Дэвид Балдаччи - A Gambling Man

The guy was living here?

He backed out of the car and hurried toward the stairs. And stopped again.

A door off the hall was open. The doorjamb was shredded and the locking side of the door had a long crack in it.

Archer eyed the name stenciled on the door.

Archer recalled the name because O’Donnell was the surgeon who’d recently removed Beth Kemper’s appendix.

He eased the broken door open.

“Hello? Dr. O’Donnell, you okay? It’s Archer from upstairs. I work for Willie Dash.”

There was no response. The place had the feel of a tomb. Archer nipped out his gun and pointed it around. He worked his way through the front reception room, which had six wooden-back chairs all in a row, and a coffee table with magazines spread out on it. He spied an old Look magazine from 1948. And a Life magazine from August with a toothy Joe DiMaggio on the cover.

“Hello?” said Archer.

He reached another door and pushed it open. This must be where O’Donnell kept his drug dispensary. The glass cabinet was smashed open, and bottles and spilled pills littered the floor.

Archer left this room and headed on. The next room was O’Donnell’s office. Archer could tell because the man’s diplomas were on the wall. There was a desk with two chairs on the patient’s side, and one office chair on the other.

And in the office chair was a dead man.

Archer rushed up to the fourth floor to make sure that Dash had not been a victim as well. When he unlocked the door and burst into Dash’s office’s a few moments later, he heard a voice call out, “One more step and you get a third eye, buster.”

“It’s me, Archer.”

Dash turned on a light revealing him sitting on the side of the bed holding a lethal-looking .32 Colt. “What the hell are you doing here?”

And Archer told him what he was doing there. Dash hurriedly dressed and raced out without bothering to don his toupee.

They first went to look at Earl. “Shit,” Dash said.

Then he followed Archer to the doctor’s office.

Dash looked down at the body. “Shit twice,” he muttered.

“Who is it? Dr. O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded, picked up the dead doctor’s phone, and made a call.

“Ernie Prettyman on duty? Yeah, right. Tell him it’s Willie Dash. Thanks.”

A few moments passed and then Prettyman came on. Dash told him what had happened.

“Okay, Ern, we’ll be here,” said Dash in reply to whatever Prettyman had said.

Dash put down the phone and said, “Okay, you look like you have something to tell me.”

“Pickett arrested Kemper for the murders of Fraser and Sheen.” Archer told him about all the evidence Pickett said he had on Kemper. And the fact that Beth had called her father and that Armstrong had shown up a bit later.

“I’m sure Pickett paid top dollar for the eyewitness accounts,” said Dash. “And the other stuff is easy to massage into evidence of anything you want it to.”

“We can’t fight the whole police force, Willie.”

“Maybe not. Let’s go analyze this sucker and see what they were really after.”

In the dispensary Dash carefully looked over the tossed bottles and spilled pills. Then he stepped back and said, “Tell me what you see here, Archer. Take your time and think it over.”

Archer bent down and picked up some of the bottles and scooped up some of the pills. He compared some pills with some bottles and even put some of the scattered pills back in the bottles. He looked up at Dash.

“This thing was staged, to make it look like a robbery with drugs as the loot.”

Dash nodded. “You’re right. But explain to me your reasoning.”

Archer stood and held out two half-empty bottles and a handful of pills. “This is morphine. And these pills are amphetamines. Worth a small fortune on the street.”

“That’s right.”

“But when you compare the pills they spilled with the space left inside the bottles, they pretty much tally. So they didn’t take any narcotics with them.”

“And they didn’t have to smash the cabinet open. The key’s in the lock. The idiots obviously didn’t see it, or else they would have taken it with them.”

“Did you know O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded. “He was a good guy. A good doctor.”

“Why would anyone want to kill him?”

“That’s principally why they call it a mystery, Archer.”

“So do we wait here for Prettyman?”

“Now that I know Pickett has arrested Kemper, I’m pretty damn certain that Ern’s not gonna show up here. Pickett will. And then I think I might actually fear for our safety.”

“So what do we do?”

“You got your car out front?”

“Yeah.”

On the way out, Dash stopped at Earl’s body. He knelt down and closed the man’s eyes.

“He was a crook, and he hated my guts, but anybody who thinks they had a harder life with fewer opportunities than Earl is seriously fooling themselves.”

“You think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Maybe. Let’s hit the road before Carl Pickett hits us.”

“Where are we going?”

“I think it’s time to check in with our client.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” snarled Steve Prichard, the front-desk sergeant. He apparently had the graveyard shift tonight and was not happy about it.

“We’re here to see our client,” said Dash calmly.

“Your client? ”

“Douglas Kemper. I understand he was booked for a double homicide. I presume an alleged murderer would not be able to post bail.”

“He’s here, but you can’t see him.”

“How many years you got to your pension, Steve?”

“Five, why?” growled Prichard.

“Because you’re never going to make it with that attitude.”

A pulse beat in the blue vein at the cop’s temple. “You threatening me?”

“No, just stating a fact. Rogers versus California , 1934. Cops denied a suspect seeing his attorneys and private investigators. All charges were dropped, a writ of habeus corpus was issued by the court, and the suspect walked free. And the cop who did the denying was busted down to riding in a prowler for a month. Then, for good measure, they canned his ass seven months before his full ride kicked in. You want to go down that road, Stevie boy, it’s okay by me.” He glanced at Archer. “Let’s go wake up Kemper’s lawyer and get the lawsuit filed before this lug uses what little brain he has and comes to his senses.”

“You ain’t bullshitting me?” Prichard barked.

“Look it up, Steve. You can read, can’t you?”

Prichard glanced at Archer and then grabbed a set of keys off a hook.

He pointed a big finger at Dash. “Just one night I hope to run into your fat ass all alone on a dark street.”

“Why, Steve, you ain’t one of them guys that like guys, are you?”

Prichard’s face flushed, but before he could say anything Dash continued, “Our client? Before I really get mean.”

Prichard led them back to the holding cells and over to the cage containing Kemper. He was seated on a metal bench, his back to the wall and his collar and necktie still undone. His very expensive suit jacket rested on the bench next to him. He had a shiner on one eye and some hardened blood on his lip.

As Prichard unlocked the door, Dash said, “Who roughed him up? You?”

“He tripped and hit that handsome puss of his on the wall,” said Prichard with a grin.

“How is it that everybody who gets arrested in this town suddenly forgets how to walk?” Dash eyed Prichard and the ring of keys. “Call Ernie in here.”