High Noon

been to Hilton Head where you said he lives. You can’t put me there.”
    “Give us time. I was never happy, were you, Liz, with the way this asshole skated after messing with the lieutenant?”
    “Me, I wanted to see him get some serious tuning on that. This time…”
    “She’s behind it.” Arnie swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “You know damn well. Trying to set me up, that’s what she’s doing. I saw the damn doll at a yard sale, just used it to give her something to think about. I didn’t kill anyone, I haven’t been to goddamn Hilton Head. She’s trying to fuck me over. She can go to hell. I wasn’t anywhere near Bonaventure last night.”
    “Where were you, Arnie? Prove it, and make this go away.”
    “I got me a girlfriend, okay? My wife’s not giving me any support, or any sex, or anything else. So I’ve got someone who will. I was with her last night at her place. And I was banging her until after two in the morning.”
    “Name.” Liz shoved a notebook across the table. “Address. We’ll ask her how much she got banged.”
    “She’s got a husband, okay? He was up at Myrtle Beach playing golf for a few days, so we used her place. You’ve got to let me talk to her first, tell her this is serious shit so she won’t blow it off. Her husband finds out, he’ll knock her around. She has to know you’re not going to use her name.”
    “Let you talk to her first, prime her?” Sykes snorted out derision. “Not going to happen, Arnie. You’re telling the truth, we’ll keep her out of it. Sounds like you deserve each other.”
    “My wife’s already talking divorce, and all because Mac Namara—”
    “Oh yeah, all this is Mac Namara’s fault. Sure. She tricked you into busting her up just so you’d get tossed off the job. Write the name down, Arnie.”
    “She’s an exec at Terrance, Inc. You go see her there, not at her place. You go talk to her at her office. You have to give me the courtesy of being discreet.”
    Sykes’s eyes were hard as stone. “You lost the right to courtesy from anyone here when you jumped Lieutenant Mac Namara in that stairwell. You remember that, asshole. Ain’t nobody on your side. You want to save yourself, you write down the name. Otherwise, you’re going in on assaulting an officer and you’re staying in until we put all these ducks in a row.”
    As he wrote, Phoebe turned to Dave.
    “It wasn’t him. He’s a pig, and he’s stupid with it. He didn’t kill Charles Johnson or Roy. He hasn’t got the stones or the smarts.” She turned back to the glass. “He’d really like to hurt me. He’d still like to make me pay. But he wouldn’t understand that killing that boy, that killing Roy, hurts me, that it makes me pay. He doesn’t understand me at all. Whoever did those things does.”
    “We’ll check out the woman, see if the alibi holds.”
    “Yeah. I’m going home. I’ll start going through the files. He’ll be in there. He’s in there somewhere.”
    As Phoebe stepped out of observation, Liz slipped out of the interview room. “I was just coming back to talk to you. Got a minute?”
    “Sure.”
    “Let’s, ah…” Liz glanced over, gestured toward the women’s room. “Take it in here.”
    When they were inside, Liz leaned back on a sink. “Hard for you, watching that. Watching him. The glass isn’t much of a barrier.”
    “Yeah, it was, and no, it’s not. But it had to be done.”
    “He’s not the guy, Phoebe.”
    “No, he’s not the guy. You and Bull did good in there. His alibi’s going to check out, and we’ll be able to eliminate that avenue.”
    “How are you holding up?”
    “Truth? I have no idea.” Phoebe ran her hands over her face, back into her hair. “I’ve got my family holed up inside the house like a group of hostages. No choice. Whoever did this to Roy has made us all hostages, and I don’t know the terms. I don’t know what he wants or why. I can’t negotiate their safety if I don’t know the terms.”
    “You want to go grab some coffee?” As she asked, Liz tipped back her watch to check the time. “I can take thirty while Bull wraps up.”
    “I look that bad?”
    “You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a friend.”
    “I could, but I need to get home. Pull out the linchpin, the wheel slips off. Right now, for my family, I’d be the linchpin. Could you let me know if and when his alibi’s confirmed?”
    “No problem.”
    Phoebe opened the door, shut it again.