Red by Kate Kinsey Page A

lie. Even a little one. Especially when it was an embarrassingly personal one.
    “She said she had lunch with her husband at Caesars on the day he was killed,” Hanson explained. “The reservation book said they’d had lunch there on Monday, not that Thursday.”
    The waiter had remembered them, too. Roger and Marla were good tippers who ate there often.
    “So? I can’t tell you what I ate for lunch yesterday ! She’d just learned that her husband was dead, for Pete’s sake!”
    “Yes, sir, it’s an understandable mistake,” Hanson agreed. “But we wouldn’t have been doing our job if we hadn’t followed up on it.”
    That was always the best defense with Daubs. Bring up duty. Honor. The American Way.
    “All right,” Daubs said with a sigh. “You’re right . But what difference would it make whether she had lunch that day with him or not?”
    Hanson exchanged a quick glance with Griggs and saw his partner’s eyes roll. Was Daubs serious? What anybody had been doing in the twenty-four hours prior to being murdered was important.
    “Well, if it had just been whether or not they’d had lunch together, it might not matter.” Hanson knew he would have to be very careful here. Daubs wasn’t just sincere, he was a sincere prude. “There were also the hairs we found.”
    “What hairs ?”
    “We found three long brown hairs wrapped around the dead guy’s dick,” Griggs said.
    Hanson resisted the urge to punch him.
    “The poor man is dead !” Daubs roared. “Show some respect, do you understand me?”
    “Sorry. But we found three long brown hairs wrapped around Mr. Banks’s penis . What was left of it.”
    Daubs paled, his face tensing for a millisecond in what Hanson assumed was shock at such a graphic image. How long it had been, he wondered, since Daubs had actually seen a dead body?
    “We found another hair, the same type, snagged in his watch band,” Hanson said, plunging forward to prevent Griggs from speaking again. “We had to make sure it didn’t come from the killer. That’s all.”
    “Did they?” Daubs asked.
    “No, sir. Based upon the sample we took from Mrs. Banks, the hair was hers.”
    “Turns out she did have lunch with her husband that day,” Griggs grinned. “Only food wasn’t on the menu. That’s why she lied.”
    For a moment, Daubs didn’t say anything. Maybe it took him a minute to put the pieces together. Maybe he was too embarrassed to speak.
    “Thank God, it was Marla’s hair,” he said finally, pushing papers around his desk.
    “Yes, sir.”
    Hanson was glad to say no more about it. He didn’t relish telling Daubs that Roger and Marla had been playing sex games at the local porn shop. Personally, he thought it was sweet, an old married couple getting kinky together.
    “Anything else ?” Daubs asked.
    “Just a handful of unexplained phone calls.” Hanson was eager to give Daubs proof of their due diligence, but he knew Daubs wouldn’t like the implication. “He had voice mails from a woman who identifies herself as Cherry—”
    “Cherry?” Daubs blinked. “What kind of name is that ?”
    “Sounds like a stripper to me,” Griggs said.
    Daubs glared and the throb in his temple flared again. Hanson threw himself into the breach before the other man could speak.
    “The number comes back as a prepaid phone.”
    “So you traced it?” Daubs demanded.
    Another glance at Griggs, who was equally dumbfounded. Jesus, Hanson thought. You’d think the man at least watched Law & Order . An episode was playing every time you turned on the damned TV.
    “Prepaid phones are almost impossible to trace,” Hanson explained, hoping like hell he didn’t sound as annoyed as he felt. “People just walk into a store, pay cash; they don’t have to sign anything or even give them a credit card.”
    “Yeah, they’re popular with drug dealers and terrorists,” Griggs said. “And people with lousy credit.”
    “So who is this Cherry person?” Daubs asked. “I