Suicide Season by Rex Burns

Author:Rex Burns [Burns, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4801-0
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com / Open Road
Published: 2012-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

I HOPED THAT was the right way to go; we were playing hunches instead of fact, and that always brought a lot of risk. But there came those times when a hunch was all one had.

“Connect the dots, and it makes some sense, Dev. Aegis could lose a lot if Haas is tied to them.”

“You heard what Lewellen told us. Somebody would have to prove more than just a connection. They’d have to show a chain of possession of the software, and even then the laws governing copyright and trademark are pretty vague when it comes to intangible property.”

“Yeah, right. But try this on: what if Carrie Busey didn’t tell Landrum everything? I mean, who would? What if she knew all along that Haas had been working for Aegis—and what if she had been helping him? And what if she even knew where that payoff money is? Maybe that’s what Aegis is after—they want that payoff back. It’s got to be a hell of a lot of money, and it would be incriminating. And somebody went through her purse for something.”

I leaned back and studied Bunch’s face. The left ear had a ripple of broken cartilage along the rim; the wide, square jaw had a habit of sliding forward when he was angry; and the mashed nose went straight down to a bulb of flesh that looked like a small potato. It was not the face of a genius but of a linebacker, which he had been at Wyoming. But that scarred face held a good mind, I knew, and beneath the carelessness he showed toward so many things, Bunch was both quick and sensitive. “What if, indeed.” And what if, for that reason, Aegis Group wanted her out of the way? They had already shown us some muscle, and shooting one unarmed woman was about as easy as hitting another with a car. But if so, why did they leave Landrum alone? How could they be certain Busey hadn’t told Landrum all that she knew?

We picked up Mrs. Faulk at the hospital around six and took her to one of the new restaurants opening up in the Tivoli Building, a remodeled brewery that sprawled its wings and towers over a city block not far from our offices. Sporadically Bunch and I tried to steer conversation away from Susan and the hospital, but inevitably it came back to her.

“They did the CAT scan and found some hemorrhaging across from the injury. The radiologist did say it wasn’t as severe as it might have been.”

“Good—that’s real good.” Bunch had finished eating long before we had and he tried not to keep glancing at my watch. Instead, he read the little card held in a metal clip and set between the salt and pepper and a small rose vase. “This place was built in the 1880s and lasted as a brewery for about a hundred years.”

Mrs. Faulk looked around the brickwork and period decorations—beer barrelheads anchored to the wall, and old-time advertisements for Hienbrau and Denver’s Own.

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