Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (5 page)

“LWD?” I repeated.

“Living With Dying. It’s a support group like AA, only these people aren’t in recovery. They have terminal illnesses, but
they want to make the most out of the time they have left, and then hopefully…” She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her hands. “And hopefully leave the world a better place than it was when they came into it.”

“How old was your husband?” Terry asked.

“Fifty-four.”

“Where did he work?”

“He was a manager at Sports Authority, but he stopped working a few weeks after he was diagnosed.”

“Did he have medical coverage?”

“Not enough, but it didn’t matter. He knew he was dying. No doctor could have saved him.”

“Life insurance?”

She shook her head. “No. He’s dead. Why is this important?”

“Mrs. Bernstein,” Terry said, “your husband shot a man in cold blood. My partner and I just spoke to his widow. She wants to know why, and so do we.”

Her face turned angry again. “And because Cal didn’t have life insurance, you think he did it for money?”

“We have to consider it.”

“You didn’t know my husband,” she said. “If you did, you’d consider this. He had a tumor the size of a tennis ball pressing on his frontal lobe. That would make anyone do crazy things. I’m sorry for the other woman’s loss, but Cal would never hurt anyone—especially not for money. Please tell her that he was a wonderful human being, and that everybody who knew him loved him.”

Word for word it was the same thing the victim’s wife had said about her husband.

We left Janice Bernstein the same way we left Nina Kraus. In tears.

CHAPTER 9

TERRY AND I
drove back to the station. Eileen Mulvey at the front desk flagged us down as soon as we walked through the door. “Guess who’s looking for you two guys,” she said.

“If it’s anyone but Scarlett Johansson, I don’t want to know,” Terry said.

“You’re in luck. It
is
Scarlett. She waiting for you in Kilcullen’s office.”

“Tell her I’m sorry to disappoint her, Officer Mulvey, but I’m trying to steer clear of the boss until he gives up on that caveman diet and goes back to being the same old pain in the ass that he’s always been.”

“Don’t count on it, Biggs. He’s digging in his heels,” Mulvey said. “This morning he had maintenance move the candy machine out of the break room. He replaced it with a ten-point list on how sugar can kill you.”

“Are you serious? I put my life on the line every day chasing gangbangers, dope dealers, mob rats, and homicidal maniacs, and that overweight caveman is afraid I’m going to be taken out by a bag of Skittles?”

“I’m starting to get the sense that you really want to chat with Lieutenant Caveman as much as he wants to talk to you,” Mulvey said, picking up the phone. “Should I call and tell him you’re back, or would you rather just go straight to his office?”

“I don’t know,” Terry said. “What would make you more of an ass kisser?”

“Definitely calling,” she said, dialing. “Hello, Lieutenant. Detectives Lomax and Biggs are back. Yes sir, I’ll tell them.” She hung up.

“What did he say?” Biggs asked.

“He said it’s about bleeping time those two assholes showed up.”

Terry and I headed down the hall. “Listen,” I said, “I’ve had a difficult day. Don’t make it worse by poking the bear.”

“But the bear took my candy machine.”

“Busting his balls won’t bring your Skittles back.”

“You never know till you try,” Terry said as we walked into the boss’s office.

Brendan Kilcullen is a smart cop and a decorated detective, but he’ll never win a prize for his leadership skills. He has the patience of a six-year-old kid on Christmas morning, and about as much tact as a brick flying through a plate glass window.

He was at his desk munching a carrot stick. There were half a dozen plastic bags on the desktop filled with the raw vegetables, fruits, and nuts allowed on the Paleo diet. “What the hell is going on with this dead doctor?” he bellowed, bits of orange vegetation flying from his mouth.

“All we know is that the shooter was Joe Average,” I said. “Calvin Bernstein, family man, worked at Sports Authority, no criminal record, no connection to Kraus.”

“What about drugs?” Kilcullen said. “A lot of these docs go through prescription pads the way I go through toilet paper. He wouldn’t be the first doc who was killed because he cut off some hophead’s supply of Oxy.“

“Dead end, Loo,” I said. “Kraus didn’t write scripts for street drugs. He got the big bucks for stimulating ovaries to produce eggs. Biggs and I are coming around to the thought that Bernstein was a hired gun.”

“But not exactly one who will ever get elected to the Hit Man’s Hall of Fame,” Terry said. “He was so clueless that he asked the receptionist to point the victim out.”

“Point the victim…? Son of a bitch. Are you telling me that somebody wanted to whack this doc, so they hired some idiot who worked in a sporting goods store?” he said, popping a few cashews in with the carrots. “What’d they do—run an ad on Craigslist? Hit Man Wanted. No Experience Necessary.”

“We spoke to Bernstein’s widow,” I said. “He had cancer. He only had a few weeks left to live, and he had no life insurance.”

“So he needs a quick payday, and he offs a guy so Mama has some money after he’s gone,” Kilcullen said.

“That’s what we’re thinking.”

“Are you also thinking about what kind of mastermind would hire a rank amateur to bump off a big-shot doctor?”

“That’s what we’re working on,” I said.

“Oh, that’s sweet. I can tell the mayor that
we’re working on it
.”

“The mayor?” Terry said. “Doesn’t he have ribbons to cut and palms to be greased? LAPD has over two hundred homicides a year. Why are we reporting to him on this one?”

“
We
? There’s no
we
, Biggs. I’m the one who’s always got half of City Hall up his ass.” He swiveled his computer so we could look at the monitor. “The mayor sent me this,” he said, clicking on a file.

A picture opened up on the screen. A smiling family of five.

“That’s the mayor’s daughter, her husband, and their three kids,” Kilcullen said. “Triplets.”

Terry frowned. “And I’m guessing the three little darlings were conceived in a petri dish.”

“The mayor said it more elegantly. I believe his exact words were, ‘My grandchildren were gifts from God and a brilliant and dedicated reproductive endocrinologist.’”

“Kristian Kraus,” Terry said.

“This was not a random homicide,” Kilcullen said, pulling a limp piece of celery out of a bag, and then putting it back. “This was Murder One. The mayor and his entire family are devastated. They know who pulled the trigger, but they don’t understand why. They need answers, and so do I. You get it now, Biggs?”

Terry grunted.

“Anything else, detectives?”

“One thing,” I said. “Joanie and I were patients of Dr. Kraus. He’s the one who diagnosed her with ovarian cancer. Since this case is now up to its ears in politics, I want to make sure you don’t think it’s a conflict of interest.”

“Did Kraus do anything wrong? Did you have a beef with him?”

“No. He was a good doctor. Plus I haven’t had contact with him in about four years.”

“No connection, no conflict,” Kilcullen declared. “Now, how about you, Biggs? Anything on your troubled brain?”

“Yeah, but no, never mind. I’ll figure it out on my own. You already have a full plate,” he said, taking a sideways glance at the meager assortment of bagged edibles.

“Hey—whatever it is, it’s my job, Biggs. Spit it out.”

“As long as you really want to know,” Terry said. “Somebody stole the candy machine out of the break room.”

Kilcullen erupted. “Get out.”

He didn’t have to scream it twice. Terry was gone. The bear had been poked.

CHAPTER 10

TERRY AND I
laid out a game plan for the morning, and fifteen minutes later I was driving down Highland headed for the freeway.

The drive to my house in Santa Monica is my decompression time. I try to turn off my mind and let go of the ugliness of the day. And this day was uglier than most. Dr. Kraus in a pool of blood, Cal Bernstein blowing his brains out, Doug Heller dodging my medical questions, and toughest of all, dredging up the loss of my wife.

Joanie’s death was the lowest point in my life, and I only got through it because of the two most annoying men on the planet. My partner, Terry Biggs, and my father, Big Jim Lomax. No matter how hard I tried, they refused to let me wallow in self pity. Especially Big Jim. He’d suffered after my mother died, and he was determined to help spare me some of the pain.

Six months to the day after Joanie died, Big Jim and his new wife, Angel, invited me to dinner. They also invited Diana Trantanella—my age, my type, and recently widowed herself. It was a blatant ambush date, and I was pissed. But it’s hard to stay mad when you’re falling in love. Now, almost two years later, I can’t think of what my life would be without Diana.

I was almost on the verge of asking her to marry me when our lives got interrupted. Diana’s friend Carly Tan asked us to take
care of her daughter Sophie so Carly could fly home to China to be with her dying mother. It was a no-brainer. The old woman was on life support, so we knew we’d only be babysitting for a week—two at the most.

That was five months ago. Since then, Sophie Tan had become part of the fabric of our lives. She’s a bright, bubbly, fun-loving eight-year-old with a passion for writing, and the fertile imagination to produce stories that can be so insightful that her teacher once called me and Diana in and asked us to stop helping her write them.

“We’re not,” Diana told the teacher. “It’s all her.”

“My God,” the teacher said. “What is she doing in the third grade?”

“Trying to stay normal,” I said.

Sophie was the daughter every parent would wish for, and I adored coming home to her. Unfortunately, she was only a loaner kid. One of these days, I knew we’d have to give her back.

When I got home that evening, Diana greeted me with the three words that signaled that the day I was dreading had finally arrived.

“Grandma Xiaoling died.”

“When is Carly coming back?”

“Thursday.”

It was Tuesday.

“Where’s Sophie?” I asked.

“I have a question for you first,” Diana said. “What were you doing at Dr. Heller’s office?”

“I guess you caught the news,” I said.

“You mean the story about the hero cop who ran through the halls in a hospital gown to confront a lunatic who killed a beloved fertility doctor?”

“Cal Bernstein wasn’t a lunatic.”

“Well, it sounds like the cop in the hospital gown is,” she said. “Tell me about him.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll get to sleep with him tonight. And if you ask real nice, he may just let you sneak a little peek under the gown.”

“Damn it, Mike, it’s not funny. You had your physical last week. Why were you back in the doctor’s office?”

“He didn’t get to the prostate exam the last time around, plus he wanted some more blood.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Did he say you’re okay?”

“Better than okay. He said I’m indestructible.”

Diana wrapped her arms around me and kissed me.

“Now where’s Sophie?” I said.

“In her room. She’s waiting for you.”

I went upstairs. Sophie was at her computer. “What are you doing?” I said.

“Writing a story.”

“About what?”

“Death,” she said, looking up from the keyboard.

“I’m sorry about Grandma Xiaoling.”

“It’s okay. We all die, Mike. The best thing to do is have as much fun with your life while you can. That’s what I’m writing about.”

“Is it too late for me to remind you that you’re eight years old, and most girls your age are writing about unicorns and rainbows?”

“Most people would rather read a story about someone dying than about a stupid horse with a horn sticking out of its head.”

“Point taken,” I said. “So who’s the hero of your little drama?”

“A girl whose grandmother dies.”

“You mean you?”

“No. It’s a fictional girl.”

“And how does this fictional girl feel?”

“She’s sad. But she understands. Her grandmother had a good
life, and now it was her time to go.”

“How about the real girl? How do you feel about your grandmother dying?”

“Sad. Then happy because my mom is finally coming home. Then sad again because I’m going to miss you and Diana.”

“We’ll miss you too,” I said. “But we’re still going to see you.”

“It won’t be the same, Mike.”

Damn right it wouldn’t
. The kid was wise beyond her years.

“We should commemorate the occasion,” I said. “Give you a big sendoff and your mom a big welcome home.”

Her eyes lit up, and she clasped her hands together. “You mean a party?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Could we do it at Big Jim’s house?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Then we’d have to invite Big Jim.”

That got a big giggle.

“We may as well invite him,” I said. “You know my father. He’s going to show up anyway.”

“And Frankie. We definitely need Frankie. And Izzy.”

“You want them with or without their Big Ugly Food Truck?”

“Duh-uh,” she said. “It’s a party. We’ve got to eat.”

“Gotcha. We’ll invite Frankie and Izzy and tell them that they’re in charge of feeding us. Make a list of everything you want, and we’ll get it done.”

“Awesome. I’ll do it as soon as I finish my story.”

“It shouldn’t take you long,” I said. “I mean what does a kid your age know about death?”

She looked up and gave me a gap-toothed smile. “I know a lot more about death than I do about unicorns.”

“Me too, kiddo,” I said, kissing the top of her head. “Me too.”

CHAPTER 11

DIANA, SOPHIE, AND
I have our morning routine down to a science. The coffee starts brewing at 5:45, alarm clocks go off at 6:30, we sit down for breakfast at 7:00, and we’re out the door at exactly 7:20. Diana drives to Valley General Hospital where she’s a pediatric oncology nurse. I head to the Hollywood station, dropping Sophie off at Bradfield—a private school on West Olympic.