Free Crime Beat by Scott Nicholson Page A

hands-on. Clubbing, strangling, razor blade.”
    The liquor was working on her and she smiled. “I love it when you talk murder.”
    Her lips tasted like Jim Beam. “Well,” I said, when I was ready to catch my breath, “if it turns out to be three or four different murderers, that’s a pretty good string, too.”
    “You still think Moretz is clean?”
    “You said yourself that Hardison wouldn’t have let him walk if there was a chance of guilt.”
    “Hardison’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’s holding out on the SBI when he should be taking advantage of their lab resources. That clipper thing has to be traceable somehow.”
    “Dead end,” I said, reaching over her, not unduly pressing my body against hers. I slid open a drawer on the coffee table and showed her the bag of the fingernail clippers. “You buy these things like candy. They’re not unique enough to pin a clever murderer. I figured we would do some sort of commemorative giveaway when this was over.”
    She pulled one out and toyed with it. The clippers featured a nail file that swiveled out so you could finish the job with a nice buffed edge. “I don’t see why the ‘Rebel Clipper’ thing stuck. They found clippers with the second body but not the others. If it wasn’t for you guys running that nickname, the cops might have a better handle on the murders.”
    “I think they did find them on the other two,” I said. “I believe they are withholding the information.”
    “You said your boy Moretz was hot on that Shumate scene. He would have seen them discovering the clippers.”
    “They were giving him a hard time, fighting their little turf wars, violating the public’s right to come and go as it pleases. They think they can play Maypole with a little bit of yellow tape and put the truth in bondage.”
    “If Moretz was there, he wouldn’t need to plant the clippers, or maybe he ran out of time.”
    “You’re getting paranoid,” I said. “You’ve been spending too much time in the city.”
    “Is that an invitation to move in with you?”
    “Just for the night,” I said. “One thing you can set in stone, there’s no future with me.”
    She kissed my cheek. “Sure thing, Mr. Melodrama.”
    “Just one thing before we go to bed,” I said.
    She groaned with impatience. “I’ve got a deadline in the morning.”
    “Those tidbits I fed you, the stuff I’d trimmed out of Moretz’s stories?”
    “Come on, you’re not going to hold that over my head, are you? You’re already getting the plum pudding. You don’t need the bribery.”
    “I’m just wondering if Moretz has ever seen us in the same place at the same time, besides that one press conference.”
    “Who cares? We’re consenting adults.”
    “He might be stalking me. He knows we’ve been hooking up.”
    “Please. Call it ‘dating.’ I’m old-fashioned and I like to pretend I’m a lady.”
    “Either way, he knows stuff he shouldn’t.”
    “That’s his job. You said it yourself, he’s good at what he does.”
    “A little too good.”
    She pressed closer, her warm whiskey breath on my face, the girlish, meadow scent of her in direct contrast to her severe, square-jawed features. “What, you’re afraid he’s going to bust in and make us victims number four and five of the Rebel Clipper?”
    Just four , I thought. But I didn’t say that. It just plain wasn’t romantic.

 
    15.
    The actual fourth victim was found the next afternoon. Peggy McDonald was in her early 20’s, dressed in a practical outfit and sneakers, her long dark hair tied back in a ponytail. She’d been on her way to a shift at the local library when the Rebel Clipper made her overdue in more ways than one.
    McDonald lived downtown and regularly walked the half mile to work. A stretch of the walk was through an undeveloped lot that contained a couple of leaning, decaying farm sheds. It was a popular shortcut for locals, and the occasional wino found rainy-day refuge in one of