashooter. Nice piece, I remember thinking, especially the rosewood grip. So if you’re carrying a twenty-two with a rosewood grip that we definitely didn’t seize last night, why does Boston PD have a twenty-two with a rubberized grip they clearly believe belongs to you and, better yet, ties you to a string of shootings?”
“Why’d you check my bag?”
“History of being attracted to train wrecks, remember?”
“But you didn’t report me.”
“Hadn’t made up my mind yet. Your turn. Spill.”
I was silent for a moment, chewing the inside of my lower lip. “I don’t know,” I said at last. “I didn’t shoot three sex offenders. I own one handgun, which I hid after our…conversation…last night. Except, I just looked for it ten minutes ago and it was gone. So maybe the Boston cops have it, except according to you, it’s a totally different handgun they’ve matched to the shootings—though, given the arrest warrant, they don’t know that yet.” I frowned, turned the matter over in my head, frowned again. “I don’t get it.”
Cruiser had slowed some more. Tom put on the blinker, turning left. “Who’d you piss off?”