First Offense by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Page A

red bow in its hair. Maybe the same dog that bit you bit me.”
    Ann leaned back and smiled at Randy Delvecchio, her first genuine smile since walking in the room. She might have wasted an hour in a stifling room with a dangerous animal, but she had what she wanted. The rest of the interview was insignificant. She’d finish it later. Standing, she pushed her chair back to the table and faced him. “That’s it for now. Randy. See, that was painless. You’ll be hearing from me in the next couple of days.”
    “Wait,” he said, his expression changing to desperation. “I didn’t tell you the most important thing.”
    “What’s that?” Ann said, hitting the buzzer for the jailer, wanting to get as far away from this creep right now as she could.
    He looked Ann right in the eye. “I’m innocent. I didn’t rape no women. I never raped anyone in my life. I don’t got to rape ‘em. Women love me. I got all the women I need.”
    Sure, Ann said to herself, deciding his proclamation of innocence was unworthy of even a response. Everyone in the jail was innocent. As soon as the jailer came, Ann took off down the hall.

    When Ann got back to her office, she placed a call to Tommy Reed. After being informed that he was in the field, she asked the dispatcher to call him on the radio and have him meet her at her house.
    Only a few blocks away when he got the call, the detective was pulling up to the curb by the time Ann got home. Ann leaped out of her car and rushed to the driver’s window, her face flushed with excitement. “I got him, Tommy.”
    “Who?”
    “Delvecchio.”
    “How?”
    “The dog bite. He admitted it.”
    The detective’s eyes lit up. “No shit?”
    “No shit, and I’ll testify. I’m certainly a credible witness. He showed it to me, even told me it was a toy poodle…a white toy poodle with a red bow in its hair. Sound familiar? It’s on his ankle.”
    “There’s a lot of white toy poodles with red bows, Ann,” Reed said skeptically. “And I’ll tell you something else. When he was arrested, they went over every square inch of his body. He swore that injury on his ankle was from falling off his motorcycle. His mother even verified his story.” Reed got out of the car and slammed the door, leaning back against it. “Besides, these homicides occurred over a year ago. Unless it was deep enough to leave a scar, a bite like that would have already healed.” Reed made a little smacking noise with his mouth. Even if he had his doubts, he obviously wanted it to be true. “He really told you it was a damn poodle?”
    “I just said so, didn’t I?” Ann was soaring on adrenaline. “He admitted the scar on his ankle was a dog bite.” One of the victims in the homicides, a grandmother of six, had owned a small toy poodle. The dog had been strangled at the time of the victim’s death. Ann had been studying the reports and had come up with the idea that the little dog had probably attacked the killer, and he had choked it in a fit of rage. Reed and some of the other detectives working the case, though, had thought differently. Their assumption was that the dog had been purposely strangled so it wouldn’t bark and draw the police. But Ann knew dogs and poodles, particularly ones that lived pampered lives with long-term owners like the victim. They sometimes developed nasty temperaments, started nipping at strangers. And if the dog had left a permanent scar, as this one evidently had, the lab could still verify that it was made by canine teeth. All they needed was one solid piece of evidence connecting him to the homicides and they would be able to prosecute.
    “Look, Tommy, I know you think I’m pissing in the wind, but please, just write it up and shoot it to Glen. He wants Delvecchio bad. You may not know it, but Estelle Summer died this morning. I’m not certain how much her testimony means to the overall case, but if we lose that rape count, Delvecchio will be back on the streets in no