“Barbara would have shot me,” I said, though Tucker and I had been over that ground before. “She pulled the trigger. She actually pulled the trigger. The thing must have jammed.”

Tucker stroked my hair. “It’s all over, babe.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were DEA?” I swallowed, and answered my own question. “Because you were investigating Bert.”

Tucker looked away, looked back, said nothing.

“That’s why you spent so much time hanging out at the bar.”

Still nothing.

I pressed on. “Why would Bert have trusted you in the first place? It doesn’t make sense. I can’t see him as a drug dealer, and even if he was, he thought you were in Narcotics. He’d have been stupid to open up to you.”

“I wasn’t investigating Bert. I was after the people who stabbed him, and beat the hell out of Sheila.”

“But—”

“We made it look like I was on the take,” Tucker said reluctantly. “That’s why they trusted me. They operated out of the bar. Bert suspected it for a long time, but he wasn’t sure what to do. Things finally got too hot, and he called us.”

“Did you get them? The guys who hurt Bert and Sheila, I mean?”

He was silent for a long time before he said, “Yes.”

“And Bert and Sheila had to go into the witness protection program because they’re going to testify?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not really quitting the DEA, are you?”

“I’ll probably take a desk job. Allison won’t share custody unless I do.”

I sighed. “I guess all that talk about your joining Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks was just that—talk.”

He grinned. “I wouldn’t mind helping out with the more interesting cases. That way, maybe I can keep you from getting yourself killed.”

I bit my lower lip. Geoff was still at large. Keeping me from getting killed might turn out to be a major challenge.

“My brother murdered Lillian.”

“I know,” Tucker said.

I blinked. “You know? How?”

“The autopsy report came back. He gave her enough morphine to stop her heart, and his prints were on the bag. He was grandstanding.”

“What about my IV bag?”

Tucker paled, or at least seemed to, in that early morning light, still dim and thready. “Drain cleaner,” he said. “He wanted it to hurt. Chances are, the rat poison in the chow mein was his doing, too. He probably made the pitch-call himself, then paid some kid to carry the box.”

A prickly shiver went through me. “He wasn’t trying to cover his tracks in the nursing home or the hospital. Geoff’s a nurse. He would have known about drugs that wouldn’t leave a trace, and he’d have had access to them.”

Tucker nodded slowly. His eyes burned into my face. “Have you seen him since that night at the casino, Moje?”