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your husband."
    Her eyes widened slightly as I sat down opposite her, and I shrugged.
    "We can hold both of you if Zach charges him. Him as a murderer, you as an accomplice. Or the other way around, depending on if he says you were the one who killed him."
    "I have to be somewhere tonight,” she snapped, and I gave myself a mental pat on the back for breaking her composure so quickly.
    Not a bad interrogation technique for a forensic scientist!
    "Zach doesn't care about that."
    "Damn right, he doesn't! That bastard put my brother away in the first place."
    "That's where you're going? To visit him?” I watched her carefully. Okay, so Pierce would have been way more observant in this situation than I was, but I hoped I could pick something up.
    "He's innocent,” Laura said, with a stony glare that challenged me to contradict her. She really believes it—whoa. Denial is a scary thing.
    "He's a serial rapist!"
    She surged upright, knocking her chair to the ground, and grabbed my shoulders, hissing into my face, “John is a good man who took the fall for an evil son of a bitch! Your Zach did that to him. I don't know how, or why, but he manipulated the evidence and let an innocent man go to jail!"
    Maybe it'd be like waving a red rag at a bull, but I thought I might be able to get through to her. “Do you really think I'd let him screw around with my evidence reports?"
    "You'd let him do anything he damn well wants.” The double entendre, caught on tape, wouldn't have been obvious to anyone but Pierce, Laura and me. I had to divert her before she said anything too explicit, though, and I summoned my own anger to counter hers.
    How dare she question my scientific integrity?!
    "Maybe when it comes to a lot of things, but not this .” I pulled her hands away from my shoulders and shoved her a pace back, out of my personal space. “Now sit the hell down and listen to me!"
    She wasn't the girl I'd thought she was, but she was still submissive enough to react to my tone of voice. Shooting me a murderous glare, she set her chair upright again, sat down and shut up.
    "Zach Pierce is an amazing detective,” I said. “He loves truth and justice. Why would he want to send a man to jail for something he didn't do?"
    "Isn't it obvious? He's protecting someone!"
    I snorted at the absurdity of that statement. “The other suspects in the case were a junkie with an armed robbery conviction and a strip joint bouncer, Laura! If Zach was gonna break the law to protect anyone, it would've been your brother!"
    She had nothing to say to that—her eyes filled with doubt.
    "If Zach charges a man with a crime, that man is guilty. End of story. Now tell me why you picked Leigh's pocket, damn it!"
    For a long moment, she just stared at me defiantly, but then her shoulders slumped. “Garth asked me to do it."
    Finally, we're getting somewhere...
    "Your husband knew the victim was gonna be there?"
    She seemed exhausted all of a sudden, though I was wary of buying into her emotions in case this was another act. It was what came out of her mouth that counted. I kept my distance and let the question hang in the air—maybe I could have been a cop, after all.
    "He owed Garth money. Not a ton, but some. My husband runs a...poker ring, downtown."
    The case was finally starting to make sense. “Is he violent?"
    "Not if I do what he tells me,” Laura said bitterly.
    Ouch.
    I was tempted to go over and give her a hug—forgiveness is one of my strong suits—but I still didn't completely trust her. “I...actually meant towards people who owe him."
    Shrugging, she answered, “I don't ask. He doesn't tell me."
    I was in a little over my head, now.
    Give me a quadratic equation or some mystery fluids to test, and I'm your girl, but an evasive woman who may or may not be telling the truth about her possibly abusive husband's gambling business? Get me out of here.
    "Laura...did he tell you to get with Zach?"
    A brief hesitation, then she nodded. When I