Tomasetti shakes his head. “And to think I was just starting to like him.”
“I’m serious.” Coulter’s voice is indignant now. “I don’t have any guns in this house. I got kids. I’m a convicted felon; I can’t have any kind of weapon.”
“How did it get in your closet?” I ask.
“I don’t know.” He takes a step back, his eyes bouncing like Ping-Pong balls between me and Tomasetti. “It ain’t mine. I swear. I don’t own a twenty-two, and I never have.”
In ten years of law-enforcement experience, I’ve heard every conceivable lie told in every conceivable form and spewed with the vehemence of brimstone and fire. I’m an expert at spotting lies and the liars who tell them. But as I watch Coulter, all I can think is that this guy is a step above the rest, because he’s almost believable.
Tomasetti steps closer to him. “So if it isn’t yours, how did it get there?”
“I don’t know.” He chokes out the words like a cough. “I’m telling you: That gun ain’t mine.”
I glance sideways at Tomasetti, and I can tell he’s thinking the same thing I am: This guy is good. That’s unusual, because Tomasetti is one of those cops who believe 90 percent of the population are pathological liars.
“We’re going to have to take you to the station,” I say.
“Ricky? What’s going on?” His wife rushes toward us. She’s still holding the baby, looking at the rifle as if I’m about to shoot her husband with it. “Where did you get that gun?”
The toddler runs to his mother, grabs her leg, and buries his face in the denim. “Mommy.”
“It’s not mine. I swear!” Coulter chokes out a sound of pure anguish. “Aw, come on … my kids…”
Maintaining eye contact, I tug handcuffs from my belt and approach him. “Turn around.”
“What are you doing?” his wife screeches.
“We’re just going to talk to him,” I tell her, hoping she stays calm.
“Aw man.” Coulter’s face screws up. To my dismay, he hangs his head and begins to cry. “Don’t do this. Not in front of my kids.”
I glance toward the door. “Let’s step outside.”
With the insouciance of a man taking a Sunday stroll, Tomasetti steps between the wife and Coulter. “We just have a few questions for him, ma’am. Step aside.”
“About what?” she cries.
I turn my back on them. Taking Coulter by the bicep, I guide him through the front door. It’s colder and the wind has kicked up. A misty rain falls from a murky sky.
Coulter wipes his face with his sleeve, then turns and offers his wrists. “That’s not my rifle.”
I snap on the cuffs. “We’ll get it straightened out at the station.”
*
An hour later, Tomasetti and I are sitting in my office, drinking one of Mona’s coffee-chocolate-hazelnut concoctions. I’m wishing I had something a lot stronger. I booked Coulter into jail on a parole violation and contacted his parole officer. She sounded young and inexperienced—and surprised by the news. In the year he’s been out of prison, Ricky Coulter has been a model parolee. He holds down a full-time job and has never missed a single appointment. After hanging up, I recap the conversation for Tomasetti, and he tells me she just hasn’t been part of the system long enough.
“A few more years and nothing will surprise her,” he says.
“That’s really jaded, Tomasetti.”
“Reality is jaded.” He shrugs, unapologetic. “One day Citizen Joe’s a born-again Christian; the next he slits his neighbor’s throat over a parking space.”
“Nice.” I’m not going to admit there’s a part of me that agrees with him.
I sip coffee as I type the serial number of the rifle into an NCIC query to see if it comes back as stolen.
“So what are you thinking?” Tomasetti asks after a moment.
“I’m thinking I don’t like this.”
“You mean Coulter as a suspect?”
“I mean any of it.”
I finish typing and look at him over my monitor. He’s wearing a charcoal shirt with a black tie beneath a nicely cut jacket. His trench coat is draped across the back of his chair. I can smell the piney-woods scent of his aftershave from where I sit. He’s a nice-looking man, but not in the traditional sense. He’s got a severe mouth, and his eyes are too intense. But the overall picture of him appeals to me in a way that no other man ever has. I don’t know why, but that scares the hell out of me.
“The kids…” I shake my head. “I felt like the bad guy, taking him in the way we did.”
“You weren’t.”
“I know, but it felt that way.” I hit ENTER, sending the query, and lean back in my chair. “He seemed pretty adamant about the rifle.”
“You tell a lie enough times and you start to believe it yourself.”
For an instant, I wonder if he’s talking about more than just Coulter. I’ve told my share of lies. He knows about most of them, but not all. “Anyone ever tell you you’re cynical?”