“When it comes to my damn wife.” He strode closer to her. “You’re impossible, you know.”
“I’m not the one pointing a gun at the person I once swore I loved.” Folding her arms over her chest, she squinted up at him, trying to see his features, read the expression in his eyes. “But why? Why go to all these lengths? I thought we understood each other.”
He muttered furiously under his breath, but just said, “I came to get you.”
For the briefest of instants, her heart tripped, a tiny bit of hope soared, but she tamped it down quickly. She wasn’t that foolish anymore. She didn’t trust him blindly. Nor did he trust her. And then, there was the matter of the weapon. “Well, okay, but most men who come for a woman, don’t hold her at gunpoint.”
“It probably happens more often than you think. I never understood until now. But I didn’t come here to patch things up.”
“You couldn’t,” she said, cringing inwardly at the bit of a lie. The truth was, she’d never completely gotten over him. Not one hundred percent. There was a part of her, a tiny very feminine part of her, that still fantasized about him, but she tamped that emotion down, wishing she could kill it.
“Just for the record, this”—he moved his hand, displaying her pistol—“is a pathetic excuse for a gun.”
“Thank you so much. That’s so helpful,” she shot out, then wished she’d held her tongue. That was the trouble with Ryder. Her blood ran hot around him, her emotions volatile. “It might be small, but you’re still aiming it at me.”
“You’re lucky I don’t just pull the trigger.”
“You didn’t come all this way just to shoot me. You could have done that and been halfway back to Louisiana by now.”
“Well, darlin’, at least you’re starting to get it.”
“What?”
“It’s time to go. The reason that I’m pointing this gun at you is because I want you to grab your things and get moving. I figured you might not be all that keen on the idea, so your pistol came in handy. So, get up. Now.”
“I’m just not buying it,” Pescoli said from her desk chair. She was still processing the information her partner had given her and trying to see a woman as their doer. “I know a lot of women who have jewelry envy. They’re all about who has the biggest rock as some kind of validation of love or something. Even my daughter went crazy over my ring when she first saw it. But I’ve never heard of one who would kill for a ring by cutting the damn finger off.”
“Women kill,” Alvarez said. “If it isn’t for a justifiable cause like protecting their children, then it’s over a man. Usually a loser of a man.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” Pescoli admitted.
“You ever watch Judge Judy?”
“No. You do? You have time for reality TV in the middle of the day?”
“I record it.”
That surprised Pescoli as she’d pegged Alvarez as a workaholic.
“O’Keefe got me started on it, and once in a while I tune in. If the litigants are complaining about loans and gifts or rent and broken leases, it’s usually some woman all up in arms that her friend slept with her boyfriend or husband or whatever. The weird thing is that to a one, they blame the other woman as if it was all that woman’s fault and their poor, dumb husband couldn’t resist. That he was just the patsy in the Jezebel’s lurid, malicious trap, and that’s why he couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
“No one on Judge Judy is a killer,” Pescoli pointed out.
“I’m just saying it’s not impossible. We’ve run in our share of women who’ve killed. You know it.”
“But to cut off a finger—”
“What about those women who kill a pregnant woman and cut open her uterus because they want the baby or have somehow convinced themselves that the baby inside is really theirs?”
“Those women are mentally deranged.” Pescoli fought an overpowering need to place her hands protectively over her own midsection and failed.
“Sorry,” Alvarez said, pulling herself up short. “But our killer’s mentally deranged, too. Taking a finger wouldn’t be past a woman. That’s all I’m saying.”
Pescoli glanced at the autopsy report on Calypso Pope, a copy of which lay atop another file on her desk. “A crushed hyoid bone. In both cases. That takes strength.”
“Strength, but not necessarily size. And know-how. Maybe martial arts?”
Pescoli tossed the remains of her banana in the trash. “So you think this Anne-Marie Calderone is our killer?”