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.

Agent Elliott met us at the ER’s doors and held the door open wide as we crossed through.

“Talk to me,” Palmer ordered Elliott.

Elliott started hurrying to the elevators as he spoke.

“He’s awake, first and foremost. He woke up viciously the moment the anesthesia wore off, but he can’t speak per se,” Elliott explained. “The bullet missed his brain completely. Apparently, at the last moment, Amsel jerked to the side. The bullet passed through the base of his neck and came out his mouth just perfectly. He lost a few teeth, and has a quite a bit of tissue and muscle damage in his neck, but he’s expected to make a complete recovery. Had to tell him that his wife died on the OR table. The baby didn’t make it either.”

I shook my head.

That didn’t sound good, even with him saying he would make a full recovery.

His wife was dead. His kid was dead. His life was forever changed.

How could he ‘recover’ from that?

I knew I couldn’t.

If I lost Nikki, I’d be so fuckin’ lost it wouldn’t be funny.

Even though I hadn’t had her the last year and a half, I still knew she was okay.

Amsel, though, didn’t have that gift.

He would forever live knowing he couldn’t protect his woman and child.

Then I berated myself.

Amsel may not have those problems.

I just knew I would if our situations had been reversed.

If it was Nikki carrying my child.

Then I shivered.

Nikki wouldn’t be carrying my child.

No matter how much the idea of it turned me on.

“This is him. I got him a pad of paper to write everything down. I also had them fax the copies of all the members who work for The Women’s Center,” Elliott said, shaking his hand that had a thick pile of papers in it.