Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

“And I saw how it could happen. How the sucs would be out of your system in minutes without a trace. It would look exactly like a respiratory collapse in recovery, which would make sense with your difficult airway. And being left unattended.

“No one was watching. I had blundered into the perfect crime. So perfect that it couldn’t have been accidental. It had to be destiny.

“And I remembered how we’d had this conversation; I’d asked you how I could find a woman like Jo and you just laughed and said, ‘You have to be willing to take a chance,’ and how I was a control freak and I’d never take a chance.

“Well, check it out, Hank. I drew off some saline from the IV to refill the syringe and put it back on the tray. I turned off the alarm on the monitor and then I went back down the hall and slumped back in my chair. I knew the anesthetist and the attending nurse would be held accountable.”

Allen shuddered. There, he’d purged it and now it took a moment for him to bring his breathing back to normal. “There,” he said aloud. “So now you know.” Then he patted Hank’s inert knee almost fondly. “The only thing I didn’t foresee, old buddy, was that you would live through the episode.”

When Amy wheeled into the parking lot, Broker, antsy, was pacing at the end of the boat dock puffing on a cigar. She walked out to him and noted the vital color in his freshly shaved cheeks and his alert eyes. He wore his coat casually half zipped. No hat.

“You’re feeling better,” she said.

“What if. .” Broker began.

Amy held up a gloved hand. “Hold on. What are we doing here?”

“What if there’s a reason they don’t have Hank Sommer in a hospital?”

“You mean he isn’t as wasted as they say he is?”

“You tell me,” Broker said.

“That’s wishful thinking.” Amy shook her head. “First, I’ve been briefed by our risk-management people. Milton Dane is a top-of-the-line malpractice attorney. No way he’d jeopardize his reputation in anything duplicitous. And second, Hank has been examined by the insurance company doctors, too. There’s no dispute about the diagnosis.”

Broker studied the look in her eyes, which was the same methodical, intelligent look that good investigators always had in their eyes when they demolished his hunches.

Procedure, they would say. Go slow, they’d say.

Right on cue, Amy said, “These things follow a certain protocol.”

“Yeah, but what if the wife is right about him looking at her?” Broker pressed.

“Unlikely. It’s normal for a bereaved spouse to grab at straws.”

“What if I could get you in to see him?”

Amy expelled an explosive, mirthless breath. “The defendant in a lawsuit approaching the plaintiff? They’d pull my license. I’d never work again.”

“So why’d you drop everything and come over here?”

Amy bit her lower lip, looked down the lake. “Did you make that coffee?”

Ha , thought Broker.

They went inside and took off their coats. Broker poured two cups of black coffee from Uncle Billie’s Braun. Amy took a chair to the kitchen table and made room for her cup in the litter of Broker’s notes, permit applications, and the newspaper she’d left last night.

Broker thumped a knuckle on the Stovall article in the Star Tribune . Amy sipped her coffee and read. Her tongue meditatively probed one cheek, then the other. She looked up. So?

“The dead guy is Sommer’s accountant.”

“Weird.”

“It’s past weird. Sommer’s luck giving out in the hospital after he lives through a cliff-hanger rescue is weird. Then his accountant coincidently dies the same week? Check this out-when the seaplane plopped down in Snowbank, the last words Sommer said to me were ‘Tell Cliff Stovall to move the money.’ Five days later you hand me a newspaper and I read that Cliff Stovall dies in the woods under bizarre circumstances.”

Amy considered the doodles on the notepad. The names, the address. The directions. The block letters: FOLLOW THE MONEY. “So those doodles-what does ‘follow the money’ mean?”

“It’s a cliche. But a very durable one. People being who they are, it never wears out.”

“Be more specific; exactly what does it mean, in this circumstance, associated with Hank Sommer’s name?” she asked.

Broker cleared his throat. “When somebody draws five fouls in the first quarter, what’s the first thing you think.”

“Too many things going wrong for normal play,” Amy said. “But that’s hypothetical law-school bullshit. Give me facts.”

“Okay, that morning at the hospital, when Sommer was choppered out. His wife was there.”

“Yeah?”

“Did you notice the young stud who came up with her?”

“Broker, I sort of kept my distance that morning.”

“Mrs. Sommer isn’t just a young, sexy trophy wife; she comes with heavy baggage, like her old boyfriend, who has apparently now moved into Sommer’s house.”

Amy raised her cup and studied the faint coffee ring it left on the table. “So? She observes briefer decent intervals than the rest of us.” She raised her eyes. “It’s only the oldest story in the world.”

Broker continued, unfazed. “On the trip, Sommer and his wife were fighting about money. They were feuding on his cell phone. At one point he got so pissed he threw the phone in the lake. Dane and Falken said he moved all his finances into a trust because she was giving money to the boyfriend. It involves money,” Broker insisted.

“What does?”

“The accountant’s death.”

Amy reread the article. “It says here he had a history of drinking and self-mutilation.”

“I don’t buy it. He was sitting on Hank’s estate which the wife wanted. She had to take Hank out of the hospital because of financial difficulties.”

“They were married. There’s probate. Where the hell are you going with this?”

Broker pursed his lips. He kept seeing the smug young guy standing next to Jolene in the hospital parking lot, his handsome, gloating face. Like he’d just won the lottery. “The boyfriend,” he said.

“C’mon, Broker. The wife is now a de facto widow. So she decides to seek the comfort and support of her young stud/ex-boyfriend. It might be sleazy, but it’s not breaking any laws. Is it?”

Broker brooded under his thick eyebrows. “I’ll bet if I toss the boyfriend he comes up dirty.”

“If that’s all you’ve got, you don’t have much,” Amy said.

“Actually I have less than that.” Broker stood up and walked from the kitchen area through the main room to the coat hooks near the door. With a swipe of his index finger he speared Sommer’s key ring off a hook. “All I’ve really got is Sommer’s Ford Expedition, which I’m returning today. To his house. That means I’ll get to go in and pay my respects, check out the wife, check out the boyfriend, and check out Sommer. What if I get in there later this afternoon and he looks me dead in the eye? What then?”

Amy squinted at him suspiciously as he came back toward the table. “I see what you’re trying to pull.”

Broker, aghast, held up his hands in protest. “What?”

“You’re trying to suck me into this project of yours.”

Broker smiled. “How am I doing?”

Amy raised her chin. “Maybe I’ll tag along just to prove I’m right and you’re full of shit?”

“But what if I’m right?” Broker countered.

Amy’s features conducted a mobile tug of war between practicality and curiosity. “And you can get me in to see him?”

Broker nodded. “Shouldn’t be too hard. The wife never met you. You could be anybody. Hell, you could be my girlfriend.”