DEATHBLOW

by Dana Marton

  That had been when things had gotten interesting.

  “Tropper asked the kid how old he was. Kid says, fifteen. Then Tropper said he was going to let us off with a warning. Before he could pull over, the Hummer showed up behind us. Twentyniners bandana in the window. Tropper couldn’t let us out in front of the rival gang, without guns, without a ride. He kept going, waiting for the Hummer to turn off on a side street. It didn’t. Once we were on the bridge, the Hummer rammed us.”

  Goose bumps puckered on his skin at the thought of the freezing river.

  “Tropper is dirty,” the chief said, sounding tired.

  Joe nodded. “Yeah. I think he’s the one.”

  “Did you see who drove the Hummer?”

  “One of Racker’s enforcers, according to Lil’ Gomez. He didn’t mention the guy’s name.” J.T. Racker was the Twentyniners’ leader.

  “Why would the Twentyniners hit a police cruiser?”

  “The BMW was in their territory,” Joe said. “J.T.’s guy could have seen us, wanted to teach us a lesson, police car or not. Could have been all drugged up, not thinking. Felt like a big boy in that Hummer.”

  More silence followed.

  “Or,” Chief Gleason said after a minute, “maybe he knew Officer Tropper was on the Brant Street Gang’s payroll. The guy saw a chance to take him out along with Lil’ Gomez, a double blow to Ramos.”

  “Could be.”

  “What did you think of Officer Washington?”

  Joe closed his eyes for a second and went through the events from the arrest to the crash into the river. “He looked surprised when Officer Tropper said he was going to let us off. When the car went under, Officer Tropper panicked and left us in the back. Officer Washington let us out. If it wasn’t for him, we would have drowned.”

  Lil’ Gomez drowned anyway, most likely. Somebody would have seen him by now if he’d made it out of the water. Joe rolled his neck to ease the roaring headache at his temple. He compartmentalized that pain and answered every one of the chief’s questions until the man ran out and they hung up.

  “I appreciate your help.” Captain Bing put his phone away. “I wish the op ended differently.”

  Joe nodded as his stomach growled. He reached for the paper bag with the pie at last.

  The stitches in his face itched. He’d have a couple of scars, while Lil’ Gomez got a watery grave. The kid had trusted him. He’d held on to the log because Joe had told him he would be all right.

  The strawberry pie tasted like ashes in his mouth, so he set it down and leaned back in his seat.

  When the captain’s radio went off, Joe only half listened.

  “One eighty-seven at the Medical Center,” the dispatcher said. “Suite 1025. Repeat, that’s a one eighty-seven.”

  Homicide. That had Joe sitting up and paying attention.

  The captain grabbed his radio, already running for the door. “I’m on my way.”

  Suite 1025. Joe jumped up, stepped into his sneakers by the door and grabbed his coat, then followed Bing to his car. “That’s Phil. Philip Brogevich. We went to school together.”

  The captain gave a reluctant nod as he jumped behind the wheel. Joe slid into the passenger seat.

  “Isn’t he the shrink?” Bing flipped the siren on as he pulled away from the curb.

  “Yeah. His wife had a baby. He wanted to be closer to home so he moved his practice back to Broslin from West Chester.”

  Bing’s family had been in Broslin for as long as Joe’s. They knew most people in town, a double-edged blade. They knew who the troublemakers were, but then again, the troublemakers knew them and played the Dude, we were on the same baseball team. You gonna arrest me for a little drunk driving? card. Or the Our mothers go to the same church card. Or, You dated my sister in high school, man. Which came up a lot for Joe, actually.

  Bing had to shout to be heard over the siren. “Does he keep drugs on the premises?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The captain glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

  Joe followed his gaze. Twenty minutes after eight in the morning. “Could be someone broke in overnight for some pills and OD’d.”

  The victim didn’t have to be Phil. But a knot formed in Joe’s stomach anyway.

  “We grabbed a couple of beers the other night at Finnegan’s to celebrate his daughter’s birth.” A three-week-old baby girl, Isabella, a miracle after a number of grueling IVF tries. Phil had a hundred baby pictures on his smartphone. “His wife’s a shrink too. Currently not practicing.”

  Cars pulled out of their way, giving them a clean shot at the road. They reached the Broslin Medical Center in ten minutes, an old strip mall that had been converted into various doctors’ offices two years ago when the owner decided to give the property a face-lift. The new setup drew a better clientele than the tattoo parlor and the pawnshop had. The previously empty spaces were filling up too, only three remaining empty.

  They parked in front of Suite 1025. No other cruisers yet. Before business hours, only half a dozen cars stood scattered around in front of the various doctors’ suites.

  Neither Joe nor the captain rushed. Noticing the details was more important at this stage. You never got a second chance to get a first impression of your crime scene.

  Philip Brogevich, MD the brass plate announced discreetly next to the entry, then below that, Psychiatrist. The handicap ramps were new, a sign on the railings warning that the paint was fresh. The door stood half-open.

  Joe glanced up and around. The pawnshop’s security cameras had been removed when the building was renovated. Either Philip hadn’t gotten around to putting new ones up yet, or he hadn’t thought he would need that kind of security in Broslin.

  The captain strode in, and Joe followed him into the reception area where the receptionist sobbed, standing by her desk, wringing her hands as she spotted them. Doris Paffrah was in her late fifties, a grandmother of six, widow of a local fireman, the type who was first to offer help if anyone needed it.

  She gestured with a limp, helpless hand toward the half-open door that led to the office. “He’s—he’s—” She sobbed again, unable to finish, and the knot inside Joe’s stomach grew harder.

  He took her by the arm. “Why don’t you sit down, Mrs. Paffrah? We’re here now. We’ll take care of it.” He grabbed a cup of water from the water cooler and handed it to her before stepping after Bing.

  Oh hell. Joe stopped on the threshold, rubbed a hand over his eyes as he took in the scene before him.

  Phil sprawled on the floor on his back, blood covering his head. A single deathblow, judging by the damage, delivered with a blunt object.

  Sorrow hit, a sharp jab of grief. What a terrible waste of a life, of a decent man who deserved better. No matter how long he’d be a cop, Joe didn’t think he’d ever get used to senseless violence—an affront to him, always personal. This was his town, the people he had sworn to protect and serve.

  An antique black Bakelite desk phone lay in the corner, covered in blood. “Looks like we have the murder weapon.” Joe scanned the phone, then looked back at Phil.

  His friend had gained a good twenty pounds since they’d played on the high school football team together. He had a receding hairline now and circles under his eyes. Probably because he wasn’t getting much sleep with the new baby. Joe had vaguely noticed those things when they’d had a beer the other night, but now everything came into sharper focus as he catalogued the crime scene in his mind. He stepped forward. “Fresh clothes.”

  The captain liked to talk cases out. He believed it made investigators think more clearly. So Joe followed with, “He didn’t spend the night at the office. Had just come in when he was attacked. Suit and tie neat, shoelaces tied in tidy loops. Doesn’t look like he rushed or was particularly upset when he dressed this morning. He didn’t know he was walking into trouble.”

  He glanced toward the back door patients used to leave after their sessions so they wouldn’t run into th
e next patient waiting at the reception, avoiding any awkwardness. Open or locked? Better not touch the knob until it’d been dusted for fingerprints.

  The captain straightened. “The coroner will determine time of death, but I’d say he was killed within the last hour or so.”

  “Looks like it.” The blood hadn’t coagulated yet. “Office hours are from nine to four. It’s eight thirty now. If he’s been dead for the past hour, that means he was killed around seven thirty.” Joe stepped back to the door to call out to Doris, “Do you know if he had an emergency call to meet a patient before the office opened?”

  Doris blew her nose. “That wouldn’t go through me. Some patients have the emergency number that goes straight to him.”

  “What patients?”

  “People who have a history of suicidal thoughts. Things like that.”

  “You have a list?”

  She shook her head.

  Bing stepped up next to Joe. “We’ll need that. How many active patients did he have?”

  “Around a hundred and fifty? I’m not sure. I can check. Some people only see him once every six months for maintenance.”

  Bing’s jaw worked silently for a second. “I’m going to put in for a warrant for his patient files. I’d appreciate it if you could get them ready for handing over.”

  Doris’s swollen eyes widened. “You think it was a patient?”

  “That’s one possibility. Also could have been someone else he knew. Or an act of random violence. You keep any drugs here?”

  “No. The pharmaceutical company reps drop off samples now and then, but we take those to the free clinic.”

  Bing went back to Philip.

  Joe strode to the front door. No sign of forced entry. “Was this door unlocked when you came in?”

  Doris stared for a startled second. “I had to unlock it.”

  “How about his office door?”

  “Closed. I opened it to see if Dr. Brogevich had anything in his Out bin. He stayed to catch up with work yesterday after I left.”

  “The back door?”

  “I didn’t check. He would have locked it last night before he went home. He always did.”

  Bing came back out of the office again, glanced at Doris. “I’m going to need you to cancel today’s appointments, as soon as possible. It’d be better if patients didn’t start showing up. To avoid contaminating the crime scene.”

  Then he turned to Joe. “As long as you’re here, why don’t you canvass the neighbors? In case anyone saw or heard anything.”

  He checked over the office door, not because he didn’t trust Joe, but because that was the way they did things. They checked and double-checked.

  Joe walked out, grabbed some police tape from Bing’s car, and cordoned off a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot area in front of the entrance, tying the tape to the railings on the new handicap ramps that stretched in front of each suite. He checked the ground. No cigarette butts that they could send to the lab, no garbage. No footprints either, since the entire lot was paved.

  He strode over to the pediatrician’s office next door. Still closed. He glanced through the window. Nobody behind the reception desk. The suite on the other side of Philip’s stood empty. The ob-gyn beyond that hadn’t come in yet either, his receptionist just arriving.

  The few people Joe found, he questioned, but nobody had seen or heard anything. The offices were soundproofed for privacy. If there’d been an argument or struggle, it probably wouldn’t have been heard even if the murder had happened in the middle of the day.

  Jesus, Philip.

  Joe went on being a cop, doing the cop thing. But part of him was still catching up to Phil’s death. Why? He was going to figure that out, dammit.

  People were visibly shocked by the news of murder. They had a million questions and wanted answers. Joe had to put them off as politely as possible. Even if he had information, which he didn’t, he couldn’t discuss the case at this stage.

  By the time he strode back to Suite 1025, Detective Harper Finnegan was arriving. A couple of years older than Joe, whiskey-brown hair, square jaw, nose broken in a bar fight—not in the line of duty. He pulled his cruiser up to the captain’s, staring at Joe as he got out. “What happened to your face?”

  “Ran into an argumentative phone pole on the four-wheeler.” Since he’d gone undercover to catch a dirty cop, the assignment was strictly confidential. Only one person at each station knew about the undercover op—Captain Bing in Broslin and Chief Gleason in Philadelphia.

  Harper looked skeptical, but he didn’t push. He knew that if Joe was evading the question, he had to have a good reason. He ducked under the yellow police tape flitting in the wind. “Dispatch said homicide.”

  “Philip Brogevich.” Joe updated him on what little they knew so far as he followed him in.

  Doris was still on the phone, crying quietly as they passed by her.

  The captain looked up inside the office. “Harper.” He paused for a second. “How is your caseload?”

  “Filed all the paperwork on the shoplifting teenagers.”

  “I want you to take lead here.”

  Joe cleared his throat. “I’d like to be assigned to the case. I can help Harper.”

  The captain raised an eyebrow. “The victim was your friend.”

  “It’s a small town. Everybody is everybody’s friend.”

  “How did the canvassing go?”

  “People are still getting in. Nobody has seen or heard anything unusual.”

  The captain stepped forward. “I need to get something from the car. Why don’t you walk with me?”

  Officer Mike McMorris, another one of Broslin’s finest, pulled up as they stepped outside. Joe and Mike had been hired at the same time, had learned the ropes together, become friends. Like Harper, he stared at Joe’s face as he got out of his cruiser, the morning sun glinting off his cropped, reddish hair.

  “Rough date? Hey, I got a joke for you.” When Mike grinned, his Irish freckles danced. “Guy comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. He shoots the guy, turns to the wife, and asks, ‘What do you have to say about that?’ The wife says…” Mike paused a beat for effect. “’Keep it up and you won’t have any friends left.’”

  Joe groaned while the captain shook his head with resignation.

  “So who smacked you?” Mike wanted to know, his attention back on the scar. “Losing your touch with the ladies?”

  “Never gonna happen.” Joe offered a cocky lift of his chin. “Four-wheeler accident last night.”

  The captain popped the trunk of his cruiser. “Glad you’re here, Mike. Why don’t you secure the premises?”

  As Mike went to station himself at the door, Bing hauled out his crime-scene kit, a large black plastic container that had an orange handle and a million compartments inside to stash all the swabs and bottles of chemicals.

  He cast a sideways glance at Joe. “It’s not just about you and the victim being friends. I don’t want you to jump straight into a homicide after last night.”

  “I’m fine.”

  The captain let a couple of seconds pass as he set the crime-scene kit by his feet. “I didn’t come to your house this morning just to check on you. I came to ask a favor.” He paused. “I need you for protection detail. Woman and child. Nasty ex-boyfriend. She moved. He probably won’t find her. But to be on the safe side.”

  Joe thought of Lil’ Gomez. “I don’t think I’m a good bet in the protection-detail department.”

  “It’s a personal favor. She’s a friend of Sophie’s. Sophie said you might remember her. Wendy Belle.”

  The name hit Joe like a sledgehammer. Everything inside him stilled. Wendy.

  “We’ve met.” He’d run into her at Sophie’s house a while ago when he’d been providing protection detail to Sophie, back before Sophie and Bing had gotten together.

  Wendy Belle was a professional model. She had the looks to twist a man into a lust pretzel, lips that begged to be ta
sted, and those mysterious gray eyes that Joe hadn’t been able to forget since he’d first looked into them.

  Being a small-town football hero, then a policeman, he’d had his share of dates. Uniforms were a chick magnet. He’d been raised to be a gentleman, took good care of his dates in and out of bed, kept in shape, put in more time at the police station’s gym than anybody else. He appreciated women, and they appreciated him right back.

  More often than not, women walked up to him with their phone numbers. Not Wendy. He’d been dazed by the instant, visceral wave of lust at their first meeting, but she hadn’t taken him seriously, not for a second. She’d taken one look at him, and she’d dismissed him.

  Which was probably why he’d shown up a month later at a fashion-show fund-raiser she participated in. He’d put big money in the plate—okay, big for his cop salary. His gesture didn’t impress her, as he’d stupidly hoped, but impressed some of the other models, and they’d invited him to the after-party.

  He’d caught her sneaking out early. Pouring rain outside, and not a cab to be had. He offered her a lift home. She offered him a cup of coffee for his ride back out to Broslin. Which had turned into—

  “It’s a temporary thing,” Bing said.

  Joe rubbed his chest with his fist. He didn’t want to be responsible for Wendy, or her toddler son, Justin. He especially didn’t want Wendy to see him like this, all busted up. Not that he was vain.

  “Her ex, Keith Kline, has turned threatening, from what Sophie says. I don’t know all the details,” the captain went on. “Wendy and the boy are staying here in Broslin, at Sophie’s place, temporarily. Sophie’s out at the log cabin with me.”

  His lips flattened. “The cops in Wilmington aren’t doing anything because the guy hasn’t committed any actual crime yet that can be proven. From what Sophie tells me about him, my gut says he will. Sooner or later he’ll hurt her bad. Point is, Wendy is scared. He knows it, and he’s being an asshole. Keeps pushing her.”

  Joe tried to line up that batch of new information in his head, fit it into the picture he’d formed of her. Their first meeting had lasted five minutes, the second an hour and a half. Obviously, there were a lot of gaps.