I swiped at the gunk on my face. I was covered with mustard, and I had special sauce in my hair. “Very funny. This guy is FTA.”
“You got papers?” Carl asked.
I scrounged in my shoulder bag and came up with the bond agreement and the contract to pursue that Vinnie had issued.
“Good enough,” Carl said. “Congratulations, you caught yourself a chicken.”
I could see the other cop was trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“So what's your problem?” I asked him, feeling sort of aggravated that maybe he was laughing at me.
He held up two hands. “Hey lady, I haven't got a problem. Good bust. Not everyone could have taken that chicken down.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Costanza, but Costanza wasn't entirely successful at controlling his amusement either.
“Good thing we got here before the animal rights people,” Costanza said to me. “They wouldn't have been as understanding as us.”
I retrieved my cuffs from the other side of the room and clicked them onto Baggett's wrists. Lula had disappeared, of course. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't expect Lula to share airspace with cops.
“Do you need any help?” Costanza wanted to know.
I shook my head, no. “I can manage. Thanks.”
Half an hour later I left the station with my body receipt, happy to escape the cracks about smelling like a barbecue. Not to mention the abuse I took for bringing in a chicken.
A person can take only so much cop humor.
Rex was nosing around in his food cup when I got home, so I gave him a grape and told him about Stuart Bag
gett. How Stuart had been dressed up in a chicken suit, and how I'd bravely captured him and brought him to justice. Rex listened while he ate the grape, and I think Rex might have smiled when I got to the part about tackling Mr. Cluck, but it's hard to tell about these things with a hamster.
I love Rex a lot, and he has a lot of redeeming qualities, like cheap food and small poop, but the truth is sometimes I pretend he's a golden retriever. I'd never tell this to Rex, of course. Rex has very sensitive feelings. Still, sometimes I long for a big floppy-eared dog.
I fell asleep on the couch, watching Rex run on the wheel. I was awakened by the phone ringing.
“Got a call about my car,” Ranger said. “Want to ride along?”
“Sure.”
There was a moment of silence. “Were you sleeping?” he asked.
“Nope. Not me. I was just going out the door to look for Mo.” Okay, so it was a fib. Better than looking like a slug. Or even worse, better than admitting to the truth, because the truth was that I was becoming emotionally dysfunctional. I was unable to fall asleep in the dark. And if I did fall asleep, it would be only to doze and to wake up to bad dreams. So I was starting to sleep during daytime hours when I had the chance.
My incentive for finding Mo had changed in the last couple of days. I wanted to find Mo so the killing would stop. I couldn't stand seeing any more blown-apart bodies.
I rolled off the couch and into the shower. While in the shower I noticed blisters on my heels as big as quarters. Thank God. I finally had a legitimate excuse to stop running. Eight minutes later, I was dressed and in the hall, with my apartment locked up behind me.
As soon as I climbed into the Bronco I knew this was serious because Ranger was wearing no-nonsense army fatigues and gold post earrings. Also the tear gas gun and the smoke grenades in the backseat were a tip-off.
“What's the deal?” I asked.
“Very straightforward. I got a call from Moses Bedemier. He apologized for borrowing my car. Said it was parked in his garage, and that his neighbor, Mrs. Steeger, had the keys.”
I shuddered at the mention of Mrs. Steeger.
“What's that about?” Ranger asked.
“Mrs. Steeger is the Antichrist.”