He grinned and then sobered upon catching Laurel’s expression. “We did.” He ground a palm into his left eye. “Too much of a party. My head is on fire.”

“How did this situation come about?” Laurel asked.

Abigail shrugged. “The kind officer kept performing drive-bys of my house as part of my protection detail, and I invited him in for dinner. One thing led to another. Several anothers.” Her chuckle was throaty.

Laurel turned to face the officer more fully. “Rachel Raprenzi was attacked last night.”

His eyebrow lifted. “The woman from the podcast? That’s too bad, but what does that have to do with us?”

“You drank a lot of wine. Can you verify that Abigail was with you all night?” Laurel asked.

His handlebar mustache twitched. “Of course. We were in bed all night.”

“But you were out, right? Slept like a baby?” Laurel pressed.

“Not that out,” he retorted, standing up straighter. “I’m a trained officer. If she’d left the bed, I would’ve known it. You can’t honestly be saying that Abigail went and attacked some reporter. That’s nuts.”

Laurel rezipped her coat. “Very well. Officer Zello, please report to my office to be interviewed at nine AM this morning.” At that time, she’d hit him with the fact that she knew he’d slept with Sharon Lamber. So far, she could connect him to all the victims except Christine Franklin, and she hadn’t probed deeply yet.

Abigail opened the door, her full lips set in a smirk. “It’s always a pleasure, sister.”

Laurel left and arctic air froze her nose. As she was driving away, she called Huck and gave him an update.

“Well, that’s good, right? Abigail has an alibi, so she wasn’t the one who attacked Rachel.”

Laurel slowed down as her SUV slid on the ice. “It isn’t good. I have absolutely no doubt after seeing her this morning that Abigail was Rachel’s attacker.”

Without question.

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

Huck sucked down a quad-latte like it was water as he sat across from Officer Frank Zello in the dismal Fish and Wildlife interrogation room. It felt as if cold air actually swept across his feet, but he kept his expression as pissed off as he was feeling right now. “So let me get this straight. You’re going the extra mile and driving by a possible victim’s home, and then you end up getting drunk and engaging in sex with said victim?”