Sarah Armstrong - 01 - Singularity by Kathryn Casey

any limb.
    “Any fingerprints or DN A on this one?”
    “No, same as the last,” I said. “The scene was clean.”
    “Well,” he said, restraint edging his voice.
    Again only silence, and I knew he was carefully weighing what he’d say next.
    “Under the circumstances, I think Nelson and I will have another powwow with the assistant D.A.,” he said.
    Presuming we’d made some progress, that he fully understood what David and I had discovered in Bardwell, I couldn’t believe what happened next. As I listened, Scroggins made a complete one-eighty. I could almost hear the pounding as he hammered on our information, reshaping it to fit his preferred theory.
    “But, you know, if you think about it, this really doesn’t have to hurt our case against Priscilla Lucas. The way I see it, so you found another murder that might or might not be the work of the same killer. That doesn’t necessarily change the situation,” he ventured, slowly reclaiming his former confidence. “Think about it. So the same guy offed some old woman in some little town…that only confirms our theories.”
    “How do you figure that?” I asked.
    “We’re not claiming Lucas murdered her old man herself. Nelson and I have said all along that this was a murder for hire, probably by some asshole who’s murdered before. Another body changes nothing.”
    “It seems unlikely for this type of a killer, with this kind of MO, to be motivated by money.”
    “Unlikely but not impossible,” he said, fully inflated with his old ardor. “When are you and the Quantico guru driving back?”
    “We hope tonight—if not, tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “We’ve got work here first. We need to track this guy down or at least find out who we’re looking for.”
    “Well, I’m going to get a pocket warrant,” Scroggins mused. “That way when we’re ready to pick her up, the red tape will be out of the way.”
    “That’s probably a good idea, if you’re convinced you need a warrant,” I conceded. Issued and signed by a judge but not recorded at thecounty clerk’s office until an arrest is made, a pocket warrant is kept secret. “At least the press won’t be the wiser. But wait until we get back to pick her up. Wait until we know what we’ve got here. Okay?”
    “You got it. We’ll hold off,” he agreed. “But if Priscilla Lucas doesn’t start answering our questions and if you don’t find something more concrete, we’re gonna haul her pretty ass in and book her. Understand?”
    “It would be a mistake,” I said again.
    “Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “But it’s the way this case is going down.”
    Judging by the gully in the center of the mattress and the black cockroach—nearly the size of a small mouse—that crawled out of the drain into the sink, I had little hope for the shower, but it turned out that the Easy Street Motel’s water supply was hot and plentiful, even if the towels were wax-paper thin. I pulled my only lipstick out of my purse, a light mauve called rose sunset. In my spare clean white shirt and Wranglers, my boots and blue blazer recycled from the day before, I emerged from my cabin to find David waiting, just as we’d agreed. He’d already had his morning run and shower, but just like his business suit the day before, his jeans and white shirt hung undisciplined on his body. I briefly wondered what he’d look like if he learned how to iron. Over a hot breakfast at the same hole-in-the-wall as the night before, I filled him in on Scroggins’s news.
    “That lady ought to just tell them what she used the money for, answer the questions,” Garrity said, shaking his head in disgust. “If she’s not involved, she’s wasting their time and this thing could really backfire. She could end up splashed on the front page wearing handcuffs.”
    “She must have some reason for not talking,” I said. “If we can figure out what that is, maybe we’ll be able to sort through all of this.”
    “Sure, she’s