Cooked Goose

room service. That kid’s appetite is almost as monstrous as yours and mine. Bloss is going to have to take out a second mortgage just to pay her tab.”
    Dirk snorted. “Good. Serves him right.” He nodded toward the house. “How’s Dr. Liu doin’ in there?”
    “Bad news and good... well, at least interesting, news.” He frowned. “What’s the bad?” Good ol’ Dirk. He knew how to embrace the dark side of the moon.
    “The blood is most likely Titus’s,” Savannah said, hating how the words tasted in her mouth. “And there’s so much of it that he’s probably dead.”
    Dirk’s face dropped. “That’s about as bad as bad news gets, all right. What’s the good?”
    “Good or bad, depends on how you look at it. But she also found what she thinks are some hairs like the ones from Santa’s beard.”
    “No way! Why would that sonofabitch go after Titus? He likes to rape women, not kill cops.”
    Savannah shrugged. “Maybe Titus saw something at the scene, something the rapist didn’t want him to talk to anyone about.”
    “But Titus already said he didn’t find anything that night, or the next morning either.”
    “Perhaps he saw something but didn’t realize it was significant until later. I don’t know; it’s just a thought.”
    He shook his head and took a long swig of Coke. “Oh, man... this is too bizarre. A serial rapist who goes from mall abductions and rapes to kidnapping a police captain’s daughter, to shooting a cop. Just what kind of weird is this?”
    Savannah sighed, feeling old. “The kind of weird...” she said, “...that keeps you awake at night.”

    * * *

    11:14 p.m.

    As Savannah stood beside her sofa, looking down at Dirk, sprawled across it, his mouth hanging open and drool oozing down his chin onto one of her best throw pillows, she wondered if the fried liver and onions had been such a good idea, after all.
    He had seemed so discouraged when he had dropped by this evening. Sitting at her kitchen table, a beer in one hand and the other hand buried in a plate of chocolate chip cookies, he had dumped his whole rotten day on her.
    After he had left Titus’s house, he had spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing the previous rape victims, asking them about the star-studded ring. No one remembered it specifically, although two said their attacker might have been wearing something like that.
    Nothing like concrete evidence to make a detective feel warm and fuzzy.
    Dirk had been anything but fuzzy, sitting there at the table, shoving his face full of cookies. Taking pity on him, she had offered to make his favorite dinner: liver, fried with bacon and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy. The guy had real down-in-Dixie taste buds.
    . Unfortunately, he had the cholesterol level to match. And seeing his inert form stretched across her sofa, she was afraid that meal might have put him right over the edge.?
    But she wasn’t terribly concerned—as long as he was drooling. To the best of her knowledge, corpses didn’t drool. But she’d have to ask Dr. Jennifer sometime, just to make sure.
    When the phone rang, she hurried to answer it, before the racket woke him. He hadn’t had a real night’s sleep since the case had begun, and she hoped the snooze would improve his mental focus... and maybe even his grouchy disposition.
    “Hello,” she said softly as she took the cordless phone into the kitchen.
    “Is Coulter there?” the nasal voice on the other end barked at her. This hatred she harbored for Bloss was quickly turning to full-fledged loathing. She could almost feel her hackles rise.
    “Why?” she replied just as curtly.
    “Because I have to talk to him.”
    “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.”
    “Put him on the phone.”
    She stuck her tongue out at the phone. “Say, ‘Pretty please, with sugar on it.’ ”
    “Fuck you, Reid. Get Coulter. It’s important.”
    She grinned. His goat had definitely been gotten. She was finished with the game. “Only because you asked so nicely.” She walked into the living room, phone in hand, then thought of something else she wanted to say. “Oh, by the way, I think the way you’re neglecting your daughter is shameful,” she told Bloss, “although it’s perfectly in keeping with your usual lack of sensitivity and complete absence of character.”
    “Shut up about my kid, you dumb bitch.” Ah-ha! She had struck a nerve. Might as well irritate him just a little more while the gettin’ was good.
    “A bitch,