Chapter 18

I swearmy ass would soon be the exact shape of a hospital waiting room chair. Mack and I spent endless hours waiting for victims to be allowed to speak to us. Thankfully, we were plainclothes, so we blended in better than our brothers and sisters in uniform while plunked down in a busy emergency room waiting area. If we kept our jackets on, no one could see our weapons and badges, and the tension that uniformed cops seated among the poorer and most vulnerable in our society sometimes drew was lessened.

No one told me I couldn't sit here and wait even though I was off the case, but one call to reorganize the rest of my day, and I wasn't moving an inch.

Mack had already spoken to Ian Brown, the security guard, who'd come out with a concussion and two stitches for a head wound, but given I wasn't officially on this case, I had to stand back. Ian didn't remember who'd hit him, or much at all, until he'd been found and brought into the hospital. I made a note to mention to Oliver that the clinic needed to check out the guys they hired to see if they were actually any good. Maybe I'd do it for him.

Mack was snoozing beside me as I people-watched, arms resting on my chest, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. We'd give Lazlo another hour to come out from under, then see if we could talk to him. Sometimes, that was dicey. The doctors weren't always keen on law enforcement showing up to question a victim. And I got it. But the sooner we could get the facts, the sooner we could move on things. The forensic investigators had been at the scene when Mack and I had arrived two hours ago, the clinic once again taped off with crime tape. I'd smiled sheepishly at Timothy. The man was pissed at me for blowing him off time after time. I was going to have to just stop playing him. I was with Oliver now. We'd not said a thing about exclusivity, but I didn't want anyone else. I'd never wanted to be with Timothy, but his flirtations had made me feel good, you know, attractive when I was not feeling at all that way.

Oliver filled that empty void in my chest now.

Oliver and the clinic. Man, what a clusterfuck things had become.

I wasn't sure if the place would survive another violent crime. If I had kids, I'd be damned if I'd take them to a facility where two people had been attacked within a month. Then again, many of the patients at the clinic had no other options. Joe and his staff treated everyone of every age, whether or not they had the means to pay. And while Joe was a good guy with a heart of gold, his bookkeeper, Heloise, had not been above milking the system.

"You want some coffee?" I asked Mack. He snored in reply. I tapped his forehead with the tip of my finger. He snorted awake, wiping awkwardly at the drool on his chin. "I said, you want some coffee?"

He blinked, then frowned. "No. Maybe. Okay." I gathered up the four empty cups on the end table beside me, got to my feet, and was glancing around for a trash can when a young doctor hustled out to us. He looked as tired as I felt. Guess cops and docs didn't get much sleep in this town.

"Mr. Richter is resting comfortably." I sighed in relief. The doc went on to tell us the basics before he grew a bit truculent. "He's willing to speak to you both, but I am restricting your time with him to five minutes. No more. And do not upset him."

We both nodded at the good doctor. He seemed less than pleased to be allowing two frumpy detectives into his world. We were given a long look before he left us to go help the next person on his long list of people in need.

"Okay, so technically, you're no longer on the case, so why don't you reach out to Timothy and see if he and his team have gotten a good match on the prints they lifted from the scene?"

"I promise I won't say a word," I wheedled as we made our way into the heart and soul of the ER. Since the wound was in the upper arm and had been clean—not hitting any bones or nerves—he'd been X-rayed, stitched up, and given some antibiotics and, probably, a tetanus shot. We saw a lot of shootings every year, and he'd probably not be admitted and would be released within a few hours. "I just want to hear what the man has to say."

"You just don't want to deal with Timothy," Mack countered, to which I shrugged. Yeah, I was a coward when it came to emotional anything. "Fine, but you just take notes and try to look like you didn't go twenty rounds with a demonic vacuum cleaner last night."

My fingers rose of their own accord to brush a tender spot on my neck. "You could have told me sooner. I'd have buttoned up and found a damn tie."

I tugged the neckline of my shirt up over my collarbone as my partner sniggered like a fool. "Asshole," I added just for flavor. We approached a nurses' station, asked about Lazlo, and were directed to a small room among about twenty. Moans filled the air. The smell of cleaner and iron were thick back here as doctors and nurses hustled from room to room purposefully.

Mack entered first. I followed, my sight touching on Lazlo as he sat on a gurney, his biceps bandaged, his face pale as snow. His gaze flickered to Mack, then to me, but he seemed reluctant to open the dialogue.

"We're glad to see that you're going to be okay, Mr. Richter," Mack opened, and I nodded silently, easing my phone out of the back pocket of my wrinkled trousers. "I know you're in a lot of pain, so we're going to make this brief so you can rest before you're discharged."

Lazlo glanced from Mack to me. "Detective Winwood is here to take notes."

"Can you tell Oliver that I'm okay? And tell him to tell Joe. I don't think I can work tomorrow, but maybe the day after?"

"I'll let Mr. Cowan know that you're going to be fine. And I am relatively sure that Dr. Baxter is not going to call you out over a missed shift or two when he's only just out of a hospital bed himself."

"He's out now?"

"Yep. Now you rest and recuperate. Being shot hurts."

"Yeah, seriously." Lazlo sighed as he cradled his wounded arm to his chest, a dark blue sling keeping the arm stationary. "I think I might know who the shooter was."

Mack glanced at me. I held up my phone. "Are you agreeable with us recording this conversation, Mr. Richter?" I asked and got a nod from Lazlo. If only every victim/witness were this cooperative, our work would be so much easier. The call for some doctor to report to a certain room floated by. I placed my cell on the rolling tray that held some ice chips in a cup, and a box of tissues. "Thank you. So, can you tell us why you were at the clinic so late at night? According to what the responding officers have in their report, you were working?"

"Yeah, it's the end of the month, and since we're so short-staffed, I was trying to get the billing done and sent to Heloise before she chewed my ass again."

Mack and I exchanged a look. Heloise. We might know what she was doing, but the rest of the staff at the clinic didn't have a clue. That aspect of the investigation was still under tight wraps, as we wanted to get our ducks in neat little rows before making more arrests. Every damn I had to be dotted, and every T crossed before we could hand things over to the district attorney, where things would be handled by the prosecutors. Sure, they would be in contact with us throughout, and we would be called to testify when the case went to court, but officially, we considered the case closed once the DA had it. And our present DA was a stickler. She did not want one criminal getting off on a technicality or due to sloppy police procedure. We didn't either, but Monique Mason was a whole new level of detail-oriented. Given that we were working numerous cases at the same time—and were fried like eggs from being overworked on the daily—we had to double down on ensuring no mistakes were made on our end.

"You work closely with Heloise?" I asked.

I sensed Mack stiffening next to me. Was this kid connected to her? Was he part of this scheme? Had he crossed a line?

"God no, she kinda scares me a little, and she's super territorial over billing… I mostly avoid her."

"Please, go on," Mack said as I lingered in the corner, arms crossed, belly rumbling softly. Too much coffee and no food. The story of my life.

"So yeah, I'm gathering up the billings for Medicare to send to Heloise when I hear something at the front door. I thought it was maybe Dilbert, so I got up to go let him in."

Mack shot me a questioning look. I shook my head. That was a name that I had not heard in our previous discussions with the clinic staff.

"Dilbert?" Mack asked.

Lazlo blushed. "He's an alley cat that I feed every day. Heloise says she's allergic and isn't really keen on the cat hanging around, so I do it on the sly. He's a really nice cat. He digs on the front or back door, then I take him whatever kind of cat food I buy at the dollar store. It stinks really bad, the tuna food, but Dilbert loves it."

"Cats are cool," Mack said with a patient smile. "So, the sound at the door. Was it the cat?"

"No, it was some dude trying to jimmy the lock open. I yelled at him to stop. That was when he pulled out the gun and fired through the glass. The alarm went off, and he had like this second of not knowing what to do, so he froze, and that was when I saw his face. When our eyes locked, he freaked out and shot like a dozen times." There had been only three shots fired through the glass, but I was sure it seemed like hundreds to poor Lazlo. "One of them hit me as I was trying to run back to the reception desk. It really hurt."

The door to his cubby hole of a room opened, and the doctor entered. "My patient needs to rest. Tie this up."

This time, the man in white stayed in the room. Our time was over, it seemed.

"You said you recognized the man? Can you give us more information?" Mack asked as I reached for my phone.

"Yeah, he had a scar in the shape of a Z, you know, like Zorro." Mack and I both nodded. "I remembered seeing him waiting outside the clinic a few weeks ago. He was there with his baby mama. Some tiny thing with a newborn, her name is Karen Snipes. Like Wesley Snipes. You can find her file at the clinic. I don't know his name, but I bet she does, since she and her baby got into his car after the appointment."

"Thank you for this information. We'll be in touch. I hope you recover quickly," Mack said as I nodded along.

"Do you guys know what's going on?" Lazlo asked. We did, but we weren't at liberty to say a thing yet. So, we did what all cops do when they really want to help ease a victim's mind but can't.

"We're working on things and hope to have news for you soon. Thank you, Doctor."

Mack eased out of the room. I followed, and we were hustling ass to get to Mack's car. We'd have to find Karen Snipes' records back at the clinic. That was the easy part, or, I should say, the least dangerous part. All we had to do was tell the manager of the clinic that the files possibly held information vital to apprehending a suspect in a crime. HIPAA rules gave us the right to grab medical records without a warrant in order to identify a suspect, witness, fugitive, or missing person. And I was sure that Joe would give that file over with all haste, as his clinic would be teetering on the brink of financial ruin if we didn't get this mess cleaned up fast.

I glared at the banana-yellow Honda as we moved toward it. I should have insisted we take my car, but I'd caved when I met Mack at his place. We folded ourselves into the car and off we went to the Haven of Hope clinic. Mack was driving, and I was on the phone, trying to contact anyone to unlock the clinic so we could get into Joe's files. Turned out Joe was out of hospital, and the man finally answered and was more than agreeable to give us what we needed. Again, I knew Joe was stressed to the max and filled with questions, but he'd have to wait a little longer. All would be revealed in due time.

I wished I could contact Oliver to fill him in. Instead of doing something that would be a major no-no, I sent him a fast text saying that I was flexing my Hill Street Blues vibes. That got me a reply with a meme of Sergeant Esterhaus and his famous, "Hey, let's be careful out there" line.

I promised I'd be, then added an X because I guess I was doing that now. If anyone had told me I'd be signing off on texts with kisses two months ago, I'd have laughed in their face.

* * *

The clinic was in disarray,yet again, when Mack and I met a pale and shaky Joe outside.

"Should you be back so soon?" I asked.

Joe shrugged, then winced. "I'll go stir-crazy at home," he said, and I wasn't going to argue with that.

The front door had been sealed with plywood, the blood stains in the reception area were being mopped up as we spoke, and a scraggly little yellow cat was napping on the desk where Lazlo should've been seated.

"File room is back here," Joe told us, leading us past the remaining staff who were working madly to get things set to rights. There were people out there who needed this place badly. "I'm surprised any of them even showed up to work. I wouldn't blame anyone for quitting, given how dangerous this clinic has become."

"They're dedicated to serving, just like you," I said softly and got a funny look from Joe, who still didn't seem as if he should be scrubbing blood from tiles.

"Seems to be a thing with some of us, huh?" He stopped outside a small office, opened the door, and waved at walls of files. "We keep paper files, as well as storing them on the computer. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to know I have paper in hand when Skynet takes over the world."

"Smart man," Mack said, as he, too, disliked our reliance on technology.

"Anything you can tell me that I can pass along to my staff?" Joe asked.

We fed him some of the standard lines, but were able to add that Lazlo would be discharged as soon as his brother arrived from Oregon. That news cheered Joe up, our lack of information fo him did not, and I was sorry for that.

Once inside the file room, we dug out Karen Snipes' folder. The girl was just twenty and had given birth a month ago. Her file, which went back about four years, was filled with questionable injuries that had strongly prompted the attending physician to suspect domestic abuse. Karen fell down stairs a lot. Karen tripped into open cupboards a lot. Karen lived with a man named Philip Miscotti, aged thirty-two, who was recorded as the father of her newborn baby girl, Poppy. Mack placed the call to run Miscotti through the database, while I read over the long list of broken bones and black eyes Karen had presented with over the past two years.

Good old Phil's criminal background report was a cornucopia of run-ins with the law since he was fourteen. Phil liked to rob people, beat up people, and terrorize people. Phil also had been in prison twice on two different charges of possession of illegal prescription medications with the intent to sell. Both times, our buddy Ivan Baladin's lawyer had bailed him out and acted as his counsel. Coincidence? Not likely. Smirking at the link between these two scum balls, I relayed what Berke had found out online for us, then set a few things into motion as Mack and I left the clinic to go visit Karen Snipes.

"So what? Ivan sends this Phil guy to get whatever he was after when he sent in that Periapsis asshole?"

"Maybe so."

"For passwords."

"Yep."

"He's a fucking idiot."

I set up some backup for when we went to visit Ms. Snipes and her boyfriend—who was assumed to be living with her—as well as tracking down a judge willing to cough up a warrant. I managed to get an unmarked with fellow detectives, as well as a lone marked that would show up at the address as soon as we had it. The warrant didn't arrive for two hours, which gave Mack and me time to stop and buy some hot dogs and devour them. We lingered around the public housing apartments on Sunset Boulevard, cramped and hot inside Mack's Honda, until the warrant came down. Then, we met with our backups, had a short talk about how this was hopefully going to go down, and went to knock on Karen's door on the fourth floor of the massive low-income housing complex. Mack and I alone, with our fellow police officers on standby.

Berke and Mason were in the lobby, loitering about while trying not to look conspicuous, while our newest additions were parked out front in unmarked cars.

Mack knocked on the door of 487, which set off a baby's wail. A male voice inside bellowed. The baby cried louder. Mack gave me a sideways glance. I stood quietly, listening, wary. Any time you paid a known violent felon a friendly visit, things could get screwed up in a heartbeat.

Karen opened the door. She was a tiny thing, tired brown eyes, long brown hair knotted into a bun atop her head. Her bottom lip was discolored and puffy.

"Please help me, officers? He's going to hurt Poppy soon."

Did we really look that much like cops? Guess so…

Mack began to reply. Phil, in all his Zorro scar-faced glory, charged at the door and grabbed Karen by the hair, his eyes wild and glazed. The baby inside the tiny apartment wailed more loudly as Phil slammed Karen's face into the door jamb. She went slack. Phil threw her at Mack, then dove at me. He wasn't a large man, not nearly as tall as me, but he had some meat on his bones. We stumbled back into a door, our bulk and force busting the flimsy lock.

I felt the impact of something into my side. A knife probably, thankfully, blocked by the Kevlar vest I'd pulled on before our little social visit.

"Philip Miscotti, you're under arrest for assaulting an officer, as well as under the suspicion of attempted murder of Lazlo Richter," I shouted at Phil in English, then in Spanish. "You have the right to?—"

"Fuck you, pig!" he snarled, his pupils blown, clearly on something. Then, the fucker tried to bite me on the cheek. I grabbed his head and pushed back.

"Remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Fuckhead, stop trying to bite me!"

He shook his head like a mad dog as he tried to chomp down on my forearms now. "I eat pork!" Phil growled.

"You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided to you. If you decide to answer questions now without an attorney present—stop trying to bite me!"

"Pork, pork, pork! Yummy raw pork!" His jaws snapped together rapidly.

"Without an attorney present, you will still have the right to stop answering—goddamn it—at any time until you talk to an attorney. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you? Ow, motherfucker, stop trying to bite me!"

His teeth found purchase on my thumb. I yelped.

An older woman in a checkered dress appeared out of nowhere, shouted at Phil in rapid-fire Spanish, then cracked him over the head with a steel frying pan. Phil collapsed on top of me in a heap, his head bleeding and coated with what looked to be fried ground beef, avocado, rice, green and red peppers, and pinto beans. The rather delicious-smelling concoction tumbled down over me as well.

"He is a shit-faced woman beater," the woman announced in Spanish while I shoved Phil off me, then sat up, pinto beans rolling to my lap.

Footsteps thundered down the hallway as I sat there flicking beans off my pants while my savior informed me of every offense Phil had ever visited upon her. Guess he got his just desserts.

I suspected poor Karen would agree.