“Because y’all bored.”
That got the younger detective irritated already. I liked when they got emotional too fast. The older one pushed one of the pictures toward me. “Do you know Jermaine Cooper?”
I looked at the picture, then back at him. “Should I?”
“Do you?”
I leaned back in the chair. “I don’t know that man.”
He slid another picture over. “Do you know this location?”
I looked at it for half a second looking at the Riverside trap house, the front porch, the broken railing and everything else they wanted me to see. “Nope.”
The younger detective opened the envelope and pulled out another set of pictures. “We have witnesses that place you in Riverside that night.”
I laughed under my breath. “Y’all got witnesses or y’all got people saying whatever they think gone save they own ass?”
That pissed him off exactly the way I wanted it to. The older one held his hand up a little, telling him without words to relax, then looked back at me. “Your wife was targeted outsidethe courthouse. Jermaine Cooper is dead shortly after. You had motive.”
“Motive ain’t evidence.”
“It matters.”
“Not enough.”
The younger detective leaned forward. “You really think you’re too powerful to touch?”
I looked him dead in his face. “I think if y’all had enough, I wouldn’t be sitting in a room answering dumb shit like this.”
That made the older one pause. Because he knew I was right. They had suspicion. Timeline. Circumstance. Maybe a scared witness or two. Maybe somebody they leaned on too hard in a back room somewhere. But they didn’t have enough to really hold me past the noise.
A knock hit the door then before it opened. Chief Martez stepped inside. He looked irritated, like real irritated. He shut the door behind him and looked at the two detectives first.
“Who ordered this move?”
The younger one started to answer, but Martez cut him off with a look.
“I asked who ordered it.”
The older detective shifted in his chair. “We had enough to bring him in.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
The room got quiet for a second. Martez looked over at me then, and we didn’t say nothing because we didn’t need to. He already knew I wasn’t worried. I already knew he didn’t like being left out of anything involving me since I put too much money in his pocket through nonprofits. The mayor wouldn’t like this shit either as much as the cartel gave back to the city.
The older detective finally cleared his throat. “Captain Saunders signed off.”
Martez nodded like he was making a mental note of that. “Mm.”
Then he looked back at them. “You got enough to hold him?”
The younger detective tried again. “We are still….”
“That means no,” Martez said flatly.
The older one didn’t answer. Martez looked back at me. “Are you comfortable?”
I almost smiled. “I been better.”
