Cooked Goose

the shoulder. “Come on, let’s have a bit of a reaction here! That’s a big deal.”
    “It is a big deal,” he replied, equally cool.
    She sighed, deflated. “You’re weird, Coulter. I swear, you got more excited over the bear claw.”
    “I’m excited.”
    “I can tell. You’re positively giddy.”
    “It’s just that...”
    “What?”
    He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small, manila envelope. Peeling it open, he said, “Hold out your hand.”
    She did as he said, and he dumped the contents into her open palm.
    It was a large, man’s gold ring with a prominent star protruding from the center. And the star was almost exactly the same size of the mark Savannah had seen on Charlene Yardley’s face.
    “Wow!” she said. A slight chill trickled through her as she fingered the ignominious piece of jewelry. “How did you get Titus’s ring? Did you find him?”
    “Nope.” Dirk looked satisfied with himself, as he always did when he one-upped her. “I just got back from interviewing Joe McGivney’s widow.”
    “And?”
    “She let me look through some of his personal effects, his dresser drawer, a strongbox under his bed. That’s where I found the ring. His wife confirmed it: That ring you’re holding there... it was Joe’s.”

    * * *

    5:10 p.m.

    “Thanks to this guy’s anti-social activities... orange groves have lost their appeal for me, and now beaches aren’t far behind,” Savannah told Dirk as they stood on the beach and looked down on the very dead body of the recently departed Donald DeCianni.
    Dirk had received word only a minute after showing Savannah Joe McGivney’s ring: An anonymous caller had told the 911 dispatcher that DeCianni’s body could be found near the water’s edge in Harrington State Park . As with the tip about Joe McGivney, the informant had been morbidly accurate.
    DeCianni was still wearing the sweatpants and shirt he had worn the last time Savannah and Dirk had seen him, in the orange grove, when they had been checking out McGivney’s abandoned unit.
    Like his ex-partner, DeCianni had a neat bullet hole in the center of his forehead and his badge was sticking out of his slack, open mouth. No other wounds were immediately obvious.
    DeCianni’s body was sprawled on its back at the water’s edge. Incoming waves licked at the sneakers on his feet. Vermin-infested seaweed was wrapped around his legs, and the tiny scavengers were already hard at work, recycling the remains of Donald DeCianni.
    While DeCianni hadn’t been Savannah’s favorite person, she cringed, seeing a human being reduced to crab bait. She thought of what DeCianni had said about how difficult it was to see an ex-partner come to a bad end. If that were Dirk, lying dead on the sand, she knew she would be insane with grief.
    Officers Jake McMurtry and Mike Famon had arrived at the scene immediately after Savannah and Dirk. They were setting up a perimeter as everyone waited for Dr. Liu and her team to appear. Then the macabre circus would begin all over again. It was a performance that was getting old, fast.
    “It’s gotta be the same guy,” Savannah said as she knelt on the sand and studied the hole in DeCianni’s forehead. Just like McGivney.
    “Yep, gotta be,” Dirk replied. “We didn’t mention the badge in the mouth to the papers, so it ain’t some well-read copycat.”
    A dark sedan pulled into the nearby parking lot, and Savannah made a face. “Bloss. I suppose he’ll give me hell for not baby-sitting his kid.”
    “Where is she?”
    “On Rodeo Drive with Tammy and Ryan... Christmas shopping. There are a lot worse ways for a teenager to spend an afternoon, huh?”
    Dirk sniffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Piddlin’ around in phoophoo stores with a fairy and a bimbo ain’t my idea of a good time.”
    Savannah gave him a dirty look. “We can’t all spend our time in manly man pursuits—like watching wrestling matches, demolition derbies and monster truck rallies on the tube while swigging beer and eating stale chips and cheap pizza.”
    He shrugged. “Some of us know how to have a good time; some don’t.”
    “What the hell are you doing here?” Bloss demanded as he strode up to them, his face flushed from the exertion of trudging through the loose sand.
    “It’s my job,” Dirk muttered.
    “I wasn’t talking to you, and you know it.” He pointed to Savannah . “I’m talking to your mascot here, who’s always hanging around when—”
    “Hey, hold