Georgia hummed.
I looked over at her.
“What?” I asked, moving my eyes back to the road in front of me.
A tractor was taking up three quarters of the road, and I contemplated passing him on the shoulder when he finally moved over, allowing me to pass.
And in all that time, Georgia stayed silent.
“What?” I asked again.
“They’re going to split them up, I can see it now,” she said softly.
I winced.
That’s what I was afraid of.
Madden was a good kid, but he was in no way, shape, or form, ready to raise two kids, seeing as he was only a kid himself.
“That’s why I’m bringing in the big guns,” I replied.
She frowned.
“I’ll try, honey. But I can’t promise a single thing,” she explained. “I can’t make any promises.”
I nodded in understanding. “I know. I just want you to try the best you can. Work with Shiloh. Anything is better than what they had. I just feel so horrible about the situation.”
She patted my hand as I stopped at the stoplight that would lead us to the hospital.
“And what about that other little boy? How’s he doing?” She asked.
I smiled happily.
“Much better, actually. They said he opened his eyes yesterday. I was going to stop in and see Nathan since I’ll already be up on the ped’s floor,” I informed her. “But we have to be back at your house by twelve so I can make my one o’clock class. Okay?”
Georgia nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. Then I can be there in time for Nico to go to work, and we won’t have to call your mom to watch the kids.”
I held up my thumb in a ‘good’ gesture, and opened my car door.
I blinked at the cop cars that were lined up at the front entrance of the hospital.
“What’s going on?” I asked the woman that was standing in front of my parked car.
The woman turned and shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re not letting anybody in or out.”
Picking up my phone, I called Michael.
“Hello?” Michael answered.
He sounded distracted, but that wasn’t going to stop me from getting inside.
“Hey,” I said. “We’re outside the ER entrance and there’re a bunch of people outside the doors. What’s going on?”
He cleared his throat.
“There was another murder,” he said softly. “Give me a few minutes to come down and I’ll escort you inside.”
Chapter 11
Don’t make fun of a woman with big lips. She’s probably thick and tired of it.
-E-card
Michael
“Where was this one from?” I asked Agent Palmer gruffly.
Agent Palmer offered me a file folder, and I steeled myself before opening the offending folder.
What I saw did not disappoint.
“Goddammit,” I said, clearing my throat. “Why another one so fast?”
“All of these have happened within the last three weeks. Roughly every three days. This is correct with that timeline,” he admitted softly.
“Well that would’ve been news you should’ve shared yesterday seeing as this happened today and here I am again,” I muttered, staring at the scene in front of me.
I wasn’t a detective.
I didn’t have the patience to be one.
Being a detective took dedication, time I didn’t have, and serious patience and perseverance.
I had the dedication and the perseverance, but not the other two.
Which was why it was confusing to me that I was here at a crime scene looking at the carnage that was left behind.
There weren’t any bodies left because those had gone to the hospital the moment the first responders arrived.
The man, the killer, had fucked up.
He’d done them in a good neighborhood.
The type of neighborhood that, if they were to hear gunshots, the cops are called almost immediately.
First responders had arrived within minutes, and both the woman and the man that’d been shot had been rushed to the hospital.
They weren’t expected to live, although the last I heard they were both rushed to surgery.
There wasn’t much they could do when the couple was shot in the head, but they still had to try.
“Who is this one with?” I asked, surveying the scene.
“Wolfgang Amsel worked for Karnack Police Department. His wife, Abby Amsel, was an accountant for Roscoe and Rush Accounting firm. Abby was eight and a half months pregnant with her first child,” Agent Palmer informed me.
I nodded.
The name sounded so familiar, but I couldn’t place the name with a face.
“What doctor’s office do these women go to?” I asked, the thought suddenly occurring to me.
“The Women’s Center of East Texas for this one. The others are various ones of the Ark-La-Tex,” he said. “But all of their systems interconnect since the doctors float throughout the offices.”
I turned my head to look to the kitchen counter.
On the counter was the officer’s service weapon, badge, and various accessories he wore on his utility belt, car keys, and his phone.
But the thing that drew my eye was the badge.
When a law enforcement officer has fallen, there’s a tradition that other officers wear a thin line of blue over their badges to commemorate the fallen life.
It’s usually only worn during the period of mourning, but over the years, it has come to be a show of respect for all law enforcement officials, civilians and public servants alike.
“You see this?” I asked Palmer.
Palmer looked over and pursed his lips at the sight. “Yeah.”
The badge had two strips of black duct tape arranged in an X across the badge, as if he was saying he took care of that particular officer.
“Asshole,” I growled in anger.
“I concur,” Palmer agreed.
Then a thought occurred to me.
“Did you check the tape for prints?” I asked.
Agent Palmer nodded. “Yeah.”
“What about the back of the tape?” I asked.
I wasn’t a crime scene tech, but that would be a place that I’d look for prints.
Agent Palmer pursed his lips.
“They’ve already collected the evidence, but I’ll just take that to the techs and see if they can find anything,” Palmer said as he took an evidence bag out of his pocket, then used the tip of his pencil to hook the badge and drop it into the bag.
Once zipped, he said, “That’s why I wanted you here. I noticed the other day you had a good eye. Nobody else could tell me much about the suspect, but you did.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the flattery.
Palmer’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket before answering it with a muttered, “Yeah?”
“You’re fucking shitting me,” Agent Palmer said in surprise. “No fucking shit? Alright, we’ll come down now.”
Palmer was already headed out the door, and I followed behind him quickly.
The officer at the door, who was guarding the door for us, nodded as we passed.
When Palmer hung up the phone he looked at me with elation in his eyes.
“The cop,” he said nodding to the house. “Made it through surgery and is talking. He wants to speak with us.”
Us?
Why would he want to talk to me?
I didn’t question it, however, only got into my truck and followed him to the hospital.
When we arrived, the entire hospital was swarming with cops.
Since the shooting had taken place, everyone and their brother was here, reporter wise, which meant that my fellow men in blue had to be here to take care of crowd control.
“Are you with the FBI?” One reporter asked as we started pushing through the crowd.
“No comment,” Agent Palmer muttered darkly.
“Are you the officer who responded to the Baby Cop Killer?” Another reporter asked.
That question was directed at me.
But I acted like I hadn’t heard, and kept pushing through right along with Palmer.