Free Delta Stevens 2: Storm Shelter by Linda Kay Silva Page B

biggest chauvinist pigs she’d ever met. Once, at a Christmas party, Leonard had had a little too much scotch and entertained a group of men with his distorted view of female detectives and police officers. When Delta heard his comment about women cops being physically weaker than male cops, she walked over to him, plucked his cigar from his mouth, and dropped it in his scotch glass.
    “Care to test that theory, Detective?” she had said, towering over him. Had it not been for Connie’s quick action to pull Delta from the group, Russ Leonard would have found out the hard way just how wrong he was.
    “Leonard, they’re people who are dying, not flies. Try to remember that before you open your mouth.”
    “Touchy, touchy. Who pissed in your Cheerios this a.m.?”
    Delta shook her head and walked away. “Jackass,” she mumbled to herself, walking over to the crime scene tech, who was dusting a glass for prints. “Coming up with anything, Manny?” Manny Espinosa was one of the best techies Delta had ever met. He was thorough, precise, and knew his stuff.
    “Not much. Looks like he bought it from someone he knew. Two glasses with alcohol. This one here is full, probably the killer’s. He was smart enough not to pick it up.”
    Delta nodded. “Keep up the good work, Manny.” Delta walked back over to the corpse to find Leonard kneeling over it. “don’t be sore, Stevie,” Leonard said. “I was only jokin’.”
    Delta didn’t respond. Instead, she wrote notes on her notepad about the layout of the apartment and the arrangement of the body.
    “Looks like your psycho has struck again,” Leonard said, rising and looking up at Delta.
    Delta towered over the stump of a man. “I don’t think so.”
    This brought a chuckle from Leonard. “Oh, you don’t?”
    “Nope. What you have here, Leonard, is another murder. Period. I don’t think it has anything to do with the guy that chucked that star at me over at Omega’s.”
    “Sounds like you’re lucky he didn’t give you a new part in your hair.” Leonard put the tip of his pencil to his tongue and jotted down a few notes. “But fear not, Stevie, because I’m gonna get him for you.”
    Delta watched, as Manny stepped over to the body. “You done here, Sarge?”
    Leonard waved a hand at him, and Manny started taking pictures of the victim.
    “Yeah, Stevie, you just leave it up to me and my men. We’ll bring this bastard to his knees before long.”
    Delta shook her head. “Not if you insist on connecting this murder to the other.”
    Leonard sniffed and stopped writing. “Oh? Jeez, Stevie, if I would have known it was amateur detective night, I would have worn my best suit.”
    Connell faked a chuckle.
    “I may not have a badge that says I’m a detective, Leonard, but I know evidence when I see it, and this evidence doesn’t point toward my man.”
    Folding his arms, Leonard looked amused. “And tell me, Agatha Stevens, just what clues, what hard evidence lies before us that supports your half-baked theory?”
    One of the things that made Leonard a good detective was that he looked for hard evidence that was nearly irrefutable in court. He would search until he found that one link, that one tie that would connect a suspect to the scene of the crime.
    “Take a good look around you, Leonard. My perp has a thing for ancient weaponry. We’ve already established that as one of his M.O.’s.”
    Leonard’s thick eyebrows shot up. “Been reading our reports, have you?”
    Delta shrugged the question off. “It’s not important. What is important is the fact that this guy had his head blown off with a large-calibre handgun at point-blank range; that’s not something our walking anachronism is likely to use.”
    A wicked grin slid across Leonard’s face. “How can you be so sure, Stevie? The M.O. is still the same. This sicko is killing for pleasure. Just because he decided to use a gun makes no difference. don’t overlook the obvious.”
    “And