Then she saw it. The necklace, snug around his throat like a choker.
Her hand stilled in her pocket. Chills raced through her body, skittered across her scalp. This was what they meant when they said someone just walked over their grave. This feeling, where time stops, where you glimpse your own mortality, where you know God is speaking to you, and you damn well better pay attention.
The way she’d felt when the printer chewed up and spat out Bud Traynor’s name.
She took a deep breath. The moment passed, though it didn’t leave her unaffected. Hand still inside her pocket, Max dropped her keys, jingled some coins, pulled a few out, then plunked the measly offering into his can.
Snake smiled. He didn’t have teeth, just rotted out stumps.
Tiffany was going to roll over in her coffin, knowing that wino would help solve her murder.
“Thank you, pretty lady.”
“You’re welcome.” She grabbed Witt’s hand and pulled him away down the sidewalk.
“What the hell? Aren’t you gonna ask him anything?”
“I don’t need to.”
Witt tugged on her, but she didn’t stop walking. “What gives?”
“I’m going to make an anonymous call to the police.” At the corner, she crossed the street, holding tightly to Witt’s hand.
“And?”
“And I’m going to tell them that the wino sitting across from St. Vincent’s Mission is wearing Tiffany Lloyd’s gold locket.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Tiffany’s necklace is what he was supposed to have in locker 452?”
“I don’t know if it was ever in the locker. But that’s what we were looking for.” Max dropped her death grip on Witt’s hand the minute they turned down the block behind the mission, taking a circuitous route back to the truck. “Will they pick him up, do you think?”
“More like arrest him for her murder.”
She threw up her hands. “But he didn’t do it.” She tipped her head, looked at Witt slyly, pasting a suggestive smile on her lips. “I suppose over a beer at their local hang-out—what did you say the name of that place was?—you could gently lead them into thinking of him as a witness.”
“And thereby absolve you of guilt?” Witt looked at her, then shook his head. “Okay, so I convince ’em he’s just a witness. How’s that help find Tiffany Lloyd’s killer?”
“Snake knows the license number of that car.”
Max walked fast despite the ache in her feet. Witt stopped, then grabbed her arm as she would have sped past him. “Shit. Then why don’t you know it? Why didn’t you see it in his vision?”
She wished she could have said she knew it, and that it belonged to Bud Traynor. But she couldn’t. And Witt couldn’t possibly know how that galled her.
Max raised her hands, fingers spread in a how-the-hell-do-I-know gesture. “Do I look like I understand any of this? All I know is he saw it, and if they work on him long enough, he’ll remember it.”
“All they’re likely to do is work him over.”
Her mouth dropped open. “They don’t really do stuff like that. You’re just trying to scare me into not calling.”
He raised a brow. “You saw the Rodney King tape, right?”
That was years ago. Her foot tapped on the concrete. The man had something working in that cop brain of his. He was testing. He was ... she wasn’t sure what he was up to, but she didn’t trust him. “I don’t believe you.”
“Well, Max.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re right. Doesn’t happen as often as the common citizen would like to think, and not by good cops, which the majority of cops are, despite the bad rap we get.”
She pulled back, hands on hips. “Are you sermonizing, Witt?”
“Just wanted to gauge your reaction.”
She could tell by that idiotic twinkle in his blue eyes that she’d passed his little test. Creep. She punched his arm. “You’re pushing your luck.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Now, where’s your cell phone?”
He splayed a hand across his chest. “My phone? Where the hell is the one I gave you?”
“It’s in my car. I’m using it for road emergencies.”
“You’re supposed to be carrying it.” Eyes narrowed and smile gone, dimples nowhere in sight. She was in big trouble.
She decided to tough it out. “I need to make that call before Snake slithers away.”
“Not with my phone. Snake is your gig. And nothing better be traced back to us.”
She sort of liked the way he used us, not me. As if they were a team. As if he actually cared what happened to her, too. And of course, he was irritatingly right. Anonymous meant no one was supposed to figure it out.
“All right. Give me the number of the cop in charge, and find me a payphone.”
“Did you dictate to your husband like this?”
“Yep. Still do.”
He gave a soft snort of a laugh, the meaning of which she couldn’t decipher. Either he thought she was a nutcase, was disgusted with himself, or fed up with the whole case in general.