Cooked Goose

Charlene felt a bit better.
    Mama had said she was going to get the bad guy and make him pay for what he had done to her little girl. And Mama sounded like she really meant it, too.

    * * *

    8:39 A.M.

    After several hours of dirt combing—searching the crime scene for the most minute particle of evidence—Dirk, Savannah , and Officer Titus Dunn had decided it was time for some I nourishment at a local pancake house.
    The waitress, who filled out her hot pink uniform to perfection, eyed Titus as she sidled by, a coffeepot in her hand and a twinkle in her eye. “You need a refill?” she asked him, ignoring Savannah and Dirk, who sat across the booth from the patrolman.
    Savannah was only mildly irked. After all, Titus was the quintessential tall, moderately dark, and delectably handsome hunk who spent most of his spare time lifting weights at the gym- While Dirk was... well... Dirk was Dirk. And she, herself, probably wasn’t the waitress’s preferred gender.
    But, on the other hand, there was no excuse for a customer suffering from low blood sugar or caffeine deprivation in a pancake house.
    “Excuse me, Adrienne,” she said, reading the name tag over the waitress’s left boob. “I need another Danish—cherry and cream cheese—and some more coffee,” she said, waving her hand in the woman’s line of vision. The waitress tore her eyes away from Titus for a second. “And do you have some half and half?” she added. “This blue water just doesn’t cut it.”
    Adrienne shook her head slightly, as though coming to consciousness after a long, deep slumber... or maybe a short, intense fantasy. “Sure,” she muttered. “Coming right up.”
    “Two Danish rolls and four cups of coffee for breakfast,” Dirk said, shaking his head in mock disgust and doing that “tsk, tsk” thing that made Savannah want to box his jaws. Dirk turned to Titus. “You can tell—this one’s really got the old girl shook up.”
    Titus laughed and turned golden eyes rimmed with long black lashes to Savannah . Her heart did a pit-a-pat. “What’s be saying, Savannah ?” Titus said in a voice as deep as his shoulders were broad. “Do you eat more when you’re upset?”
    “No, I eat less,” she said, giving Dirk an evil eye. “Normally, I’d have a short stack of hotcakes to go with the rolls, and a slab of ham on the side.”
    Titus chuckled, revealing a smile that should have been used on recruitment posters for the S.C.P.D. Half the force would have been women. “We miss you,” Savannah ,” he said affectionately. “It’s just not the same at the station without you.” He nodded toward Dirk. “And this guy mopes around with his chin draggin’ on the floor. It’s like he’s got an acute case of permanent PMS.”
    Savannah nudged Dirk in the ribs with her elbow. “Ah, Dirk’s always been a downer. He considers it his mission in life to keep us optimists adequately depressed.”
    Dirk scowled. “I’m not a downer; I’m a realist.”
    “You’re a Gloomy Gus who’s only happy when he’s pooping in somebody’s ice cream.”
    Titus grimaced and looked down at the eggs and link sausages on his plate. “Oh, man... now there’s a visual I could have done without.”
    “Me, too.” Dirk gave her a look of disgust mingled with respect. “Van, you’re the only chick I know who can out-gross a guy.”
    “Why, thank you, darlin’. That’s high praise, indeed, coming from a foul-mouthed, dirty-minded adolescent like your-self.”
    Adrienne arrived with the coffee, half and half, and Savannah’s Danish. As she dumped a healthy—or unhealthy, depending on the point of view—portion of cream into the coffee and stirred it, she wondered when Charlene Yardley would be able to eat solid food again.
    “Speaking of disturbing visuals,” she said, “I can’t get the victim’s battered face out of my mind.”
    “No kidding,” Dirk said, slathering more butter and syrup on his tall stack of blueberry flapjacks. “She looked like a semi had run over her, backed up, and made a second trip.”
    “She looked pretty awful out there in the grove, too.” Titus shook his head, and he had a sad, distant expression on his face. “I don’t understand how one human being can do something like that to another one... and somebody they don’t even know.”
    “Well, we assume it was a stranger attack, but we aren’t sure,” Dirk said, chewing and talking at the same time—a habit Savannah had tried for years