Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) by Marshall Karp

Author:Marshall Karp [Karp, Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mesa Films, Inc.
Published: 2016-05-03T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 33

TERRY WAS ON the phone when I got to the office Friday morning. “We’re on our way,” he said. “And doc… don’t sedate him. We need him conscious.”

“Sounds like Bruce is awake,” I said as soon as he hung up.

“Claire wasn’t that lucky,” he said. “She died during the night.”

“Have they told him yet?”

“No. Guess who gets to break the news to him.”

I didn’t have to guess.

“I know Bruce ran down Yancy intentionally,” Terry said as we walked to the car, “but the poor bastard was desperate, and someone convinced him that if he did it they would take care of his wife after he was dead. Then they shot her through the head. They didn’t even have the decency to wait for him to die.”

Terry is one of those cops—tough on the outside, but he’s always had a soft spot for the underdog, even in a case like this when he knew the underdog was a cold-blooded killer.

“Let’s change the subject,” he said, starting the car. “How did Sophie’s reunion with her mom go?”

“Ugly.”

He killed the engine and looked at me.

“Carly is in a Chinese prison for the next twelve years, and her family is trying to relocate Sophie to Beijing so that Jeremy Tan can’t get custody.”

“You’re serious,” he said.

“As a bullet through the brain.”

I gave him the shorthand version of last night’s drama. He asked a lot of the same questions Big Jim, Diana, and I had asked, but there were still no answers.

“You’ve got to fight it, Mike,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you have to do. You can’t let Sophie—”

And then he remembered. “Shit,” he said. “You’re still waiting on that lab report.”

“At least you know why I’m not ready to storm into a lawyer’s office and make a case for why I’m the best possible man to watch over Sophie for the next ten years.”

“You are, Mike, and you’re going to be around for a long time.”

“I know this is going to sound like an asshole thing to say, but that’s probably what Bruce Bower said to Claire.”

He started the car, and we drove to the hospital in silence.

Bruce was in a private ICU suite, a uniformed cop sitting outside his door.

“He knows about his wife,” she said.

“How did that happen?” Terry said.

“He kept asking for her, and one of the residents told him.”

We thanked her and went inside.

Bruce’s body was hooked up to a series of tubes that allowed fluids to drip in or drain out, and he was plugged into a tower of flashing, chirping, and beeping machines that monitored his vital signs like the black box on a Boeing 747. For a man who had just survived a shooting, only to wake up and remember he was still dying, he looked relatively alive. Not exactly rosy-cheeked, but not deathbed gray either.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” I said.

“It’s my fault she’s dead,” he said, staring at the ceiling.

“No, it’s not,” Terry said. “Your friends betrayed you.”

“They weren’t friends. They hired me to kill Yancy and take the secret to my grave.

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