Free Cooked Goose by G. A. McKevett Page A

here to the hospital and tries to kill me again?”
    “He can’t,” Savannah told her. “No way. Right outside your door is the biggest Irish cop you’ve ever seen, and he’s packin’ a gun the size of a Sherman tank. Ain’t nobody comin’ through him, I guarantee it. You’re safe now, Charlene. Really. I promise.”
    She continued to sob. “But I don’t feel safe.”
    Savannah didn’t have the heart to tell Charlene Yardley that one of the worst things her attacker had done to her was to rob her of the simple, human joy of ever feeling safe again.
    “I know you don’t,” Savannah said, “but we’re going to catch that bastard for you and put him away so that he can’t ever hurt you or anyone else again. I swear.”
    Charlene turned her face away, but she gripped Savannah’s hand even harder. “He…he….” She struggled with the words. “He did awful things to me,” she finally said, as though she were confessing some deeply personal, mortal sin.
    Savannah returned the squeeze. “I know. I’m so sorry.”  
    She began to cry even harder. The sound was like that of a wounded animal, and everyone in the room shuddered. “He made me do things to him, too,” she told them. “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t.”
    “That’s okay, Charlene,” Savannah said. “You only did what you had to, what anyone would have done under those circumstances.”
    “If my mama had seen me there in that orange grove, she—” Charlene released Savannah’s fingers and covered her face with her hand, as though trying to blot out memories that could never be erased. “Oh, God,” she said, “I’m glad my mother is dead and won’t ever know what he did to me, and what he made me do to him.”
    “Your mama would have wanted you to do whatever was necessary to stay alive. And that’s what you did,” Savannah told her firmly, then she softened her tone. “You were a brave girl, Charlene. A strong, brave girl. And now everything’s okay, sweetheart. You’re safe and everything’s going to be all right.”
    Pulling the sheet higher around Charlene’s shoulders, Savannah said, “You try to go back to sleep, honey. Just close your eyes and try not to worry about anything. Atta girl.”
    After several minutes, Charlene had stopped crying, and her breathing was slow and rhythmic.
    Savannah stepped away from the bed and walked over to Dirk. “Come on,” she whispered to him. “Let’s go get that bastard and nail his dick to the nearest wall.”
    Half-awake and half-asleep, Charlene heard what the woman with the soft, sweet, Southern accent whispered. And, after hearing her, Charlene felt a bit better.
    Mama had said she was going to get the bad guy and make him pay for what he had done to her little girl. And Mama sounded like she really meant it, too.
    * * *
    8:39 A.M.
    After several hours of dirt combing—searching the crime scene for the most minute particle of evidence—Dirk, Savannah, and Officer Titus Dunn had decided it was time for some nourishment at a local pancake house.
    The waitress, who filled out her hot pink uniform to perfection, eyed Titus as she sidled by, a coffeepot in her hand and a twinkle in her eye. “You need a refill?” she asked him, ignoring Savannah and Dirk, who sat across the booth from the patrolman.
    Savannah was only mildly irked. After all, Titus was the quintessential tall and delectably handsome, law enforcement-type hunk who spent most of his spare time lifting weights at the gym. While Dirk was, well, Dirk. And she, herself, probably wasn’t the waitress’s preferred gender.
    But on the other hand, there was no excuse for a customer suffering from low blood sugar or caffeine deprivation in a pancake house.
    “Excuse me, Adrienne,” she said, reading the name tag over the waitress’s left boob. “I need another Danish—cherry and cream cheese—and some more coffee,” she said, waving her hand in the woman’s line of vision. The waitress tore her eyes away