It was a lucrative trade, and Savich didn’t want Duncan Hatcher to bugger it up.

The machine shop on the ground floor of the warehouse was noisy, nasty, and hot, in contrast to the cool oasis of his office suite upstairs. The two areas were separated by a short ride in a clanking service elevator, but aesthetically they were worlds apart.

He’d spared no expense to surround himself with luxury. His leather desk chair was as soft as butter. The finish on his desk was satin smooth and glossy. The carpet was woven of silk threads, the finest money could buy.

His secretary was a homosexual named Kenny, whose family had deep roots in Savannah society and, unfortunately for Kenny, longevity genes. Kenny was waiting impatiently for his elderly parents to die and leave him, their only son and heir, his much-anticipated paper mill fortune.

In the meantime he worked for Savich, who was dark and mysterious and exciting, who was anathema to his stodgy parents for every reason thinkable, and who had won Kenny’s undying loyalty by slowly choking to death a violent homophobe who had waylaid Kenny outside a gay bar and beaten him to within an inch of his life.

Their working relationship was mutually beneficial. Savich preferred Kenny to a female secretary. Invariably women got around to wanting a sexual relationship with him, the depth of which depended on the woman. His policy had always been to keep romance and business separate.

Besides, women were too easily swayed by flattery, or even kindness. Cops and federal agents often used this feminine weakness as a means of getting information. They’d once tried that tactic in the hope of incriminating him. It failed when his secretary mysteriously disappeared. She’d never been found. He’d replaced her with Kenny.

Kenny shot to his feet the instant Savich crossed the threshold of the office suite. Although his well-coiffed hair remained well-coiffed as he nodded toward the closed door to Savich’s private office, it was apparent that he was in a state of excitability.

“You have a visitor who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said in an exaggerated stage whisper.

Instantly alert to the danger of an ambush-his first thought was Hatcher-Savich reached for the pistol at the small of his back.

His secretary’s plucked eyebrows arched fearfully. “It’s not like that. I would have called you if it was like that. I believe you’ll want to see this visitor.”

Savich, now more curious than wary, moved to the door of his private chamber and opened it. His guest was standing with her back to the room, staring out the window. Hearing him, she turned and removed the dark sunglasses that concealed half her face.

“Elise! What an unexpected and delightful surprise. You’re always a sight for sore eyes.”

She didn’t return either his wide smile or his flattery. “I’m glad to hear that because I need a favor.”

Duncan’s rank as detective sergeant afforded few benefits above those of his colleagues, but one of them was a private office at the back of the narrow room that was home to the Violent Crimes Unit.

Duncan nodded at DeeDee as he walked past her desk. He had a doughnut stuck in his mouth, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, his sport jacket hooked on a finger of the other, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He stepped into his office, but before he even had a chance to sit down, DeeDee, who’d followed him into the closet-sized office, laid a folder on his desk with a decisive slap.

“His name was Gary Ray Trotter.”

Duncan wasn’t a morning person. Hated them, in fact. It took a while for him to warm up to the idea of daylight and get all his pistons firing. DeeDee, on the other hand, could go from zero to sixty within a few seconds.

Despite their late night at the Lairds’ house, she would have been up and at ’em for hours. Other detectives had straggled into the VCU this morning, looking already sapped by the cloying humidity outside. DeeDee, not surprisingly, was by far the most chipper of the lot and was practically bristling with energy.

Duncan raised his arm and let the newspaper slide onto his desk. He draped his jacket over the back of his chair, set down the coffee, which had grown hot in his hand despite the cardboard sleeve around the cup, and took a bite from the doughnut before removing it from his mouth.

“No ‘good morning’?” he asked grumpily.

“Dothan got to work early, too,” she told him as he plopped into his desk chair. “He fingerprinted the Lairds’ corpse. Gary Ray Trotter was a repeat offender, so I had the ID in a matter of minutes. Lots of stuff on this guy.” She indicated the folder lying still untouched on his desk.

“Originally from Baltimore, over the last dozen years he’s gradually worked his way down the East Coast, spending time in various jails for petty stuff until a couple of years ago he got brave and expanded into armed robbery in Myrtle Beach. He was released on parole three months ago. His parole officer hadn’t heard from him in two.”

“My, you’ve been busy,” Duncan said.

“I thought one of us should get a running start, and I knew you wouldn’t.”

“See, that’s why we work so well together. I recognize your strengths.”

“Or rather, I recognize your weaknesses.”

Smiling over the barb, he flipped open the file folder and scanned the top sheet. “I thought his clothes looked new. Like a con recently out.”

By the time he’d finished reading Gary Ray Trotter’s rap sheet he had eaten the doughnut. He licked the glaze off his fingers. “He didn’t have a very distinguished criminal career,” he remarked as he removed the plastic top from the coffee cup.

“Right. So I don’t get it.”

“ ‘It’?”

DeeDee pulled a chair closer to Duncan’s desk and sat down. “Burglarizing the Lairds’ house seems a trifle ambitious for Gary Ray.”

Duncan shrugged. “Maybe he wanted to go out with a bang.”

“Ha-ha.”

“I couldn’t resist.”

“He’d never been charged with burglary before,” DeeDee said.

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t commit one.”

“No, but from reading his record, he doesn’t come across as the sharpest knife in the drawer. In fact, his first offense at age sixteen was theft of a bulldozer.”

“I thought that was a typo. It really was a bulldozer?”

“He drove it from the road construction site where he was employed as a flagman. You know, orange vest? Waves cars around roadwork?”

“Got it.”

“Okay, so Gary Ray steals a bulldozer and drives it to his folks’ farmhouse, leaves it parked outside. Next morning, the road crew shows up for work, discovers the bulldozer missing, calls the police, who-”

“Followed the tracks straight to it.”

“Duh!” DeeDee exclaimed. “How dumb can you be?”

Duncan laughed. “Where was he going to fence a bulldozer?”

“See what I mean? Our Gary Ray wasn’t too astute. It’s quite a leap from bulldozer theft to breaking into a house with a sophisticated alarm system. It wasn’t set, but Gary Ray didn’t know that when he went at that window with a tire iron.”

Playing devil’s advocate, Duncan said, “He’d had years to perfect his craft.”

“Wouldn’t that include coming prepared? Bringing along the tools of his trade? Let’s say Gary Ray had become a crackerjack burglar. Doubtful, but let’s say. One who knew how to disarm sophisticated alarm systems, cut glass so he could reach in and unlock windows, stuff like that.”

“Your basic Hollywood-heist type with his fancy techno toys.”

“I guess,” she said. “So, anyway, where was Gary Ray’s gear? All he brought with him was that tire iron.”

“And a Ruger nine-millimeter.”

“Well, that. But nothing to pick locks or crack safes. Nothing he could use to break into a desk drawer.”

“Those locks would be simple, the kind you open with a tiny key. Give me a few seconds and I could pick them with a safety pin,” Duncan said.