Ruthless Creatures by J.T. Geissinger

“No?”
She waits for me to say more, but my tongue is pinched
firmly between my teeth. Kage’s warning about talking to the
police is too fresh for me to start blabbering.
When I don’t break under her laser beam stare, she adds,
“We’re here about the shooting at La Cantina last night.”
I don’t make a peep. I do, however, notice that there’s
more than one law enforcement car parked at the curb out on
the street.
Chris leans against his sheriff’s cruiser with his arms
folded over his chest, staring hard at me over the tops of his
mirrored sunglasses.
Shit.
Realizing that Detective Brown and I could stand there in
silence forever, the paunchy officer makes a friendly
suggestion. “Why don’t we go inside and talk?”
“No.”
He looks surprised by the forcefulness of my answer.
Detective Brown, however, doesn’t.
“Is there something you’d like to tell us, Ms. Peterson?”
I bet those sharp ears of hers can hear the faint screams of
my bowels, but I manage to keep a straight face when I
answer. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
She shares a knowing glance with her colleague. He
crosses his arms over his barrel chest and gives me a new look.
One that says he didn’t take me seriously before, but he does
now.
Obviously, Detective Brown has been telling him stories.
In her book, I might look innocent, but I’m not.
I wonder if she thinks I chopped David into tiny pieces and
fed him into a wood chipper.
She says, “There was a shooting last night at La Cantina.
Four people were killed.”