Free Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split by Kathy Hogan Trocheck

you two? Were you here when the body was found?”
    “We just this minute walked up,” Truman said. “My friend here has Alzheimer’s. But he didn’t do this. He must have found the body. He was lost.”
    The other police officer was kneeling down beside Rosie. He donned a pair of disposable rubber gloves and put his fingers on her wrist, trying for a pulse, then shook his head, snapped the gloves off, and threw them aside. “She’s dead,” he said, standing up now. “I’m gonna radio for homicide.”
    They used Jackleen’s betting money to take a cab back to the hotel.
    “Mel couldn’t kill anybody,” Truman said. He’d been saying that over and over.
    “He had blood on his hands,” Jackleen pointed out. “And he kept saying he was sorry. Only he was calling her Pearl.”
    “Poor Rosie,” Truman said. “She seemed like a good kid. Always smiling. Couldn’t have been more than twenty, twenty-one. Same age as my Cheryl when she got married.”
    When they got to the Fountain of Youth he went over to the lobby phone booth and dug a quarter out of his pocket.
    The desk sergeant wouldn’t tell him much, just that Mr. Wisnewski was being questioned by a Detective Rivers.
    “You people have got the wrong guy,” Truman said. He slammed the phone down.
     
    Pearl’s eyes got big and frightened when she saw who was knocking at Dottie Milas’s door. “Truman?” She got up from the card table, knocking her chair over, she was in such a hurry. “What’s wrong? Where’s Mel? Is he okay?”
    The plan was to tell her once they got back to the Wisnewskis’ room on the fourth floor, but Pearl started crying, and Truman couldn’t handle that. So he told her what little he knew. Then he called Howard Seabold’s kid, the lawyer, Howie Jr., and set it up so Howie would meet them at the police department.
    “He never even got a parking ticket,” Pearl said when she could speak again. They were in Mel’s car, the Chrysler. Truman drove, and Jackleen sat in the backseat, handing Kleenex to Pearl.
    “I know,” Truman said. His eyes were on the road, he wanted to make sure he didn’t miss the turn into the police station. They’d built a new one in the years since he’d covered the cop shop for the wire service. Big and fancy. Justice Administration Building, it was called now. They could call it that. It was still the cop shop.
    He wanted to ask Pearl about the knife they’d found on Mel, about that black eye she said she got from bumping into something, but every time he cleared his throat, he heard himself saying softly, “It’ll be all right. It’ll be okay.”
    The desk sergeant had a secretary take Pearl and Truman back to the homicide office, but he gave Jackleen the kind of look she was used to getting. A black girl, only nineteen, and St. Pete was still the South, no matter how many Yankees moved down. So she sat in the lobby, read a Rotary Club magazine, and fumed.
    The detective was waiting for them outside the door to the homicide office. He was white, in his mid-thirties, wearing a white and red-striped shirt with his tie undone. His face was smooth and round, a baby-face, Truman thought, surprised. In his days cops were grizzled veterans of the field, chain-smokers and hard drinkers.
    “Mrs. Wisnewski?” the detective said, putting his hand on Pearl’s shoulder and giving Truman a quizzical look. “I’m Virlyn Rivers. Your husband is inside the office, talking to one of the other detectives. Has anybody told you what happened?”
    “We know your people have the wrong man,” Truman said, stepping forward.
    “Sir?” the detective said.
    “Truman Kicklighter,” he said briskly, businesslike. “AP. Tampa. Assistant bureau chief. I was with Mr. Wisnewski at the track tonight. We’re old friends. He was only gone a couple of minutes. The next thing we know, you people have hauled him down here like a criminal.”
    “You don’t think he killed that woman?” Pearl said, her voice