The Pediatrician's Personal Protector

by Mallory Kane

  “I’ve got money—just for you—but I need a name. Who was Autumn seeing? The day she died was her birthday. She went out with someone. Who was it?”

  Glo grimaced and Christy saw her blackened teeth. “I swear, I don’t know who she was with that night, but she—” Glo’s arms tightened and her knuckles went white. “She used to get drugs from a guy named Kramer.” Glo looked up at Christy. “She’d trade—stuff—for drugs.”

  Stuff. Christy winced. She knew what Glo was saying, although she wished she didn’t. “Kramer,” she repeated. “What’s his first name?”

  Glo shrugged, not looking at her.

  “Come on, Glo. He sells drugs. I know you know him. Tell me his name.”

  “Buddy.”

  “What?”

  “His name. All I know is Buddy.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “I can’t—look, uh—Christy. I need my money.” Glo’s gaze shifted behind Christy again. “Now.”

  Christy held up a folded stack of twenties. “This is a hundred dollars. You’ve got my phone number in your phone. If you remember something else, I’ll give you more.”

  Glo reached for the money. Christy took a step backward. “Where can I find Buddy Kramer?”

  Swallowing visibly, Glo eyed the money. “He works downtown, out of an abandoned hotel called the Winsor.”

  Christy pressed the twenties into Glo’s outstretched hand. “Remember what I said,” she muttered. “If you think of anything else—”

  “What the hell? Glo!” A sharp male voice cracked the air like thunder.

  Christy jumped and whirled.

  “Jazzy, I wasn’t—”

  “Shut up! Who the hell are you?” The man, a medium-height scarecrow in a torn T-shirt and filthy jeans, got in Christy’s face. His breath was as rank as the room, smelling of stale cigarettes, sour beer and onions.

  She recoiled, moving toward the door.

  “I said—” He lifted his hand in a threatening gesture.

  “Jazzy!” Glo snapped with more energy than Christy had seen from her. “She just had some questions about a friend of hers. A girl I used to hang out with.”

  Jazzy whirled toward Glo. “Oh, yeah?” He shot a suspicious look back at Christy. “You don’t look like you got any friends that would hang out with my sister. But I’m sure I’d know him—or her. Who is it?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Christy said with more bravado than she felt. “She’s dead now. I was trying to find her—her boyfriend. He has some—personal stuff that I want back.”

  Jazzy sized her up with a narrowed gaze. “I’ll bet Glo could help you for a price, couldn’t you, Glo?” He turned to glare at the girl.

  Christy held her breath as Glo answered. It was obvious that Glo didn’t want Jazzy to know she’d given her money. “I couldn’t tell her anything, Jaz.” Glo’s fist, which held the rolled-up twenties Christy had given her, tightened.

  “Oh, yeah?” Jazzy scrutinized Glo then turned back to Christy. “Ask me, gorgeous,” he said. “I’ll tell you something. Just how much money we talking anyhow?”

  “Who said anything about money?” Christy responded. “I was just trying to find my friend.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Jazzy’s vocabulary was obviously limited. He stepped closer, grinning at her. He was a couple of inches shorter than she was in her heels.

  She straightened and lifted her chin, glaring down at him. “That’s right. I have to go now.” She turned toward the door, but Jazzy grabbed her arm.

  “Ow!” She winced and pulled against his grip.

  “Hang on a minute, gorgeous. I didn’t say you could leave.”

  “Let me go,” Christy demanded, pulling against Jazzy’s rock-hard grip. “Are you threatening me?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Christy saw Glo stuff the twenties into her tight jeans and advance on her brother. “Jaz. Stop that!” she shouted, doubling her fist and hitting him in the bicep. “Let go of her.”

  “Hey, bitch! What’d I tell you about hitting me.” Christy was forgotten as Jazzy whirled on his sister, raising his arm, prepared to backhand her across the face.

  “Get outta here!” Glo shrieked at her.

  Christy hesitated for a fraction of a second, afraid for Glo. But it looked as if she and her brother had fought like this for a long time.

  At that instant, Glo jerked back from Jazzy’s threatening gesture and a small can of pepper spray appeared in her hand.

  “What’d I tell you about hitting me!” she yelled.

  Yes, it looked like Glo could handle Jazzy. Christy jerked the door open and ran. She saw the taxi driver looking past her at the open door of the ramshackle house. As she ran toward him he started the engine.

  She jumped into the backseat. “Okay,” she said breathlessly, pushing her hair back with a shaky hand. “Go! Get out of here.”

  The driver was still looking toward the house as he put the car into gear. Then he met her gaze in the rearview mirror. After a couple of seconds, he laughed. “You gotta be crazy,” he said. Then he held up his hand. “Give me my C-note.”

  Christy’s heart was beating so fast that she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She squeezed her eyes shut and worked to get herself under control.

  “Not yet. When you get me safely back to the hospital,” she snapped, rubbing her arm.

  NOT AN HOUR AFTER REILLY had faxed the partial print from Autumn Moser’s file to Buford Watts’s office, the deputy called him. He was on his way to the hospital to pick up Christy.

  “We got a match on that print,” Watts said.

  “Already?” Reilly was surprised.

  “Yeah. I went ahead and ran it, since I was going to be here all day anyhow.”

  “Well? Who is it?”

  “Print belongs to a dealer who operates in downtown Mandeville, around the old Hotel Winsor.” Reilly heard papers shuffling. “Name’s Buddy Kramer.”

  “So Kramer’s a known dealer?”

  “Yep.” Buford’s reply was short and noncommittal.

  Reilly knew what that meant. Somebody was using Kramer as a confidential informant. Otherwise he’d probably be in prison. “What now?”

  Watts sighed. “I gotta pick him up for questioning.”

  Reilly thanked Watts for calling him and hung up, then called his brother.

  Ryker answered the phone with a sleepy growl.

  “Afternoon,” Reilly said cheerfully. “What’s up?”

  Another growl.

  Reilly figured he knew what Ryker was doing on a Saturday afternoon. “Sorry to interrupt you and your lovely fiancée, but I need some information.”

  Ryker grunted, muttered a curse and yawned. “Is this something to do with Moser’s daughter?”

  “It is. Are you familiar with a two-bit dealer named Buddy Kramer?”

  “Kramer?” Ryker yawned again.

  “Come on, old man. Think. This is important.”

  “Kramer. Okay. I think Charlie Phillips has a CI named Kramer. Why?”

  “A partial print of Kramer’s was in Autumn Moser’s case file, and last night Christy was shot at. The shell casing from the bullet has Kramer’s print on it.”

  “Crap.” Now Ryker’s voice was sharp.

  “Yeah,” Reilly agreed.

  “I didn’t think that print in Autumn Moser’s file had an ID attached to it.”

  “It didn’t. Buford Watts matched the bullet in the system.”

  “It was the same gun?”

  “Right.”

  “Charlie Phillips is a good detective. He wouldn’t—”

  “I believe you,” Reilly said, “but it’s going to be touchy. Christy found a bag of heroin in her sister’s room that was marked by one of the crime scene analysts, Amber Madden.”

  “A marked bag?”

  “Right. Do you see where this is going? I’m beginning to think Autumn’s boyfriend was a cop.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “Exactly.
” Reilly’s reaction when the thought first popped into his head had been exactly the same.

  “Kid, you need to be careful. You can’t just go on a witch hunt. You could destroy a detective’s career because they might have hooked up with some girl somewhere.”

  “That’s what you think I’m doing?” Reilly said, ire rising at Ryker’s assumption that he’d go off half-cocked.

  “So what are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to find out who killed Autumn Moser.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “What about Bill Crenshaw?” Ryker’s friend.

  “What about him?” Ryker’s tone took on an edge.

  “Does he have a CI?” More silence.

  “So he does. Do you know who it is?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, old man. Help me out here. You work with Bill all the time. Are you telling me you don’t know who his CI is?”

  “Why do you think they call them confidential? They’re not much use if everybody knows who they are.”

  “What about the other detectives? Who else uses them?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maybe half of the guys.”

  “Can you find out?”

  Another pause. “I’ll see.”

  Reilly took a deep breath. He needed to ask one more question. “Ryker? What about you?” Reilly was pretty sure what his brother’s answer was, but he wanted to hear it.

  “Nope. It always seemed a little sleazy to me. I have used information from them before though, when I work with a detective who uses them.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  “You got any more questions?”

  “Nope. I’m done for now. Tell Nicole I said hi.”

  “Reilly says hi,” Ryker said in an aside.

  “Hi to Reilly,” he heard Nicole say.

  “Listen, kid,” Ryker said. “Be careful. If you suspect somebody on the job, be sure of your facts. You could ruin a good man’s career—and your own.”

  REILLY KNEW SOMETHING was up with Christy as soon as he saw her. It wasn’t so much how she acted or what she did, as what she didn’t do. She didn’t walk confidently through the hospital entrance doors, her head held high. She didn’t tilt her head at that arrogant angle he was used to seeing, and she didn’t mow down the men in her path with a look.

  Something had happened in the hours since he’d left her here. He leaned over and opened the passenger door for her. She got in without saying anything and busied herself with fastening her seat belt.

  He pulled out onto the highway, heading toward his apartment. “How’s your dad?” he asked.

  “The same,” she said shortly. “He’s not getting any better.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you have other family anywhere? Someone I could call for you?”

  She shook her head. “My mother had a sister who lived somewhere around St. Louis, but they weren’t close and I don’t even know her married name.”

  “Your aunt? You don’t know your aunt’s name?”

  “That’s right.”

  Reilly was stunned. “How can you not—?”

  From the corner of his eye he saw her chin lift defiantly. He bit back that question and went down another path.

  “What about your dad?”

  “My dad?”

  “His parents. His siblings.”

  “My grandparents are dead. Dad had two brothers, both of whom died in their fifties of heart disease. They had kids. We saw them a couple of times at holidays, but—” She waved a hand. “You know.”

  That’s just it. He didn’t know. His family had always been close. Sometimes—okay, a lot of the time—they didn’t get along, but they were still close. He knew his first cousins as well as he knew his brothers. He couldn’t imagine not knowing aunts and uncles or his cousins. He shrugged.

  “What do the doctors say?”

  “They’re telling me that it could be a matter of days or weeks. It all depends on whether he has another heart attack. They’re warning me that I need to start thinking about things. Like whether I want to put him on a ventilator.”

  Reilly waited, but Christy didn’t say anything else.

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head as he drove into the private parking garage of his building. He parked and came around to open her car door for her. Both of them were silent as they went into the elevators and up to Reilly’s apartment.

  Once they were inside, he turned to her. “Christy? Do you know what you want to do? Do you know what your father wants?”

  “He told me once that his dad lingered for weeks because he and his brothers let the doctors put a feeding tube in. He said he didn’t want to be kept alive if it was time for him to go.”

  Reilly put his hand on her back in a comforting gesture. “You stayed there at the hospital all day. You must be exhausted.”

  She stepped away from him and rubbed her forehead. “I am tired. And I need to take a shower.” She took another step backward, toward the guest room.

  “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.” He watched her as she walked to the guest room door and opened it. Her shoulders were slumped. Her hair didn’t have that sheen of black velvet. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a faint smell of cigarette smoke clinging to her.

  As if she heard his thoughts, she turned at the door with a grimace. “Some guy kept sneaking cigarettes—in the waiting room bathroom, I think. I started to report him. He reeked of smoke. Stank up the entire waiting room. I’m sure I smell like smoke now.”

  Reilly didn’t comment. He just watched her steadily as she lowered her gaze and went inside.

  Once the door had closed behind her, he let out a frustrated breath. “You’re lying,” he whispered. She’d withdrawn when he said she’d been at the hospital all day and she’d gone to a lot of trouble to explain away cigarette smoke that for all she knew, he hadn’t even noticed.

  A righteous anger grew in his chest. Righteous, yes, but also concerned. She was worried about her dad, but not so much that it had kept her from sneaking off again. He didn’t believe for a second that anyone had been sneaking cigarettes in the bathroom. She’d been somewhere with someone who’d smoked. A taxi driver? Or someone she’d arranged to meet? He paced back and forth in front of the guest room door.

  “Damn it, Christy,” he muttered. “Why won’t you trust me? You’re going to get yourself killed.”

  He stopped and clenched his fists. He ought to go in there right now and give her a piece of his mind, then put her in protective custody, assign a couple of deputies to watch her 24/7. Well, he could, if the department weren’t so shorthanded right now.

  A thought occurred to him. He didn’t have to depend on an overtaxed police force. He could hire someone himself—maybe one of Dawson’s specialists. His older brother’s security firm employed women and men.

  But he couldn’t force Christy to accept what essentially amounted to imprisonment. So the security specialist would be no more effective at keeping up with her than Reilly himself was.

  He stomped into the kitchen to get some water, his brain whirling. Where had she gone today? Her dad’s house? No. She’d already found what she’d been looking for there.

  Or had she? Whatever she’d hoped to find in Autumn’s secret hiding place, it wasn’t money or drugs. But there was nothing else there, she’d told him. Nothing but some coins and a ribbon.

  That was a lie too. She’d definitely found something else—he was sure of it. She’d been acting suspiciously ever since then. Showing him the drugs and money and getting them into police hands hadn’t made her less uneasy.

  In fact, she seemed more nervous than ever.

  Whatever she’d found, she had no intention of telling him about it. If he was going to protect her, he was going to have to force her to trust him somehow.

  Force her. Yeah. That would work.

  He looked at his watch. Nearly eight. She’d been in there almost an hour. She ought to be through with
her shower by now. He strode back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. She probably hadn’t eaten, and he was starving. There was some sliced ham that had been in there over a week. He inspected the neon-green sheen on some of the slices. Nope. He tossed it in the trash. Then he opened the freezer. A frozen pasta entree. A pizza. Ice cream.

  He read the ingredients on the package. Mushrooms and shrimp in a Parmesan cream sauce with rigatoni. Sounded pretty good. He hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t cook, but he’d tried a few of these all-in-one-package meals. They weren’t bad, and they were easy. Add water and cook on low heat. Even he could do that.

  He did exactly what the package said, and within twenty minutes he had dinner ready. He took a domestic Sauv Blanc out of the wine cooler and opened it.

  As he took another look at his watch, his phone rang. It was Ryker.

  “Hey, old man,” he said. “Did you finally decide to get out of bed?”

  Ryker ignored him. “I talked to Bill.”

  “Yeah?” Had Ryker told his friend about Reilly’s questions?

  “I managed to bring up the topic of confidential informants. Bill said Kramer used to be Ted Dagewood’s CI, but a few years ago Dagewood dropped him and picked up another guy. Bill wasn’t sure of the new guy’s name.”

  “Dagewood dropped Kramer? What does that even mean?”

  “Don’t know. According to Bill, Dagewood didn’t like some of the things Kramer was doing.”

  “He said Dagewood dropped Kramer a few years ago? Like five maybe?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. That would have been around the time Autumn Moser was killed,” Ryker said. “I don’t know. Where are you going with this? Are you thinking Dagewood was involved with Christy’s sister?” Ryker snorted. “I’d sooner suspect Phillips. Dagewood’s so uptight. I can’t see him doing anything that would jeopardize his career.”

  Reilly felt a chill run down his spine. That was almost exactly what Moser had said about Autumn’s boyfriend. “Okay. Thanks. I appreciate the information.”

  “No problem. By the way, Mom called about the party. Are you going to bring your gorgeous doctor?”

  Reilly winced. “I doubt it. She’s not very happy with me right now. In fact, I’m not very happy with her. She’s lying to me every time she opens her mouth.”