“Figure of speech. No idea what color the thing actually was. But I swear you could barely hear it. Some kind of stealth version.”

“Still, I thought that was an urban legend.”

“Apparently not.”

“And they never showed a warrant?”

“Never said a word. Slam, bam, not even a ‘thank you, ma’am.’”

“Your boss must be freaked.”

“Naomi doesn’t freak.”

Tolliver shrugs, as if he doesn’t quite believe it. “So I heard. Good for her. Must be kind of weird, working for a female, huh?”

“Not weird at all.”

“No?”

Jack shakes his head, enough already.

Tolliver sighs. “Hey, one of these days maybe you’ll wangle me an invitation. I’d love to see the inside of that place.”

Jack changes the subject. “Long way around, Shane was not the shooter. That’s a definite. He’s that rarest of things, an innocent man.”

Tolliver snorts. “Nobody is innocent in this world, least of all Randall Shane. We have a garment with blood on it. A shirt, extra large, 17-inch neck, 37-inch sleeves. The shirt would fit your average gorilla. It has discernible splatter on the right sleeve, indicative of proximity to a gunshot. It will take a while, lab work being what it is, but I’ll bet you a bottle of this port that the blood belongs to the vic and the garment links to Mr. Shane.”

“No bet. You’re probably correct about the matchups but there’s an explanation: the shirt was deliberately used in the crime, donned by the real shooter and then planted. And if Shane never got back into his motel room, how did it get there?”

“Working on that. It’s not only the garment, which you already knew about from the detectives on scene, and don’t think I didn’t know that. There’s something else. Something way better.”

“Oh?” says the former FBI agent, the little hairs stirring on the back of his well-barbered neck.

“We have the murder weapon, Jack. Registered to your pal, and his prints are all over it.”