Got Your Number

feeling for a pulse.
    "Is he...?"
    "Yeah, he's dead." He pushed himself to his feet, then limped over to her and yanked the tire tool away. "I thought I told you to get in the car."
    "I was trying to help."
    He tossed her weapon to the ground. "Well, you damn near crippled me, and you could have gotten us both killed."
    To her complete mortification, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked furiously. Her face was so cold, her cheeks ached.
    He cupped her face in his hands and sighed. Water dripped off his nose and chin. "Are you okay?"
    She sniffed. "I guess so. Nothing broken."
    He stroked her cheek with his thumb. "He hit you?"
    She nodded.
    "I should shoot him again."
    "He told me he killed Dr. Seger."
    He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. "Well, let's hope he left some physical evidence at the crime scene, because I doubt if the police will take our word."
    In the distance, a siren wailed. Capistrano lifted his head. "Speaking of which. Want to bet we're the most popular 911 call tonight?" He looked back to her. "You let me do all the talking when they get here. Pretend you lost your voice."
    She frowned.
    "I mean it, Roxann. Don't say a word." Two police cars came screeching into the neighborhood. "Hold up your hands and don't move."
    Roxann raised her arms and stood shivering, wondering if things had just gotten better...or worse.

Chapter Thirty

    "I COULD HAVE YOUR BADGE for this," Jaffey said to Capistrano. "Breaking and entering. Compromising a crime scene." He gestured to the journals, swollen, the ink runny and illegible. "Tampering with evidence."
    "It was my idea," she started, then pressed her lips together.
    Jaffey looked at her. "Well, Ms. Beadleman, I'm glad to see your voice has returned." Then he looked back to Capistrano. "And on top of everything else, a dead man— another dead man. Do you know what this kind of thing does for tourism? For the university's image?"
    Capistrano drummed his fingers on the table. "Look, tell the press that the man who killed Dr. Seger was killed by a cop. Little kids can play outside again, the police are heroes, everybody's happy."
    Robert Mason, looking none too pleased to have been dragged down to the police station late at night, scoffed. "Oh, yeah, especially Ms. Beadleman and Ms. Ryder—they get to pin Dr. Seger's murder on a dead man."
    "Did you find Cape's prints on the scene?" Capistrano demanded.
    Jaffey pulled on his chin, then looked to Mason and back. "Yeah," he finally admitted. "We matched three partial prints lifted from the library to Cape. But that doesn't mean he killed Seger. In fact, Officer, I think it's pretty coincidental that you happened to kill the man who's accused of shooting your partner."
    "I wanted Cape punished," Capistrano said flatly, "not dead. If you check the butt of Cape's gun to the wound on the back of Seger's head, I think you'll get a match."
    Jaffey's expression told him they'd already done just that—and it had matched. "Why wouldn't he just shoot Seger?" he asked, playing devil's advocate.
    Capistrano shrugged. "Maybe he didn't want to alert the neighbors, maybe that cheap gun jammed on him—we'll never know."
    "Because you shot him," Jaffey said.
    "In self-defense. He admitted to Roxann that he killed Seger."
    Jaffey turned to her. "He killed Seger to scare you into revealing the whereabouts of his wife and daughter?"
    "That's my understanding."
    "Will you take a polygraph test?"
    "Yes. I offered to take one before. Detective Jaffey, if you don't believe us and you don't think that Cape did it, fine." She pointed to the ruined books. "The journals prove that my cousin was telling the truth about what Dr. Seger was doing to and with his students."
    "Thanks to you and Detective Capistrano," Jaffey said, "these journals will tell us very little."
    "But there are others," Roxann said, then looked at Mason. "And I read enough of those pages to know that you suddenly have dozens, maybe hundreds of suspects, old students and new, any of whom might have been in town for Homecoming. So, I can understand why you'd suddenly have doubts that Frank Cape committed the murder—there are so many other possibilities."
    Mason rubbed his eyes as if when he opened them, they might all be gone. Then he blinked bleary eyes and nodded to Jaffey. "Can we have a word outside?"
    The men left, and Roxann pulled the blanket she'd been given tighter around her shoulders. She didn't think she'd ever be warm again. "What do you