"You'd just killed a woman, Anita. Tends to give a bad first impression."
He had a point. "Do I need to have Catherine meet us down at the station?" I asked.
"You're not under arrest," Dolph said.
"I'd still like Catherine to meet us at the station."
"Call her."
I stood.
Dolph touched my arm. "Wait." He turned to the other cops. "Everybody wait outside for a minute." There were some glances, but no one argued, they just went. They'd all worked with Dolph before, and no one present outranked him.
When we were alone behind closed doors, he said, "Give it up."
"What?"
"You've got some kind of freaking blade down your back. Let's see it."
I sighed and reached under my hair to the hilt. I drew the knife out. It took a while. It was a long knife.
Dolph held out his hand. I handed it to him.
He balanced it on his open hands and gave a low whistle. "Jesus, what were you planning to do with this?"
I just looked at him.
"Who frisked you at the club?"
"Rizzo's partner," I said.
"Have to have a talk with him." Dolph looked up at me. "Be a bad thing to miss on someone who might use it. Is it the only weapon he missed?"
"Yep."
He stared at me. "Lean on the bureau, Anita."
My eyebrows raised. "You're going to pat me down?"
"Yeah."
I thought about arguing but decided not to. There were no more weapons to find. I leaned on the bureau. Dolph laid the knife on the chair and searched me. If there'd been anything to find, he'd have found it. Dolph was thorough in everything he did, methodical. It was one of the things that made him a great cop.
I looked at him in the mirror without turning around. "Satisfied?"
"Yeah." He handed the knife back to me, hilt first.
I must have looked as surprised as I felt. "You're giving it back to me?"
"If you'd lied to me about it being your last weapon, I'd have kept it and everything I found." He took a deep breath and let it out. "But I won't take your last weapon, not with a contract out on you."
I took the knife and resheathed it. It was a lot harder putting it back than getting it out. I finally had to use the mirror to sort of direct me.
"I take it it's a new weapon?" Dolph asked.
"Yeah." I flipped my hair out over the sheath and presto, you couldn't see it. I was really going to have practice with it more. It was too good a hiding place not to use more often.
"Any other impressions of the scene before I take you back?"