Kansas City Cover-Up (17 page)

Even if there were some loose ends about this investigation that nagged at her, Olivia knew getting a murderer off the streets was always a good thing. Helping her father find closure on an otherwise stellar career he’d been forced to end before he was ready to was even better.

The lieutenant agreed. “Make the call.”

* * *

“W
HAT
DO
YOU
MEAN
he’s not in his cell?” Olivia turned 360 degrees, taking in the seemingly normal chaos of the holding wing’s long hallway, processing counter, barred gates and steel doors beyond, as well as her father’s shaking head and Gabe’s piercing glare. “Where is he?”

Max was at the sergeant’s desk, cursing the ineptitude of paper pushers and the stupid luck of the world in general while Trent Dixon offered a saner explanation for why the man she was here to arrest had gone missing. “March collapsed in his cell. The guard said he was going through some serious withdrawal symptoms this morning. Don’t know if it’s his heart or his lungs or his stomach, but he just couldn’t handle detoxing cold turkey. They took him in an ambulance to Saint Luke’s about an hour ago.”

“Is he still alive?”

“As far as I know.”

“Is he still there? Is he under guard?”

“You know he is. We’re not going to let this guy slip through our fingers again.” Curling his mouth into a wry grin, Trent patted Olivia’s shoulder and excused himself. “Why don’t you go down to Saint Luke’s and read him his rights yourself while I take care of Mr. Charm School over there before he gets put on report.”

“Thanks, Trent.”

The big man nodded. “We’ll follow as soon as we can.”

“Gabe? Dad? Jim? Let’s go.”

Jim dangled his keys in front of her and backed toward the exit. “I’ll drive.”

Jim put the siren on the roof of his extended cab pickup, and got them to the downtown hospital in a matter of minutes. But the deathly quiet from the back seat Gabe shared with her father made the ride seem to last an hour.

Still, smoothing over familial tensions and figuring out whether she and Gabe had any future beyond working together to solve this case had to be filed away and dealt with later. Right now, she had a murderer to track down and put into official custody. She and Jim flashed their badges to give their guns clearance, and all four of them quickly moved through the security checkpoint to get into the hospital.

With Trent feeding them information over the phone, they hurried through the multistory lobby, skipped the information desk and went straight to the elevators to get to the second floor. “Room 222. Thanks, Trent.”

Olivia tucked her phone away in her pocket and led the way out of the elevator and around the corner into the second-floor corridor. But her steps slowed to an uneasy pace long before they reached the room at the end of the hallway. Suspicion pricked the hairs at the back of her neck. Something wasn’t right.

Jim stopped beside her, sensing it, too. “I don’t like this.” He checked behind them, then swiveled his green-eyed gaze back along the empty corridor. “Where’s the guard?”

The chair outside the door was there. But there was no one standing watch at Stephen March’s room. Olivia pulled back her jacket and unsnapped her holster. Resting her hand on the butt of her weapon, she warned Gabe and her father to stay back. “Wait here.”

Gabe took a step after her. “Olivia, be care—”

“Let me do my job, caveman.”

With a fuming reluctance, Gabe nodded and ducked into the room next door with her father.

Nodding her readiness to Jim, they both pulled their guns and flanked the door to room 2022. Switching between guarding and taking point, they quickly cleared the room, closet and adjoining bathroom. The rumpled bed and IV tube, needle and tape still swinging from its solution bag indicated March hadn’t been gone for long. The empty, unlocked ring of the handcuffs still attached to the bed’s steel frame made her think he hadn’t left on his own, either.

Olivia muttered one choice curse and pulled out her phone. “What is happening here? Who’s helping him escape?”

Jim holstered his gun and hurried out the door. “I’ll check the front desk.”

“Livvy?” Thomas Watson limped out into the hallway after the all clear, with a KCPD badge in his hand. “We’ve got an unconscious man in here. His ID says Derek Logan. I’m guessing he’s your guard.”

“Pretty nasty blow to the back of the head,” Gabe added. “I already called the hospital staff from the phone in the room. Told them he’d need assistance as soon as it was safe.”

Olivia added the badge number to the report she was making to Dispatch. “That checks out. Whoever’s helping March is going to be in street clothes or hospital gear,” she added before hanging up. “Officer Logan is the guard assigned to March. So we don’t know who the accomplice is. We have to look for March.”

“I notified hospital security. They’re sending someone to every exit point.” Jim returned with a nurse who hurried into the room to attend to the injured officer. “The nurse there said she took March’s vitals ten minutes ago and he was still showing signs of detox. Chills, shakes, headache. It’d be hard for him to walk out of here.”

“That means he’s in a wheelchair or on a gurney.” That meant the elevators. Olivia cursed. “They were probably going down when we were heading up. If they get out to the parking lot before security locks this place down, we’ll never catch them.”

Gabe grabbed her arm and stopped her when she hurried past. Any instinct to argue fell silent when she saw the keen intelligence lighting his eyes. “If he’s on a gurney or in a chair, then they’d have to take the staff elevators. The hospital staff would stop and question them if they tried to get on the public elevators.”

Oh, how she loved that cool logic of his. “You’re right. Max and Trent are on their way, too. But we need to find them now. Ten minutes isn’t that much of a head start if they had to disable Officer Logan and sneak out of the room.”

She pointed to Jim but he was already nodding, moving down the hallway, sharing the same idea. “Let’s split up. I’ll search this floor, make sure they’re not hiding out, and you get on down to the first. Hopefully, we can at least contain him here before he reaches any of the exits.”

Thomas Watson still had KCPD blue running through his veins. “Livvy, you take Knight with you. I’ll stay and help Detective Parker.”

“Dad, you’re not armed.” She glanced up at Gabe. “Neither one of you are.”

“Olivia Mary, I love you to death, but if you let this guy get away...”

She winked at her father and nodded. “Yes, sir. Let’s go.”

Leaving her father to limp into the room across from Jim, Olivia dashed toward the staff elevators and cleared each car before running to the stairs. Gabe was already there, shoving open the door and following close behind as she charged down the empty stairs to the first floor. A quick glance down the first floor service corridor showed no men who resembled Stephen March’s receding hairline and wiry build.

But Gabe’s hand at the small of her back turned her attention to the orderly pushing a wheelchair out through a swinging door. The patient bundled in a blanket looked far too familiar. “They’re heading out to the lobby.”

“Stay behind me,” she ordered, pulling her gun and breaking into a run. “Call Jim and tell him we’ve got them.”

For once, Gabe obeyed a command. Sort of. As she paused at the swinging steel door and peeked through to make sure the path was clear, she could hear Gabe giving Jim a succinct explanation of the situation and location. But he was right on her heels as she pushed through the door. “We’ve got a lot of civilians down here,” he added before hanging up.

“Oh, my God,” Olivia whispered, lowering her weapon. The public lobby at Saint Luke’s was as tricky to navigate as downtown rush hour. The carpeted area was a maze of chair groupings, sculptures and planters filled with trees and flowers—not to mention the gift shop, information desk and dozens of staff, visitors and volunteers crossing through and hanging out there. “Do you see them?”

She and Gabe stood back-to-back, turning, searching. Wrong color hair. Too tall. A woman in that wheelchair. No orderly with that one. There was still only one guard at the front glass doors.

She felt Gabe’s firm grip on her elbow and turned. “There. That’s him.”

Olivia moved out in a quick walk, keeping the orderly wearing green scrubs in her line of sight as she darted from one chair to the next tree. The patient in the wheelchair was bundled up with blankets that masked most of his face, but the shaking hands holding the covers up to his nose were a dead giveaway. The pair headed for the glass doors away from the check-in station at a fast enough clip that the guard had noticed them, too.

She held up her badge and waved him back, angling her head toward the families and staff, hoping he understood her silent request to start moving people away from the doors and the potential confrontation.

And then she saw the bulge in the back of the green scrubs. March’s accomplice was no orderly. He was carrying a gun.

“Gabe?” She glanced up, sharing her concern with the man who never seemed to miss a detail.

He saw it, too. He squeezed her arm and started moving toward a seating area where two children were putting together a puzzle. “I’ll get as many people out of here as I can.”

There was a matter of yards between her and the two escapees when a woman screamed. She’d seen Olivia’s gun.

Stephen and the orderly both glanced over their shoulders. And then they were running.

“Ah, hell.” Olivia planted her feet and raised her weapon and Gabe whisked the hysterical woman out of harm’s way. “KCPD! Stephen March! You with the wheelchair! I order you to stop.”

Stephen shoved the blankets off his chair and tried to rise, but the covers tangled with the spokes of the wheel and the chair tipped over, throwing him to the floor. The man with the gun leaped over him, muttering something like, “You’re on your own.”

But the guard had locked the doors and when the orderly slammed into them, he knew he was trapped.

Olivia advanced. “Stop where you are. Drop your weapon.”

The woman shrieked again when the man pulled his gun and spun around. “Get back!” he yelled, waving the gun back and forth before settling on her as the biggest threat in the room. “You get back!”

“Not gonna happen.” Olivia froze, leveled her gun at the middle of his chest. “Everybody get down!”

“Olivia!” Gabe’s warning shout was the last thing she heard as she fingered the trigger.

The next few seconds passed by in a slow-motion blur.

Stephen March crawled out of the wreckage and lurched to his feet. Olivia saw the gunman’s finger squeeze the trigger. An elderly woman rose from her chair, blocking Olivia’s line of sight.

“Get down!” she warned, averting her weapon and praying the gunman was a lousy shot.

There were two loud bangs from off to her left. The glass behind the perp shattered and the gunman went down.

Olivia glanced over and saw Jim Parker lowering his steaming weapon. “Told you I had your back, partner.” He jogged past her and knelt beside the assailant, picking up his gun and checking the man’s neck for a pulse. He shook his head as she joined him. “This one’s done.” He was already waving her off as she backed toward the path Stephen March had taken. “Yours is getting away. Go.”

“Thanks. Partner.”

The world reverted to real time as she took off after March. Even in his unsteady condition, that tweaker could fly. He knocked a man in a suit and the nurse beside him out of his way and zigzagged toward the gift shop. Alert to the danger now, the other patrons and staff dodged out of Olivia’s path. He’d reached the long hallway now, stretching the distance between them. Her lungs were burning and she pressed harder. Her shoulder ached and...

A metal-rimmed chair flew across the carpet, knocking the young man off his feet.

Olivia caught a glimpse of coal-black hair as she ran past and grinned.

The man who’d escaped from lockup at the hospital—the man who’d gotten away with murder for six years, who’d tarnished her father’s career, who’d tried to kill her more than once—moaned as he tried to push himself to his feet.

But Stephen March didn’t take one more step. Olivia holstered her gun, put her elbow to the back of his neck and took him right back down to the ground. He groaned and complained and muttered a nervous stream of words that didn’t always make sense. Olivia’s voice was breathless with exertion, but perfectly clear as she pulled the handcuffs off her belt. “Stephen March, you are under arrest for the murder of Danielle Reese.”

“What? I swear I didn’t mean... Ah, hell. What about Rosemary? My sister needs me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.” He writhed on the floor beneath her knee, fidgeting with his fingers almost as soon as she pulled his hands together behind his back. He repeated the same words over and over, almost crying in his manic state. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

She felt the tall shadow coming up beside her, and recognized the familiar starchy scent as Gabe knelt beside her. “You just couldn’t stay out of the way, could you?” she chided. “You didn’t think I was going to run him down this time?”

“I had no doubt you were going to catch him, but this idiot doesn’t get to hurt the woman I love.”

A few of those words tried to reach her heart, but Olivia had to finish the job first. “Is everybody in the lobby safe?”

“Yes. Scared, but fine.” He reached out beside her, pinning March’s flailing legs. “You got him yet?”

“I don’t know who that guy was.” March’s rambling never ceased. “He said he had to help me. I had to kill that girl. I had to save my sister. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want—”

Olivia could seriously use five minutes of peace and quiet right now. She slapped the first cuff on his wrist. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Gabe added, “I recommend using that right.”

“Anything you say...” Olivia paused, seeing her father’s uneven gait as he walked up on the scene, flanked by Max Krolikowski, Trent Dixon and Jim Parker. She looked up and smiled at her friends, her partner and her father. All men she could depend on, men who’d shown her time and again that they believed in her skills, that they trusted her, that she could trust them. A feeling of warmth rose up inside her, a feeling a belonging, a certainty that the damage Marcus Brower had done to her was finally in the past and that she would never have to second-guess these relationships again.