Page 98 of Deathmarch

Harper, in plain jeans and a Flyers jacket zipped up over his bulletproof vest, was knocking at the house on Dicky’s left, his shoulders up around his ears as if against the cold, to block his face as much as possible.

“I already know Jesus, and I ain’t buyin’ anythin’,” the woman who opened the door said.

Harper kept his voice low and flashed his badge between them so nobody else would see it. “Detective Finnegan from the Broslin Police Department. I need your help.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “With what?”

“We’re serving a warrant next door, and we have reason to believe that the man we’re arresting might be armed and dangerous. I’d like to ask you to go down to your basement until I come back and give you the all clear. Do you need help getting down there, ma’am?”

“I might look a hundred, but I can manage. And if I can’t, my boyfriend can help me down there. That’s why I have a man.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Who you arrestin’?”

She’d be watching from the basement window, so there was no point in keeping it a secret. “Dicky Poole.”

“Oh.” She looked past him, toward Dicky’s house. “Dicky ain’t home.”

“His car is in the garage.” Harper had checked.

The woman shook her head. “An ambulance took him away this morning. I saw them wheel him out on a gurney. Ronnie, my boyfriend, talked to the EMTs. Heart attack.”

“Do you know when?”

“Around ten?” She shrugged, then looked Harper up and down. “Show me the search warrant.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Ronnie has his spare key.”

Harper pulled the warrant from his pocket. The woman put on the glasses that hung from a lanyard around her neck and read the piece of paper over, to the last letter. Then she stepped back into her kitchen and, a few seconds later, reappeared with a key.

“There you go. Figure you gonna go in either way. This way, you don’t have to break down his door.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

As Harper turned on his heel, he saw Joe hurrying toward him.

“Ambulance took Poole,” Joe said when they met in the middle of the driveway.

“Just heard.” Harper handed over the search warrant and the key, but kept the arrest warrant. “You guys search the premises. I’m heading over to the hospital.”

“You still think he’s our guy?”

“He’s been avoiding me. Maybe it’s a delay tactic.”

“Sounds like you want him to be our guy. Watch out for that. Bias can muck up a case, can make you miss clues that point in a different direction.”

Harper didn’t defend his position. He did want Poole to turn out to be the killer. He wanted the man in prison.

As Joe hurried on, Harper jumped into his car and took off. He called the hospital, identified himself, asked to talk with the emergency room.

They confirmed receiving Poole and tracked him down for Harper, patching him through to the nurses’ station in surgery.

“They just rolled him out,” the helpful nurse told him. “He won’t be awake for a while.”

Okay, the man hadn’t faked the heart attack. Which didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t Lamm’s killer.