The 20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(18)

A long moment passed before Dave could speak again.

“Thanks, Joe, but I have to tell you, I’m furious. Dad was strong. He lifted cases of wine. He could work all day.

“And here’s the thing, Joe. Dad wasn’t the first of Murray’s patients to die suddenly. From what I could find out just from reading obituaries, he was the third of Murray’s patients to die suddenly this year.”

“The deaths were all suspicious?”

“Yes. Mild heart attack in one case, and two were complications from aneurysms, like Dad.”

Joe nodded, thought about Ray. He’d been seventy-two, a vigorous seventy-two, but still, an age where heart attacks and strokes were not uncommon.

Dave gently shook Joe’s arm, bringing him back to the moment.

“Will you help me, Joe? He never got that MRI, and maybe that scan would have given Murray a clue. But he didn’t get it. I don’t know if my father’s death was due to gross malpractice, or if Murray gets off on snuffing his patients. But I do know this: my father died inexplicably under Alex Murray’s care, and that needs to be investigated.”

“What about going to the police, Dave?”

“I don’t want to stir up the hospital’s lawyers. Not until I have something solid to go on. Joe. Will you help me? I can’t let him get away with this.”





CHAPTER 29





FRIDAY MORNING, CONKLIN and I were hunched over our computers, fleshing out backgrounds of the people on the Barons’ guest list from their recent movie premiere party, building a database of their friends and contacts.

As we worked, we texted notes of interest to each other, and there were tidbits aplenty: affairs, snubs, slights, and fist-fights, parts in movies, book and record sales numbers. We found nothing criminal.

We took a break when Judy Bernard, head of Narcotics and Organized Crime, joined us. We showed her our list, and after a long couple of minutes she said, “I know some of these folks, of course. But I don’t see any wholesale drug honchos here.”

My phone rang. It was Brady.

“I’ve got something,” he said.

I turned toward the rear of the squad room and saw that Brady was down from his office on the fifth floor. He waved to us from his glassed-in cubicle.

I thanked Bernard for the consult. She said, “No problem. Keep the faith.”

A minute later my partner and I dropped into the chairs across the desk from Lieutenant Jackson Brady, friend and chief.

He got right into it.

“A Mr. Alan Newton lives right behind the Baron house. His property faces south. He was walking his dogs with his wife a few days ago and took some neighborhood pics to send to his daughter in Amarillo. Then when he looked at his photos, this shot raised his hackles.”

Brady opened a manila folder, took out a photo, and passed it over.

Conklin and I looked at the photo of a woman posing with two dachshunds.

“What are we looking at?”

Conklin stabbed the photo. Behind the dogs was a car pulled over to the curb and a man leaning on the frame of his open car door. He was wearing a camo jacket and a knit cap, and he was holding a short tube up to his eye.

I could hardly contain myself. “That’s a gun scope.”

“A little fuzzy,” said Conklin. “And his face is obscured by his hand, but I’m not throwing it back. When was this taken?”

“Two days before the shooting. Time-stamped, too. Eight thirty a.m.”

“Oh, my God. He was casing the target,” I said.

“Here’s another shot,” said Brady.

A second photo crossed his desk, this one of the same vehicle, a Ford, heading downhill. In this shot the vehicle’s plate number was clearly visible.

I wanted to kiss someone. I know I was beaming.

“Don’t get excited yet,” said Brady.

“Too late,” I said.

“I know, I know. But right now this is proof of nothing. It’s just a guy admiring Saint Francis Wood while looking suspicious. Check him out with our computer techs. See if facial recognition likes him. Report back.”

“Yes, sir.”





CHAPTER 30





OUR COMPUTER TECH, Mike Stempien, was on loan from the FBI.

He had a free moment and an upbeat attitude.

“I’m looking forward to this,” he said.

“Good,” I said, “because I’m not wearing my lucky socks.”

Mike ran the subject’s snapshot through facial recognition, and I’ll be damned, we got a hit. Our subject had a name, Leonard Malcolm Barkley, and Conklin and I ran with it.

Back at our desks, after some intense pecking on my keyboard with my partner sitting beside me, Barkley’s background emerged.

He was forty, a former Navy SEAL with a distinguished military record. So it was no surprise that Barkley was highly skilled in a dozen weapons as well as hand-to-hand combat. He’d been captured in Kabul, and even though injured, he’d fought his way out of his cage and found his way back to his unit at night.

He was awarded a Purple Heart, honorably discharged, and sent home, where he married Miranda White, also a former Navy SEAL. They bought a house in Silver Terrace, a down-market neighborhood near Bayview.

That was four years ago.