Akins shook his head. “Yeah, she’s definitely got a screw loose.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He broke things off with her over the summer and she flipped out, slashed all his tires and threatened to go to his wife.” He handed the paper back. “Mason asked me to talk to her.”

“Did you?”

He shrugged. “I dropped by her place. Kept it low key. I told her she needed to leave him alone or she was going to be looking at a criminal mischief charge.”

“Was this an official visit or—”

“It was a favor.” Akins lowered his voice. “The girl’s obsessed with him. She sent him about a million nude pictures of herself.” He smirked. “Not that that’s bad or anything—she’s definitely hot. But then when he broke it off, she had a meltdown.”

“He showed you the pictures?”

“Yeah. Hang on.” Akins got up and went to the shed, where he picked up a red plastic basket filled with foil-wrapped tacos.

“Sure you’re not hungry?” Akins asked as he came back to the table.

“I’m good.”

Brandon folded the picture of Vanessa and slid it back into his pocket.

“So far, this thing’s shaping up like a he-said, she-said,” Brandon told him. “Vanessa flatly denies touching the car.”

Akins rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well I saw it for myself.” He unwrapped the foil from his taco.

“Any chance Lloyd slashed his own tires?”

He snorted. “On a Porsche 911? Not a chance. That’s four Pirelli tires at five hundred bucks a pop.” He dipped his taco in hot sauce. “Look, the girl’s crazy. She freaked out when Mason broke up with her, and he asked me to help him out before she blew up his marriage.” He chomped into the taco, taking down half of it in one bite. “Trust me,” he said around a mouthful of food. “He’s the victim, not her.”

Brandon’s phone vibrated as a text landed from Antonio: Call me ASAP.

He looked at Akins. “I need to call in.”

“Sure.”

He got up and walked away from the table, leaving Akins to his tacos. He was glad to get a break from him. Brandon could only imagine Leigh’s reaction if she knew that the guy who had used his badge to bully Vanessa had also seen pictures of her naked. It wasn’t hard to understand where Leigh got the bottomless well of outrage that she needed to do her job.

Stepping under the shade of a cottonwood, Brandon called his partner.

“What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with that detective in Tampa. He retrieved the case file.”

Brandon’s pulse picked up. “What’s he got?”

“You know how I told you they always thought the break-in at their office was an inside job and they took all the docs’ prints but no matches?”

“Yeah?”