Silent Night Man. Diana Palmer

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      The man whistled softly. “I thought about going with them, once, but after six months of being called, interrogated, lie-detected, background-checked and otherwise investigated to death, I gave up and joined the police force. The pay’s lousy, but I’ve only been involved in one shoot-out in ten years.” He grinned. “I’ll bet you can’t say that.”

      “You’d be right,” Tony had to admit. “I’m carrying enough lead in me to fill a revolver. They can’t take some of the slugs out because of where they lodged.”

      “You knew the deceased, I gather.”

      He nodded. “He was my best friend since high school.” He grimaced. “But it turns out I didn’t know him at all. He was stalking a woman we both knew and I thought she was lying about it.”

      The man pulled out a notepad. “That would be Miss Millicent Evans.”

      “Yes.”

      “She wasn’t lying,” the police detective told him. “She called us in on a 10-16 domestic, physical,” he added, using the ten code for a domestic disturbance call. “He’d knocked her around pretty badly.”

      Tony felt two inches high as he remembered Millie’s unexpected reaction when he’d moved so abruptly in the funeral home. He couldn’t speak.

      “But when it was time to press charges, she wouldn’t,” the detective said flatly. “We were disappointed. We don’t like women beaters. She said he was drinking heavily and had apologized, and it was the first time he’d hit her.”

      “Was it only the one time?” Tony had to know.