Chapter 3

      “You’re serious?” Dugan asked the attendants. This just wasn’t adding up. “She just had a baby,” he said. “Aren’t you people supposed to keep them here for at least three days?”

      “This isn’t a prison, officer,” Dale told him, obviously taking offense at the implication that they or the hospital had failed in some way. “Patients are free to go home at any time.”

      “What about the doctor?” Dugan asked. “Wouldn’t he or she have ordered against something like that? And by the way, it’s detective, not officer,” he said, pointedly correcting the man.

      “Well, detective,” Dale said with an exaggerated bow of his head, “the doctor can make a recommendation, but if the patient chooses to disregard that recommendation, the patient is free to just sign herself out and leave whenever she wants to. Unless, of course, if she’s being restrained,” he added, glancing toward the woman beside him to make sure he was right. Rita nodded. “But that’s a whole different story.”

      “Bottom line, detective,” Rita told him in a far more polite voice than Dale was using, “the woman you’re looking for isn’t here any longer.”

      Dugan blew out a breath, then shrugged. “Well, I tried,” he said, addressing his words to the woman. He’d already used up the twenty minutes he’d allotted himself. He needed to be getting to the precinct. “That’s all a man can do.” Dugan offered her a smile. “Thanks for your help.”

      And with that, he turned away and walked out of the hospital lobby.

      He had no doubt that the woman wasn’t there anymore. There was no reason for either of the people, even the irritating idiot, to have lied to him. What bothered Dugan was why the woman from the other night wasn’t there any longer.

      And why she had given him—or the hospital—a phony name.

      Not your problem, Dugan, he told himself as he made his way back toward his car. You gave it your best shot, which is more than a lot of other guys would have done. And apparently, for whatever reason, the woman had no desire to stick around longer than she has to.

      Still, he had to admit as he crossed the lot, the detective in him was really curious about why someone like Scarlet—or whatever her real name was—would just leave the hospital so quickly after having given birth. The experience had to have exhausted her. Wasn’t a stay at the hospital supposed to help her get back on her feet?

      Maybe, Dugan thought as he finally reached his vehicle and got into it, it was just a simple matter of not having any insurance coverage. She couldn’t pay her bill, so she gave them a phony name and decided to pull a disappearing act before anyone in the administration office had a chance to check her out.

      But if that was the case, then why hadn’t she tried to talk the hospital into letting her pay her bill off over time? People did that sort of thing. Sometimes the hospital would just write off a patient’s charges.

      “You’ve got a legitimate case to work on,” he told himself out loud. “You don’t have any time to try to figure this out.”

      Pushing the thought out of his mind, he started up his car. Puzzles were for people who had time on their hands to try to solve them. He, on the other hand, had a dead CI whose murder he was trying to solve. Someone obviously felt that Mitch Gomez had known too much and that was the mystery that took precedence over everything else, not some missing mama who had checked out of the hospital too early.

      A missing mama with a gun, he reminded himself as he drove to the precinct.

      When he’d first attempted to come to her aid, he recalled that the woman had tried to reach for a gun. Had she not been tied up in knots because of those contractions, he had no doubt that she probably would have shot him.

      What—or who—was the woman afraid of? Dugan wondered.

      “Later, damn it,” he ordered himself sternly. “Think about this later. Not now.”

      The rest of the way to the precinct, he did the best he could to push all the other thoughts aside. He was a detective first, a man with a mystery woman to pursue second.

      A far second he reminded himself.

      The answer didn’t satisfy him, but for now, it was going to have to do.

      * * *

      They were getting nowhere.

      Eight weeks later they were no closer to finding out who had put that bullet into Mitch Gomez’s head than they had been when the body was first found.

      He and Jason had canvassed the area, talking to more people in the last two months than he probably had in the last six months, and still nothing. People talked, but in the long run, they said nothing.

      Oh, he had a few suspicions about who might have been responsible—Michael Oren, a higher-up who represented the Juarez cartel in California—but suspicions had never won a case.

      Not only that, but now he was currently down a partner, as well. Jason had broken his tibia and it looked as if he was going to be sidelined for the next few weeks if not longer.

      “Tripping over your eighteen-month-old daughter, who does that?” Dugan demanded when he went to see Jason at his home to see how his partner was coming along.

      “Apparently I do,” the detective answered almost morosely. Fighting with his crutches, he managed to make it over to an easy chair. The whole adventure had left him exhausted. Three days and he still hadn’t gotten the hang of maneuvering the crutches.

      “I mean, she’s not that tiny a baby. How could you have missed seeing her?” Dugan asked, shaking his head.

      “Believe me, when you’re not looking for an eighteen-month-old baby, they’re easy enough to miss—and trip over,” Jason grumbled.

      His mother-in-law, who was babysitting the little girl, looked as if she was less than thrilled to also act as a part-time nurse for Jason. The look on his face showed that he felt the same way.

      Jason lowered his voice so that only Dugan heard him. “Look, I’m sorry that this leaves you high and dry right now. I should be able to get around with crutches pretty soon.”

      Dugan had seen Jason attempting to maneuver into the room. He didn’t hold out much hope.

      “Right,” Dugan replied sarcastically. “Just do me a favor. Stay home and get well. Fast,” he underscored.

      Jason glanced over toward his mother-in-law. “As fast as I can, trust me,” he responded.

      “I’ll check back with you in a few days,” Dugan promised.

      And with that, he left.

      Dugan had some thinking to do, and right now, he was better doing it alone. Granted, he and Jason had been a team for the last year and a half, but now that Jason was home for what looked to be some time, for now he was on his own in this investigation. He was not about to tackle the investigation and break in a new partner.

      Granted, he could walk and chew gum at the same time, but at the moment, all his energy was concentrated on unraveling the massive drug connections that were involved here.

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