Page 59 of Justice for JoElla

“We’re taking care of this!” a voice yelled, and when Roy turned sideways and caught a glimpse of her and Quint, she could see past him.

Fucking Lance.

JoElla’s voice was nothing but venom. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Taking care of our prisoner.”

“He’s notyourprisoner. He’sourprisoner. The crimes were all perpetrated in the county.”

Roy placed a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “That’s what I’ve been standing here telling him.”

“Where’s your little buddy, asshole? You know, the one you had stop me on the street?”

Roy spun and glared at Lance. “Now you’re having your uniforms stop my detectives?”

Lance gave them a smug smile. “I just wanted to talk to her.”

Before JoElla could reply, Roy bellowed, “You have a problem with one of my detectives, with any of my people, you come tome, do you understand? You don’t harass my employees. I won’t stand for it.”

Lance shrugged. “I just wanted to talk to her, to see if we could all work on this together.”

One question kept cycling through JoElla’s mind:Why does he care so much about this? It’s not like they don’t have any cases to work. What is it about this case that’s got him so interested?The whole thing had been bothering her, and she could finally ask herself that plainly. It was unnatural. He’d never shown an interest before. Why now? Why this case? “I’m not working with you on anything. You burned that bridge.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. Now get out of my way. I’m going in there to question our suspect.” She tried to push past him, but he blocked her.

“Lance, you’d probably best step aside,” Roy growled.

“I’d say SheriffBillings is right. Stepping aside would be the best thing you could do at this point,” Quint said, his voice a low, menacing hum.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Someone who has far more invested in this case than you do. You’re not going to block us from talking to this prisoner. I came a long, long way to talk to him, and I intend to do what I came here for.”

“Oh, is that right?” Lance glared at Quint. “Are you JoElla’s newpartner?” he asked, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest.

“No. I’m LieutenantQuint Axton, SanAntonio Police Department. And if I have a lot of interference, I’m sure I can have my chief call your city manager, your mayor, and your county judge executive, and we can make some heads roll. Or we can just call in KDCI.”

“How the hell do you… Oh, fuck it. Go ahead. You’re not going to get anything anyway.” Lance moved aside, and Quint and JoElla blew past him and into the room.

The guy reeked. JoElla could honestly say she’d never smelled anything so bad. It was a combination of urine, feces, vomit, blood, and dirty socks. From the corner of her eye, she could see Quint recoil. “Mr.Warmuth?”

“Who the hell are you and what do you want?”

“My name is JoEllaTompkins, and this is QuintAxton. I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

“I ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ without my lawyer.”

“That’s okay. I don’t want to talk to you about Josie.” An odd look passed across the man’s face, pure confusion, and she knew she had him. “I just wanted to talk about where you’ve been the last few weeks.”

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean, you weren’t in the SUV the whole time, were you? Because you relaxed and kicked back sometimes, right?”

“Didn’t do much relaxin’ with that bitch caterwauling the whole fucking time.”

“Do you have a house?”

---