“I’ve let you get by with the sly innuendos you sneak into your reports. Oh, yes, I’ve heard them, but I let them pass without comment.”
“How commendable.”
“Because I thought a true professional would soon tire of the little game you’re playing and would start reporting honestly and without bias, as other reporters do.”
That stung. Her eyes flashed furiously. “I am a true professional. I report what I see.”
“After you strain it through that spiteful brain of yours,” he said with rising volume. “What did you hope to accomplish by airing that tearful interview with Hopkins?”
“Nothing. It was a good interview. I thought the public should see the broken, guilt-ridden man you’re going to ask the state to kill for you.”
He looked like he might very well take the state’s business in his own hands and wring her neck on the spot. “You wanted to win public sympathy for him and make me look like Adolf Hitler’s second cousin just for taking him to trial.”
“He had a heart attack!”
“You should have been more thorough in checking out the medical reports, Ms. Stewart. He has angina. Has had for years. He suffered some chest pains in jail, and as a safeguard, I had him hospitalized. Can we speak off the record?” She set her jaw stubbornly, giving him the impression she wouldn’t agree to it. “You’re not trustworthy enough for me to speak off the record?”
“I certainly am.”
“All right, then.” He stuck out his hand. “Off the record.”
She looked down at his extended hand and warned herself against touching it. A premonition so deep she couldn’t find its source warned that if she touched him, it would lead to consequences. Nonetheless she took his hand and shook it twice before quickly releasing it. “Off the record,” she said brusquely.
“Hopkins, no matter how pitiable he looks and acts, murdered his wife. It was two weeks before he disposed of the body—You do know how he disposed of the body, don’t you?”
She swallowed the nausea that filled the back of her throat and nodded. “If the newspaper accounts are true.”
“They are. I was there while they dug up the twenty-six holes in the backyard.” She squirmed uncomfortably.
He took off his glasses and folded them into the breast pocket of his coat. He had remarkably unusual eyes, she noticed. And for an infinitesimal second, he seemed just as captivated by hers. Her heart flipped over in her chest, just as it had that day in his office when he had told her she always looked beautiful on television.
“Where was I?” he asked distractedly.
“It was two weeks …”
“Oh, yes. It was two weeks before anyone noticed that she hadn’t been seen around their house. Now if he was so shook up over it, why didn’t he come crying to us with a confession right after he axed her?”
Kari made a squeamish face. “I don’t know, Mr. McKee. He was probably overwhelmed by what he’d done. Terrified. He was under tremendous pressure. He said that for thirty years she had nagged him.”
Hunter laughed. “So, you think we should look the other way every time a man kills his wife because she nags him?”
“Don’t laugh at me.”
He sobered instantly. “I’m not laughing at you. I didn’t see anything funny about what you did yesterday. And the issue here isn’t whether Hopkins murdered his wife or not, whether he’s crazy as a bedbug, or saner than us all. The issue is your yellow journalism. What’s your motive, Kari? To swing public opinion against me?”
“Maybe it should be swung against you.”
“Why? I’m doing my job. It’s my job to prosecute criminals and help maintain law and order. Why do you persist in taking potshots at me for doing what the taxpayers expect me to do?”
“I don’t like your methods.” She turned away from him but was brought back immediately. His hand had firmly gripped her upper arm and spun her around.
“And I don’t like yours. I don’t like my orders being disobeyed, and my orders were that no one was to get to Hopkins. Who let you in that room?”
“No one! And let go of me. You’re hurting my arm.”
That wasn’t quite the truth. He wasn’t hurting any part of her. But they were standing chest to chest and she found that proximity to his body disquieting, not to mention the strange vulnerability she felt each time his warm scented breath struck her mouth and throat.
He glanced down at his fingers, which were curled around her arm. Slowly they were released. He seemed embarrassed by his show of temper. To cover her own discomfiture, she rubbed her arm where his fingers had been to let him think he’d bruised her.