Hard Bargain (Brandon Hall Series Book 2) by Mike Ryan

Author:Mike Ryan [Ryan, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: www.mikeryanbooks.com
Published: 2020-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

14

After the police descended on the scene, Hall and Charlotte were instructed to wait until the detectives had talked to them. They did, waiting in the hallway as the crime scene technicians dusted for prints and did their thing. As they waited, with an officer standing guard at the door, Detective Bradham came walking down the hall. Charlotte noticed him coming and gave Hall a nudge in the arm. Hall looked up just as Bradham approached them.

“Oh, no,” Bradham said. “What are you guys doing here?”

“Well…”

“As if I’m not snowed in enough right now, you gotta hand me another dead body?”

“We’re just going where the investigation takes us,” Hall answered.

“And it took you here?”

“Yep. Victim’s name is Jerry Guzman. You remember those mug shots that you didn’t give us?”

“Shhh,” Bradham said, looking around. “What about them?”

“Well, he was in it.”

The connection finally hit the detective. “J-E-R.”

“So we had his address and came over here.”

“And you killed him?”

Charlotte slapped Hall in the arm. “See? I told you!”

“I don’t carry a gun, you know that,” Hall said.

“Well, I just have your word for it,” Bradham said. “I mean, I’ve never personally searched you myself.”

“You can search me now if you want.”

“You would’ve had plenty of time to ditch a weapon.”

“You really think we would’ve hung around here if we killed him? Nobody would’ve known we were here.”

“I think we shouldn’t say another word until we’ve gotten a lawyer,” Charlotte said.

“We don’t need a lawyer,” Hall replied. “He doesn’t really think we’re involved.”

“Oh, you’re involved all right,” Bradham said. “Do I think you killed him? No. But you’re involved. Right up to your eyeballs.”

“If you don’t think we killed him, then why are you grilling us like that?” Charlotte asked.

“That wasn’t even close to grilling you. You have no idea what it’s like under the bright lights of an interrogation. That was child’s play. Besides, I have to cross the i’s and dot the t’s and all that stuff and rule you out before I move on.”

“Oh. OK.”

“So what brought you guys here, anyway?”

“We dug into Guzman’s background and found out he worked at the pizza shop that Keith went to, and the same one that his roommate works at. So we went there and found out that Guzman was fired a few months ago. The owner gave us his address, so we came here.”

“Then what, you just found him lying here?”

“Umm, not quite,” Hall said. “I was about to knock, saw the door was open a hair, then pushed it open. Took a few steps and was met with a right hand from somewhere.”

“So just one guy?”

“No, after I started wrestling with the one guy, another guy came from somewhere. Not sure where.”

“So then with your Bruce Lee moves you took both guys out?”

Hall faked a smile. “Not quite. It was a back-and-forth struggle and eventually they just split.”

“Any idea who they were?”

Hall rubbed the back of his neck. “No. They were in their thirties, maybe forties. One guy had a mustache, black hair, the other guy was… just a guy.

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