She looked up. Braddock waited at the door.
“Yeah. I’m okay.” She gestured to her throat. “It’s just a scratch.”
“But it could have been a hell of a lot worse,” he suggested.
She took a breath. He was right. “Why are you here, Braddock? Do you have news on the investigation?” His man Jenkins had been parked outside the clinic all day. Fat lot of good it had done her. But then, that wasn’t his fault; she was supposed to call if she needed help. Unsavory-looking characters had been coming in and out of the clinic all day. There was no reason for the guy who’d showed up at the door last to have been viewed any differently.
Unless Braddock had news, they had nothing else to talk about. She didn’t want to deal with him anymore either.
“I heard a disturbing rumor.”
“What rumor?” That his broad shoulders filled the doorway so completely unsettled her somehow. Made her want to lean against that strength. No way. That wasn’t happening ever again. She was just feeling vulnerable after the incident with the addict.
Those dark eyes probed hers. She didn’t like him looking at her that way. “Say whatever you have to say, Braddock. I have to fill out an incident report and then I’m out of here.” She was tired. Tired and disgusted. Mostly with herself.
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re making yourself an easy target.” He took a step into the room, planted his hands on his hips, and leveled a you-better-listen-up gaze on her. “You cannot come back here and start interrogating Nash’s people. Do you want to get yourself killed?”
Oh, so that was what this was about. Word had gotten to him that she was asking questions. Well, he could get over himself. Like she’d told him, she wasn’t going to stop until Shelley’s killer was brought to justice.
“What am I doing?” She flung her arms wide, stared up at him in challenge. “Asking the questions you haven’t asked.” Actually she had no idea what he was doing at this point, because he hadn’t told her anything about his goals or strategy for the investigation. Well, except that he would get the job done. She’d heard that from cops before. He was the last cop she would trust.
“Look,Dr. Patterson.” He moved in closer, putting his face right in hers. “The people you questioned today will go straight to Nash and tell him what you’re up to. They get brownie points for that sort of thing. What part of this don’t you understand? Nash is a bad guy. A pimp. A major drug dealer. I’ve watched bodies loaded into the meat wagon with missing tongues. Eyes. Hearts.”
She flinched. Every word prompted images of how Nash might mutilate the women she’d questioned today.
Braddock went on, “That’s how he sets an example for the rest. I don’t want to watch your body get stuffed into a bag and then heaved onto a gurney.”
Focus. Think logically. Not emotionally. “First ...” She took a breath. “How do you know what I’ve discussed with my patients? Have you been sitting outside questioning them?” The idea made her want to slap his smug face. “Or did you order Jenkins to do it?” He was young, handsome. Jenkins could easily have charmed the ladies who’d been in and out of here today.
Braddock shook his head. “I didn’t have to ask. I got more than one phone call filling me in on your interrogation tactics.”
“You have informants here?” If that was the case, why didn’t he know what had happened to Shelley? Someone here had to know. Oh, wait. Of course he had sources here. That was how he’d been using Shelley.
“That’s right, CJ.” He stepped back, took a breath. “I actually do my job. I’ve spent two years developing informants in the village.”
“Then what’s the holdup? One of them surely knows who killed my sister?”
“I wish it was that simple.” He held up a hand when she would have launched her next tirade. “It’s very possible that one or more knows exactly what happened. But they’re afraid to talk. This is the kind of thing that could get them killed.”
“You mean the way it got Shelley killed?”
Braddock turned away from her. He ran his fingers through his hair. She recognized what he was doing: working to temper his anger and come up with the right thing to say to get her off his back.
Not going to happen.
Finally he settled his gaze on hers once more. “What’s it going to take to get you to trust me?”
She laughed. Couldn’t help herself. “I’m never going to trust you again, Braddock. All I want from you is for you to find the person who murdered my sister.”
His expression shifted from frustrated to grim. “What did you learn today?” He set that dark gaze on hers. “Quid pro quo, Doc.”
She hated when he called her that. The last couple of times she’d come home—after their fledgling relationship was over—he’d called her that just to make her angry and frustrated. Mainly because she knew he meant it disrespectfully. “That Tyrone Nash mentally and physically abuses the women who work for him, and when that doesn’t work anymore, he kills them.”
“That’s right,” Braddock agreed. “But we don’t have any evidence linking him to a single murder. So we wait, we watch, we question, until we find the link we need.”
She shook her head. “Tyrone is not that smart. There has to be something you’re missing,Detective.”
“Six,” he said.
