Justice Lost (Darren Street #3)(10)

“Don’t apologize,” I said, holding up my hand. “I barely remember anything during that time.”

“And then our two main suspects got themselves shot to hell in West Virginia.”

“Yeah, I know. Did you ever look at anybody else? I mean, besides me?”

“I hope you’re not taking that personally, Darren. The cops just let the investigation lead them. You know how they do it.”

“They made up their minds it was me, and when they couldn’t prove it, they shelved the whole thing.”

“Is that why you’re here? Do you want us to reopen the investigation into your mother’s death?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think it would do any good at this point. I’m here about something else. Did you hear about Grace Alexander and my daughter?”

He nodded and put his elbows on the desk. “I did, and again, I’m so sorry. I met her once, you know.”

“Grace? Yeah, she told me. She said it didn’t go very well between the two of you.”

“She told me I didn’t have any balls.”

I smiled. Grace had never told me she’d used those exact words, but I didn’t doubt it. “She was one of the kindest people I ever met, but if she got riled, she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. It wasn’t always what people wanted to hear.”

“The worst part about it was she was right,” Morris said. “She came to me and told me Clancy had framed you, and she wanted me to help, but I refused. I was afraid of the big fed machine. And then you got out and cleared yourself. That was an amazing feat.”

“Like they say, the truth shall set you free.”

“What do you think happened to him?” Morris said.

“Who? Clancy?”

“Yeah. You think somebody killed him? I mean, none of his credit cards were ever used, and his money is still in the bank, from what I know. He isn’t sitting on a beach, sipping rum punch, but he hasn’t been declared legally dead yet.”

“Guys like Clancy never die,” I said. “They just fester.”

“So you think he’s still around somewhere?”

“He had a lot of enemies. He did a lot of bad things. I think somebody probably got even with him.”

“Well, I don’t suppose you came here to talk about Ben Clancy,” Morris said.

“I didn’t. I came here to talk to you about Grace and our baby and what happened to them. Do you know anything about it?”

“Just what I read in the obituary. That Grace and the baby both died during childbirth.”

“There’s a lot more to it,” I said. “Have you ever heard of a doctor named Nicolas Fraturra?”

Morris twitched, almost imperceptibly, when I said the name. His chin came up just a touch, and his head leaned to the right. It was something a normal person might not even pick up on, but I was anything but a normal person at this point. I saw the twitch. He knew him.

“What was the last name?”

“Fraturra. About your age, early forties. Works for an OB-GYN group here in town.”

Morris shook his head slowly and averted his gaze. “Fraturra? Can’t say that I do.”

He was lying. I would have bet my life on it.

“I’d like for you to get to know him,” I said. “And then I’d like you to charge him with two counts of reckless homicide and send his sorry ass to the penitentiary where he belongs.”

“Darren, do you have any idea how hard medical cases are to prove? That’s why they all wind up as wrongful death cases in civil court.”

“This one shouldn’t be that tough,” I said, and over the next several minutes, I laid out everything I knew. I told him what happened the night Grace and Jasmine died, what I’d learned at the bar, how Fraturra had come in late and drunk, and how Dr. Jenkins had tried to save Grace and Jasmine. The only thing I left out was the threat I made to cut off Fraturra’s head and bury him in the mountains.

“I can see some problems with this right on the front end,” Morris said.

By his tone, I knew he’d already made up his mind. There would be no criminal prosecution. “Really? What problems?”

“The first thing that jumps out at me is that we’ll have to prove he was intoxicated if we want to prove he was reckless.”

“You do the same thing I did. You send investigators to the bar he was in. It’s called the Portal. Like I said, I’ve already been there and talked to the bartender who served him that night. The bartender’s name is Bud. You subpoena the tab. Take a look at his credit card records. Get your investigators to talk to Bud. Get them to talk to the blonde he was bird-dogging. Her name is Danielle Davis. Subpoena his phone records for the pages and the calls and the voice mails that came from the birthing center. Canvass for witnesses. I’ll testify that he was drunk when he came into Grace’s room, and I’m sure a couple of nurses and maybe a doctor will, too. Do a timeline. It should be open-and-shut.”

“Okay, let’s say we do all those things. We find out he had too much to drink. We find out he ignored the pages and the phone calls you told me about. The fact remains that he didn’t lay a hand on Grace, if I’m understanding you correctly. He didn’t do the surgery, right?”

“That’s right, but—”