A Gambling Man

Chapter 60

Archer rushed up to the fourth floor to make sure that Dash had not been a victim as well. When he unlocked the door and burst into Dash’s office’s a few moments later, he heard a voice call out, “One more step and you get a third eye, buster.”

“It’s me, Archer.”

Dash turned on a light revealing him sitting on the side of the bed holding a lethal-looking .32 Colt. “What the hell are you doing here?”

And Archer told him what he was doing there. Dash hurriedly dressed and raced out without bothering to don his toupee.

They first went to look at Earl. “Shit,” Dash said.

Then he followed Archer to the doctor’s office.

Dash looked down at the body. “Shit twice,” he muttered.

“Who is it? Dr. O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded, picked up the dead doctor’s phone, and made a call.

“Ernie Prettyman on duty? Yeah, right. Tell him it’s Willie Dash. Thanks.”

A few moments passed and then Prettyman came on. Dash told him what had happened.

“Okay, Ern, we’ll be here,” said Dash in reply to whatever Prettyman had said.

Dash put down the phone and said, “Okay, you look like you have something to tell me.”

“Pickett arrested Kemper for the murders of Fraser and Sheen.” Archer told him about all the evidence Pickett said he had on Kemper. And the fact that Beth had called her father and that Armstrong had shown up a bit later.

“I’m sure Pickett paid top dollar for the eyewitness accounts,” said Dash. “And the other stuff is easy to massage into evidence of anything you want it to.”

“We can’t fight the whole police force, Willie.”

“Maybe not. Let’s go analyze this sucker and see what they were really after.”

In the dispensary Dash carefully looked over the tossed bottles and spilled pills. Then he stepped back and said, “Tell me what you see here, Archer. Take your time and think it over.”

Archer bent down and picked up some of the bottles and scooped up some of the pills. He compared some pills with some bottles and even put some of the scattered pills back in the bottles. He looked up at Dash.

“This thing was staged, to make it look like a robbery with drugs as the loot.”

Dash nodded. “You’re right. But explain to me your reasoning.”

Archer stood and held out two half-empty bottles and a handful of pills. “This is morphine. And these pills are amphetamines. Worth a small fortune on the street.”

“That’s right.”

“But when you compare the pills they spilled with the space left inside the bottles, they pretty much tally. So they didn’t take any narcotics with them.”

“And they didn’t have to smash the cabinet open. The key’s in the lock. The idiots obviously didn’t see it, or else they would have taken it with them.”

“Did you know O’Donnell?”

Dash nodded. “He was a good guy. A good doctor.”

“Why would anyone want to kill him?”

“That’s principally why they call it a mystery, Archer.”

“So do we wait here for Prettyman?”

“Now that I know Pickett has arrested Kemper, I’m pretty damn certain that Ern’s not gonna show up here. Pickett will. And then I think I might actually fear for our safety.”

“So what do we do?”

“You got your car out front?”

“Yeah.”

On the way out, Dash stopped at Earl’s body. He knelt down and closed the man’s eyes.

“He was a crook, and he hated my guts, but anybody who thinks they had a harder life with fewer opportunities than Earl is seriously fooling themselves.”

“You think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Maybe. Let’s hit the road before Carl Pickett hits us.”

“Where are we going?”

“I think it’s time to check in with our client.”