20th Victim (Women's Murder Club #20)(46)

“Why? Did someone die?”

I laughed again. “The usual number. Lots. And no more pushing me around. Doctor said you have to go for a walk, so we’ll go together to the end of the hall.”

“He did not. You’re lyin’.”

I buzzed the nurse, and when she arrived a moment later, she detached a few lines and helped Claire from her bed. I got a laugh out of her flashing her big butt down the hallway, and she laughed, too, wheezing some, telling me she’d get me for this. I put my arm around my best friend’s waist and told her to shut the fuck up.

She said, “Did you catch that sniper or snipers yet?”

“Working on it.”

And then she started to sing. Yeah. As I had one arm around her waist and was holding the IV pole with the other.

“Hup two, three, four. What the hell we marching for? Sound off.”

I stared at her.

“Lindsay. You say ‘sound off.’”

“Sound off.”

“Thassit. Sound off, one, two. Three, four,” she sang.

I shook my head and helped her make a two-point turn.

“What? What are you thinkin’, Lindsay?”

“I’m thinking I want what you’re having.”

She laughed and laughed some more, wobbling enough on her slippered feet to scare me. The nurse and I used considerable strength to hold Claire up and walk her back to her room, and it took three of us to get her into bed.

I promised her I’d come back the next day, and not long after that I hugged her good-bye.





CHAPTER 68





I CHECKED MY phone as I walked through the exit doors out to my car.

Richie had called a couple of times. I climbed into the driver’s seat and called him back, and he picked up on the first ring.

I wasn’t expecting him to say, “Bad news.”

“What is it? Please don’t make me beg.”

“Kennedy. That detective in Houston. He was shot a couple of blocks from the Moving Targets storefront he was checking out. He took one slug to the back of his head. This can’t be a coincidence.”

I was stunned. I liked Kennedy. He was perceptive. Curious. Outgoing. Proactive. I’d felt as if I knew him.

I didn’t speak, and so Rich said my name a couple of times.

“I’m here.”

“I know, I know how you feel,” he said. “It’s sick. They’re going after cops now?”

“How could they have known he was a cop? Did he tell them? Or did they just make him when he walked into the shop? And then what? They followed him out, tailed him for a few blocks, and shot him?”

“Houston PD is on it. They crashed Moving Targets and the space was empty. No computers. No nerds. No fingerprints. No cameras. Back door open to the loading dock. No one was home but the dust bunnies and a sign hanging inside the door.”

“Sign saying what?” I asked him.

“‘Gone Fishing.’”

“That’s a sly way of saying ‘Gone hunting.’”

“Right you are.”

I told Rich I was on the way back to the Hall, but in fact I wasn’t ready to drive.

After we hung up, I sat in my car looking out at the hospital parking lot, and I thought of Carl Kennedy. He’d been upbeat, quick with an idea, and now he was dead. He and Clapper had been tight, having worked together in homicide, LVPD. I didn’t want Charlie to hear about Kennedy on TV or the internet.

I tapped Clapper’s office number into my phone and waited for his assistant to locate him. When he got on the line, he said, “Boxer, you heard about Kennedy? He told me he was working with you.”

“I just heard. Charlie, I’m very sorry.”

He said, “Thanks,” but his voice was all wrong.

He sounded removed.

“Charlie?”

“Lindsay, got a minute? I’ll take this to my office.”

I turned off the police radio, pressed my phone to my ear, and waited for Clapper. And then he was back on the line.

“Boxer, what do you know about what happened?”

I gave Clapper background on Moving Targets and said that Kennedy knew of an in-real-life location that was possibly Moving Targets’ HQ.

I said, “Kennedy was going to check them out. Then he was shot a few blocks from their store. Houston PD found the store had been cleaned out.”

“I hadn’t heard that part, Boxer. I’m starting to form a theory.”

“Tell me.”

“What if Kennedy knew these Moving Targets people? I should tell you, he was known to cross the line.”

“Like how?”

“Skim cash. Pocket drugs. Stash a gun. My just-formed theory is based on his character, Boxer, not on evidence. Maybe he told Moving Targets he wanted to make them an offer. They pay him off. He keeps the cops in the dark.”

“And so they shot him.”

“Evidence will tell, Boxer. Regards to Richie.”

And then he hung up the phone.





CHAPTER 69





CINDY DRAFTED AN email to the mystery man who had given her the tip of a lifetime: the motive for nine killings and counting, a manifesto on a “new war on drugs,” followed by a lead to a new shooting in Chicago.