Witt was a big guy, no pushover despite the blue eyes and Dudley Do-Right dimple in his chin. She’d expected more of him. Hell, she could have told him she’d had another psychic vision and that her husband’s ghost had sent her running to him. She spared him, figuring Witt was still getting over the time Cameron had given him a little ghostly nudge.
“Hey, Long, this the pain-in-the-a ... neck you keep talking about?”
Max turned to glare at Coffee Breath. At five-foot-six and in three-inch spiked heels, she towered over the man by at least an inch. His glasses were smudged, his brown suit rumpled, and the sleeve of his sport coat spotty with ... something. She’d bet her next paycheck the eau-de-dirty-socks came from his shoes.
Witt raised his head. Finally.
The creep was laughing. So damn hard he cried. Tears streamed down his face.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m serious.”
She hadn’t known he could laugh. But then she’d only known him a little over two weeks. Still, when a man practically saves your life, you figure you know him. Though not in the biblical sense.
He wiped his eyes, chuckled once more, then got himself under control. “Scranton, you got reports to type or something?” He awarded Coffee Breath a bored flick of his hand and pulled out the chair next to his desk for Max.
Max continued to stand. “We have to go, Witt.” She lowered her voice. “There really is a body.”
He raised a blond brow. “Guess you weren’t joking the other day when you said you felt a ... dream coming on?”
She noticed he couldn’t quite call it a vision. “I was, but ... maybe I was having a premonition.”
His tears started afresh. “Certifiable,” he choked out.
“Me?” she muttered, affronted.
He shook his head. “Me.” Then he wiped the newest stream from his eyes with the sleeve of his charcoal shirt. “Where?”
“Where what?”
“Where’s the body?” he stage-whispered back.
Thirty minutes later, Max had gotten them halfway down the Peninsula. It was sunny, on the cool side, and just shy of noon. The drive was forty-five minutes from Witt’s station, which was close to the San Francisco airport, to the heart of Silicon Valley ... and the body stuffed in a dumpster behind Billy Joe’s Western Round Up, a local bar and country dancehall.
With the top up, Witt dwarfed her little red Miata. His near buzz-cut brushed the roof, and his knees scrunched up against the dash. Well ... she’d always said the car discouraged passengers.
“Santa Clara’s way out of my jurisdiction, Max.”
“But I need you, Witt.”
“You do?” He turned slightly, slid his arm along the back of her seat. She wore her dark hair short, but his sleeve brushed the ends at her nape. Her skin prickled. The confines of the car were definitely too small for the two of them and his ego.
“Can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that, Max. I think I need you, too,” he whispered, far too close to her ear.
She felt it right down to her toes in her high-heeled shoes. “Get outta here, Long.” She jabbed him with her elbow.
He sighed, then sat back. Max could breathe again. Sort of.
“Suppose you want me to run interference for you.”
“The cops’ll probably arrest me if I go by myself.”
“Like I almost did when you got your nose into my case.”
“That was days ago.” And thank God they were past that kind of distrust.
“All right. Spit it out. Everything.” Witt applied the brake on the passenger side as she snapped into the fast lane between a Camry and a Honda. “Maybe I shoulda driven, Max.”
“Do you want to hear or do you want to pick on my driving?”
“I wanna live.” He settled his big hands on his thighs. Gosh, she was partial to big hands. “But go on. Female,” he prompted. “Let’s start there. Age?”
“Mid-twenties.”
“Description?”
She pursed her lips. “You’re interrupting my flow here.”
“Habit. Sorry. Tell it your way.”
She told him everything, well, almost everything. She started with the bar and the dance. She skipped the men’s room—too much explicit sex with Witt sitting so close—and went straight to how she knew where the body was. “... and her killers tossed her in the dumpster next to the Round Up,” she finished.
Her speed dropped to sixty-five. She could feel him looking at her before he finally spoke. “You sure that’s the spot?” Was that skepticism in his voice?
“Yeah.” She knew Billy Joe’s Western Round Up well. It had, until last week, been a favorite hang out of hers. But murder had squelched her appetite for the whole party scene.
“So, in your ... dream, you’re a wino witnessing a couple of guys wearing Frankenstein and Dracula masks dumping a body.” He was quiet a moment. “Guys that you, as the drunk, of course, can’t even identify.”
“I bet we’ll find out he knows a lot more if the detectives can question him. Like maybe a license plate number.”
He raised one blond brow. “If he knows it, don’t you as well?”
“Ummm, no.” Some things weren’t always clear in her visions.