The Unknown by Heather Graham

Author:Heather Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2021-07-29T17:56:37+00:00

* * *

Betsy Mahoney reached Ryder’s office just a minute after he slid in himself. He greeted her at the door, and before anything else, taking her hands, asked her how she was faring.

“I feel lost. They won’t release my husband’s body yet. But the police department here has been wonderful. And the medical examiner and everyone at the morgue...” Her voice hitched. “I never thought I’d see a morgue. I mean, yes, I knew we’d die one day. But it would be natural, and if Lester went first, he’d be in a hospital or at home. We have already paid for our funerals and plots there, because he never wanted the children left to...to need to struggle in any way to pay for funerals.”

“You’ll still get to take him home,” Ryder promised her.

“So many people loved him!” she said. “I know funerals are for the living, but he saved so many lives and prolonged others. Not just by keeping people on machines. He gave them quality of life, too.”

“I didn’t know him, but I’m so sorry. His loss is truly tragic. And I know you must feel lost and you’re suffering, and I’m so sorry to ask you to talk, but...”

“I know,” she said. She looked at him with wide eyes. “That was it, Detective Stapleton. He liked to play craps. And only now and then. He didn’t bet the mortgage or the household money. Twice a year, maybe. He liked to come here, and he liked to go to Las Vegas. We usually took two trips alone each year, one to each place. But as I told you, we couldn’t both leave. And look what it’s brought! Maybe, if I had come with him, he’d still be alive. And I wouldn’t be away from the kids now.”

“Please, don’t think that way. Maybe, if you’d come with him, you might have been killed, too, and then you wouldn’t be going home to your children. I believe the person who did this has little or no conscience, and that killing anyone who’s in the way would be nothing more than collateral damage.”

She nodded, trying to smile.

“He had no enemies, you told me,” Ryder said.

She shook her head. “I’m not just making that up. He cared about everyone. He was loved in private practice and at the hospital. He worked wonders with kidney patients. Sometimes, his patients needed transplants. Many got them, and some, of course, didn’t, but there was never anyone who blamed my husband for lack of effort.”

“You don’t believe there’s anyone out there who believed he failed them?”

She shook her head. “He kept people living longer than anyone else projected. He worked with a new dialysis machine. It’s under trials right now, and I know he was saying there were people working around the clock to see if any improvements could be made. And any medical device in trials—”

“You don’t think anyone killed him because they believe an experimental machine killed a loved one, do you?”

“There hasn’t been a failure yet,” she said.

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