If someone had told me I’d be in a police station on Halloween, I’d have punched them right in the kidney. I’d never done anything even remotely considered unlawful. Yet here I sat in a drunk tank with every other female from the party. Unlike the Siouxsie Sioux wannabe and the others in costumes, I was wedged between two women whose profession truly was sex worker. Unfortunately their skirts were longer than my sexy fairy costume and far less glittery. Maybe Jurassic-jerk Nick had a point.
One by one, the females in the holding cell with me were taken away until all that was left were the Siouxsie lookalike, two prostitutes, and me. I wanted to pace but the glare the sex worker to my right tossed me when I’d almost stood forty-five minutes ago kept me exactly where I was—with a numb ass and jittery nerves.
This was bad. Really, really bad. Officers had been shot. I’d been outside while it had happened. Everyone else had been inside. That made me more of a suspect than Siouxsie. Sure I’d been cuffed in a police cruiser for some of the time. But that cruiser’s roof had been destroyed. No one had seen what had done that. And when the last pack of police had arrived, I hadn’t been inside the cruiser. With no witnesses to the bear, I hadn’t had the courage to tell the dispatcher that part of the story.
The facts boiled down to me definitely being a suspect. In a cop killing case. No, in a mass cop killing case. All because I’d had the misfortune of trying to stomp out of the party earlier than everyone else. This was all that asshole Nick’s fault.
Except…if it weren’t for that asshole, I probably would have been shot, too. My righteous fury deflated, taking my stiff spine along with it. I slumped toward my knees, trying to hold back hot tears.
“Maxwell. Shelby Maxwell.”
I jerked upright at the barking voice. “That’s m-me.”
A stern-faced man with blotchy skin above his crisp black collar gestured me forward. “Hold out your hands.”
Glancing at Siouxsie’s wide-eyed stare, I eased from between the pros. One harrumphed but made no move to haul me back. Once clear of their gangly limbs, I shuffled to the bars and held out my hands toward the officer. He made an impatient noise and motioned for me to come closer. His irritation continued until my wrists were at a grabbing distance. Seconds later he had me cuffed and had unlocked the cell door. The metal sliding aside should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. I was in shit so deep I couldn’t see the light of day and no one had left me even a crazy straw of hope.
The surly cop hauled me out of the cell and barely paused to let the door clang shut before he marched me into the precinct’s bowels. He all but shoved me into a sparse interrogation room, uncuffed me, and gestured for me to sit facing a “mirror.” Only when I was rubbing my freed wrist did I realize I should have asked to use the restroom.
The cold metal under my ass didn’t help me forget how much I had to pee. I wiggled to one side, hoping to ease the pressure. When that didn’t help, I swayed to the opposite side. Crossing my legs, I squeezed my thighs together and prayed someone would come soon.
All the fidgeting made me look guilty. They were probably watching me through the two-way mirror. I froze and made myself forget the full bladder.
Voices floated through the door, getting louder. And then they stopped. The lock clicked. I held my breath as the door swung open.
A man in a black blazer that complemented his dark skin strode in, head bare and polished brighter than the table I’d been seated at. His slacks were a shade lighter than his coat. Dark, thick eyebrows pinched inward above eyes that took in all of me with a steady regard. I bit the inside of my lip as he slapped a yellow legal pad on the table and took the seat across from me. He flicked his pen open, licking the tip, and then fixed me with his dark brown gaze.
“Detective Davis.” He pointed the pen at his chest, barely missing the wrinkled white of his shirt.
With a baritone voice that held a hint of harshness, Davis did little to put me at ease. I stared, waiting to be asked a question or told my offences.
“This meeting is being videotaped.” He nodded his head toward the mirror. “State your name for the record.”
“Sh-Shelby Maxwell.” I winced at the tremble in my reply. But being scared in a situation like this was a good thing, wasn’t it?
“Ms. Maxwell, where were you tonight between nine and nine thirty-six p.m.?”
I’d left a party before ten o’clock on a Saturday night? How sad was that? Davis tapped his pen on his pad, bringing me back to what mattered. Cops were dead.
“I was at a Halloween party my co-worker hosted,” I said.
“And your co-worker’s name is what?”
“Greg. Greg Jennings.”
“When did you arrive at the party?”
“Um… I think it was around eight-thirty?”
Davis scribbled the numbers eight and thirty on his notepad. “Did you notice anyone or anything suspicious outside or inside the house?”
I shook my head. “It was a pretty standard party at a pretty standard suburban house.”
“Did you see anyone you didn’t recognize?”
“Lots.” I straightened, worried that my lack of knowledge was going to be a problem. “But I only know Greg from work. We don’t hang out in the same circles.”
“Then why did you go to his party?”
My cheeks went hot and no doubt a color nearing a certain singing dinosaur. Telling the truth would paint me in a mercenary light. Davis lifted an eyebrow as I pushed out a hard breath.
Deciding to go for it, I rambled out the complete truth. “Greg invited our boss, and I hoped I’d be able to get him to agree to give me a raise if I caught him when he was drunk.”
The assessing look Davis cast over my costume said everything. My neck joined my cheeks on the super-heated highway, destination: shame. So I wasn’t exactly dressed for a business chat? That had been my intention.
“That’s the only reason?” Davis asked, gaze cutting to my bodice.
I folded one arm over my chest and lifted my chin. “Yes. Well, that and I had hoped at least one of Greg’s friends would be nice to talk to.”
“Tell me what happened when you got to the party.”
“Nothing.” I shrugged before he could question me on the validity of the statement. “I stood around for at least a half hour, nursing a beer. Our boss wasn’t there. Dave Matthews was on repeat. Greg’s friends were either too friendly or not friendly enough. I got a second beer and hoped it would help me loosen up. It did, but not in a good way. When I decided to leave, some guy in a dinosaur costume stopped me and accused me of being a whore. I tried to get away from him and ended up being caught threatening to hurt him in front of police. They took us both into their car, handcuffed us, and left us there while they went back inside. A few minutes later there were gunshots. I didn’t see anything because the dino jerk in the car shoved me into the floorboards.”
Davis sat forward, scribbling notes at a frantic pace. His chicken scratch stained the yellow page in wide lines I doubted anyone could read. “How many gunshots did you hear?”
I closed my eyes, trying to count from memory. “Seven, I think?”
“Run me through when you heard each shot.”
I recounted the different shots, leaving off the bits about the beard on the forehead of the werebear. Davis made notes of each bang I described. Still he didn’t hop up and proclaim my innocence. If I could have wrung my hands together without being noticed, I’d have done it at warp speed.
“And what happened to the guy in the car with you?”
I swallowed hard at Davis’ question. “I don’t know. He got really…upset and…um…he, he kind of f-freaked out. He smacked at the ceiling and like…the car opened for him. I don’t know how he did it. I think maybe adrenaline was involved because he wasn’t a big guy.”
Until he’d changed into a giant. Black. Bear.
“Who was he?”
I shrugged again, as ashamed as when he’d asked me what I’d been doing so early on a Saturday night. “He told me his name was Nick, but that’s all I know. I’d never met him before.”
Davis fixed me with a long, piercing stare that made me uneasy enough to ramble further. “He wasn’t exactly nice,” I said. “I wanted to get away from him. But the co— police had something else to say about it.”
“So this…Nick broke out of the police car using…adrenaline?” Davis twirled his pen around. “Is that your story?”
I bristled, lifting into a tight line from the top of my head to the bottom of my ass. “Yes. That’s right.”
“And he left you there.” Davis’ voice dripped with disdain.
“Yes. He wasn’t what I’d term the chivalrous type.” But he was. And the more I explained the situation, the more I realized how much I owed the mysterious asshole named Nick.
Davis set his pen to the paper. “What shredded the dinosaur costume in the car?”
My face felt as if it could cook a quiche. “I don’t know.”
The detective grunted. “Your hands were clean of GSR—gunshot residue—when we picked you up. We know you didn’t fire any guns. What we don’t know is why the gunman who killed four police officers would leave you—an eyewitness to the murders—alive. Why do you think that is?”
“Um…I think maybe he didn’t see me?” Did I look as guilty as I felt? “I was hiding in the floorboards for some of the time.”
“So you’re saying the guy you were with managed to destroy a police cruiser and somehow managed not to get shot when four of Texas’s finest didn’t have the same luck?”
Davis’ dubious tone made me want to crawl under the table and nest. “I don’t know how else to explain it except adrenaline,” I said. “I mean…how else could the guy get out of the car? It’s not like the officers left a spare set of jaws of life in the floorboards. As far as the shooter, I don’t know. Maybe he saw what the guy did to the car and decided not to mess with him? Or maybe he didn’t see it at all. He might have already left. I couldn’t see.”
Davis dropped his pen and put his fingers to his temples, rubbing in a circular motion. I had a momentary pang of sympathy for him. He had to solve this horrendous crime with no help from me—a woman fibbing through her teeth.
I could be arrested for that alone, couldn’t I?
The detective dropped his fingers and picked up his pen again. “What did the shooter look like?”
I lowered my chin to my chest, sighing. “I don’t know. I didn’t see him.”
Davis scribbled a shape on the pad beside his latest note. “What about approximate height? Race? Age? Anything?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t see him. I’m sorry.”
“What about Nick? The guy in the car with you?”
Well, that I could explain. “Trim, Asian, high cheekbones—”
“Wait. Let me bring in a sketch artist.” Davis lowered his palm from the stop position. He lifted out of his seat, leaving me alone.
This was a good sign, wasn’t it? If I were suspected of murder, they wouldn’t be asking me to participate in a sketch of another person. At least I hoped that was the case.
Davis returned what felt like ages later and he wasn’t alone. The kind-faced man who sat across from me made me feel a measure better. A half hour later, Davis had a credible sketch of Nick the Jurassic jerk.
He let the sketch artist out, and then faced me. “We’re releasing you, Ms. Maxwell. But the investigation will continue, and we’ll need your help finding the shooter. Expect calls from us to view photographs.”
I set my palms on the table in front of me, finally getting up the courage to ask the one question I needed an answered. “Don’t police cars have video cameras installed now? Wouldn’t there be footage of the inside and outside?”
Davis coughed and muttered something about faulty technology.
I leaned forward, trying to catch what he’d said. “Pardon?”
“The technicians are looking at it.” He avoided my gaze while he opened the door and stepped aside.
I stared, unsure if he was telling the truth about releasing me. Did this mean I wasn’t a suspect? Or that they didn’t have enough evidence to hold me any longer?
Davis lifted his eyebrows. I got to my feet and shuffled forward.
Just as I reached the door, Davis said, “Let us know if you plan to leave town.”
I gulped, nodding on my way out. “Okay.”
So I was still a suspect.