He didn’t wait for us to say.
“You buy it on the dark web, dead cheap with crypto. Middlemen, that is, folks like the Barons, cut it with lactose or something, press it into pills, and mail out little envelopes through the US Postal Service or a courier service. And the customers? They’re caught in the perfect storm between heroin drying up and that nice, cheap opioid high. No needles. Just snort it up and nod off. The more deadly it is, the more they want it.”
Brady had been a narc with the Miami PD. This was hitting him personally.
“That’s all,” Brady said. “Try to get a lead on who killed the Barons. Talk to Chi and McNeil about that baseball guy who got killed last week. See if there’s a link.”
Before he could say “Keep me posted,” his cell phone buzzed. He read the text and said, “Ah, sheet.”
He typed a few words, put down his phone, leaned across the big old desk.
“Get this. Guy dropped off his kid at school in LA. Took a shot between his eyes and dropped dead. No other casualties.”
I said, “What time?”
Brady said, “I didn’t ask. Just before the school bell. Eight thirty?”
I said, “That’s the same time the Barons were shot. To the minute.”
CHAPTER 20
CLAIRE TEXTED ME as I was driving home.
I stopped at the light on Turk Street and Webster Street and returned the text, asking Claire, Where are you? Are you ok?
I’m in my office. Call me.
I pulled over and phoned her. She picked right up.
“Where’d you go, Claire? I got no answer from the mysterious Dr. Dugan.”
There was a pause, then, “Where are you?”
“Turk and Webster.”
“Can you come back, Lindsay? I need to talk to you.”
I was about ten minutes out from the Hall. I said so, made a couple of left turns, a right, then a left on Bryant, and found my usual spot on Harriet Street waiting for me.
During those return ten minutes I tried on all kinds of reasons for why Claire needed to see me, and while some were ridiculous, the one that seemed most reasonable and possible was that she’d quit her job.
That crack house–turned–incinerator was a sick nightmare. Claire dealt with death every day, yet this case was singular. The victims were probable longtime addicts, so there was little chance that friends and family members were calling Missing Persons. And even if they did, Claire was at a dead end. No answers to what had happened, how or why, no fingerprints, no way to get those bodies home.
Maybe this fire had been Claire’s final straw.
I locked the car, buttoned my coat, and took the short walk to the medical examiner’s office. The lights shined through the glass. I saw that the receptionist had gone home, but there were a few people sitting in the waiting room. One of them was a cop I knew. I knocked on the glass and Diaz got up, reached behind the reception desk, and buzzed me in.
A moment later Claire opened the door to reception and leaned out, saying to me, “After I get outta of these bloody scrubs and wash up, want to go have a beer?”
I nodded. Good idea.
We went to MacBain’s, the bar and grill across Bryant and down the street, named for a valorous homicide captain who’d owned the place and whose portrait hangs over the bar. RIP. At six thirty MacBain’s was packed with Hall of Justice workers and one departing pair of lovebirds who’d left an empty table by the jukebox.
We grabbed it.
A sappy pop vocal was on loud, making my teeth vibrate, but at least we had a table. Syd MacBain, our waitress, stopped by and dropped off dinner menus.
Claire said, “Wait a sec,” handed back the menus.
“Two Anchor Steams and a bowl of chips,” I said.
Syd left, and I imagined a cone of silence dropping over our table so we wouldn’t be disturbed. In a way, it worked. The Cheers-like ambiance of the place faded. I asked Claire about the fire victims, a way in for her to say, “This damned job is just too damned much, Lindsay,” but she didn’t.
She said, “I’ve been coughing.”
I nodded. I knew that.
“I have lung cancer.”
I was sure I was hearing her wrong. I couldn’t believe what she had told me. I asked her to say it again, and she did. “I have lung cancer.”
I shook my head, No, no, no.
“Probably from the disinfectant or the X-rays or whatever fumes I breathe doing autopsies—or all of the above.”
“Claire. You know this for sure? You’ve had tests?”
Sydney brought the beer, the chips. We didn’t even acknowledge her when she said, “Will there be anything else?”
Claire said, “I had a biopsy. Today I saw my oncologist. It’s a carcinoma. It has to come out. I haven’t told Edmund. Jesus. I keep thinking about Rosie.”
Rosie is their youngest, their beloved change-of-life baby.
Claire coughed into a napkin, then looked at me with water in her eyes. “It’s nothing to worry about. I’m a doctor, you know.”
Bullshitting herself, lying to me, to Edmund, to people who loved her. That’s how scared she was.
“Don’t tell anyone,” she said.
I reached across the table and grabbed Claire’s wrists.
We both burst into tears.
CHAPTER 21
BEFORE CLAIRE TEXTED me, I’d been thinking about how much I wanted to discuss the Baron murders with Joe.
He has decades of experience in intelligence agencies and spent a number of those years as a profiler with the FBI.
I had a new case: a successful record producer and his wife shot dead in their house by a very sophisticated marksman who knew their habits. Possibly knew about their drug business, which was still in a formative stage. The motive was unknown. Suspects, zero.
Joe might see an angle on the case, but my thoughts about the Baron murders had become secondary.
Now I wanted to hold Julie, spend time with her before she fell asleep, read to her first if I could steady my voice and not cry.
I opened the door to our apartment and saw that Joe was across the room in his big leather chair. He lifted a hand in greeting, but I could tell he was deep in conversation.
Martha waggled and shimmied into the foyer, yelping her joy that I was home. I ruffled her ears and called her pet names. Everything about this old doggy is precious to me. We’ve been together for so long. I talked to her as I put my gun in the safe that Dave Channing had given us, and she followed along as I went to find Julie.
She was barefoot, still in the school clothes I’d dressed her in this morning, sitting on her bed with a book in her lap. She looked up and said, “Mommy. Martha peed on the floor.”
“Oh. Did someone forget to walk her?”
She shrugged, not willing to implicate her dad, too young to do the chore herself.
“Wanna go for a walk?” I asked Martha.
This is every dog’s favorite question, and ours responded with a loud, emphatic bark. Yes. Yes, she did want to go for a walk.
We went out to the foyer, where I slipped a collar and leash onto Martha, zipped Julie into a coat, and tied her shoes. I got Joe’s attention, and he put his hand to the phone and said, “Just take a quick walk, okay?”