Kurlen nodded and picked a DVD case off his desk and handed it to me.

“Might as well give you this now.”

I looked at the disc.

“What’s this?”

“Our interview with your client. You will clearly see that we stopped talking to her as soon as she said the magic words: I want a lawyer.”

“I’ll be sure to check that out, Detective. You want to tell me why she’s your suspect?”

“Sure. She’s our suspect and we’re charging her because she did it and she made admissions about it before asking to call her lawyer. Sorry about that, Counselor, but we played by the rules.”

I held the disc up as if it were my client.

“You’re telling me she admitted killing Bondurant?”

“Not in so many words. But she made admissions and contradictions. I’ll leave it at that.”

“Did she by any chance say in so many words why she did it?”

“She didn’t have to. The victim was in the process of taking away her house. That’s plenty enough motive right there. We’re as good as gold on motive.”

I could’ve told him that he had that wrong, that I was in the process of stopping the foreclosure. But I kept my mouth shut about that. My job was to gather information here, not give it away.

“What else you got, Detective?”

“Nothing that I care to share with you at the moment. You’ll have to wait to get the rest through discovery.”

“I’ll do that. Has a DA been assigned yet?”

“Not that I heard.”

Kurlen nodded toward the back of the room and I turned to see Lisa Trammel being walked toward the door of an interrogation room. She had the classic deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes.

“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Kurlen said. “And that’s only because I’m being nice. I figure there’s no need to start a war.”

Not yet, at least, I thought as I headed toward the interrogation room.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Kurlen called to my back. “I have to check the briefcase. Rules, you know.”