since Detective Banning’s idea of lunchtime conversation was to question every detail about her account of the psychic impression she’d shared while they’d waited for their order to arrive.
“Like a log cabin?” he asked, picking up his last onion ring and popping it into his mouth. While he chewed, he pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and carefully wiped his hands.
Kelsey swallowed her impatience. While he was being Mr. Clean and acting politely interested, she was reliving the scratchy sensation of rough wood cutting into the skin on her back. “No. It was more like a building under construction—or one being torn down. The latter, I’m guessing, because of the smell.”
He wadded up the napkin and tossed it onto his empty plate. “The smell?”
Of foreboding. The smell of dead bodies and buried secrets. But that sort of metaphorical description would surely elicit a laugh, so she stuck to more scientific facts.
“Rot. Decay. Like when the cold seeps in between the cracks and condenses. It turns moldy before it can evaporate. Slimy. This place was dark and horrible. She wasn’t familiar with it. I’m sure it wasn’t her regular place of business.”
He responded by adjusting his tie unnecessarily. His straight nose and square face reflected few lines beyond the squint marks beside his eyes. But he dressed older than his youthful face might dictate, with affluent materials and a tailored fit to his clothes. He acted older than a man of twenty-nine or thirty. Conservative. Wary. Politely distant. He carried himself older, too. Not just in the slight limp he camouflaged with a quick, rolling gait, but the way he sat across from her—straight backed, never leaning in to show trust or acceptance, never lounging back to relax.
With her self-protective need to be constantly aware of the people around her, Kelsey couldn’t help but notice other incongruent details about him.
Despite his relatively young age, Merle Banning’s hands had seen something of life. They were clean and neatly taken care of, to be sure, but they were also nicked up with scars around the knuckles and callused enough to show hard physical labor of some kind. They moved with precise efficiency at every task, from opening the front door for her to cradling his mug of hot coffee.
He seemed unaware of her subtle perusal. Or perhaps her opinion just didn’t matter to him.
“Those are pretty specific details for a crime you haven’t really seen.” He sipped his coffee, then frowned at the mug as if something about it didn’t please him.
She had a good idea it was her report which didn’t please him.
“But I have seen it,” she insisted. “That doll triggered something. Either it’s from the crime scene, or the victim touched it somewhere along the way. It carries her residue.”
“Her DNA?” Banning’s moss-colored eyes flared with mild interest.
“It’s not that concrete, Detective. It’s more of an imprint of her psyche, her consciousness. I can sense her thoughts and emotions. She was scared for her life. And I don’t think she suspected the man who killed her had that kind of violence in him. Not toward her at any rate.”
“You saw the man who did it?”
“No.” She hadn’t wanted to look that hard. She’d already felt death, she didn’t need to look it in the eye, as well.
“Do you know who the woman was?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know where the murder took place.”
Kelsey bristled at the challenge in his tone. “Apparently, you don’t know the answers to any of those questions, either, Mr. Banning, or her murder wouldn’t be relegated to the cold-case files.”
His eyes narrowed at that one.
“I know this is more of a lead than you had twelve hours ago. I’m only trying to help.” Kelsey clutched her coat more tightly around her and eyed the box she’d taken out of her backpack and slid across the table to him earlier. “I don’t know if you’ll find scientific evidence on the doll or not. But you’re welcome to keep it and send it to a lab for analysis. I certainly don’t want it anymore.”
“That’s generous of you, Ms. Ryan.” His insincerity irritated her, and it didn’t surprise her to hear him try to debunk her claim with a logical argument. “But unless you can tell me you picked that up at the murder scene, saw it used as a weapon or there’s a written confession hidden inside, it’s pretty useless to K.C.P.D.”
She sat at attention, age-old defenses rising to the fore. Lucy Belle had tried to teach her to be patient with those who didn’t understand. But she had a real problem with anyone who refused to even try. “I don’t imagine these things, Detective. I know that’s not the murder weapon. She was strangled with a long scarf.”
He nodded as if he’d caught her in a lie. “Then you’re conjuring dreams from facts you read in the newspaper and are using this doll as some sort of manifestation of them.”
“No—”
He set down his mug with a precise thud. “Or you were at that crime scene and you’re just now working up the nerve to report what you saw.”
Kelsey gripped the edge of her seat to hold on to her temper. “I have no idea where the murder took place. That’s why I tried to describe it to you in detail.”
“Or perhaps you’ve been intentionally withholding evidence on a capital crime.”
“Inten—?” She swallowed hard, then tapped out each sentence onto the table top. “I didn’t get the impression until last night. I called right after. At three in the morning I called.”
“Even if that doll was good for something, it’s so far removed from the crime scene and so tainted, it’d be worthless now.” He shoved the box back across the tabletop toward her. “So, no thanks.”
Kelsey dodged to the side, avoiding the doll as if he’d fired his gun at her. “I didn’t know it was evidence.”
“I’m not sure if you need to get some professional help, or if you just need to get a life.” He offered her an apologetic smile, arching one golden eyebrow and carving out a dimple at the side of his mouth, as if that would take the sting from his words. “But, plain and simple, Ms. Ryan, you’re wasting my valuable time on this case.”
With that, she stood up. She knocked her leather bag to the floor and spilled some of the contents. The curse she muttered was neither ladylike nor subdued. Watching her lipstick roll beneath the empty table across from them did nothing to improve her mood. This conversation was done as far as she was concerned. But so much for making a dignified, hasty exit and salvaging some semblance of her pride. Squatting down, she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her coat while she snatched up her lipstick, keys and a pen.
Detective Banning slid out of his seat to help her. She noted the tight set of his mouth as he knelt beside her, and idly wondered if his knee was giving him trouble. But Kelsey fought the sympathetic urge that would defuse her temper, grabbed the last item before he could reach it and shot to her feet. One coat sleeve caught at her elbow and tangled with the strap of her bag.
Banning
