AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Bradley nodded and the four made their way toward the back of the precinct to one of the more spacious meeting rooms. Harris pulled out a chair for Bradley and sat across from him.
Cassie wasn’t sure what to do. “Should I go, or—”
“Sit,” Harris said. “Stay, please.”
“I’ll grab us some waters.” David backed out of the room.
“Mr. Baker, was it?” Harris asked.
“Doctor,” Baker said, shifting in his seat. “Dr. Baker. Call me Bradley.”
“My name is Adelaide,” Harris said. “And this is Cassie.”
Bradley looked between the two of them and smiled. “You must think I’m nuts.”
“Not at all,” Harris said. “But I will say we already have a suspect in custody.”
“Is it Langford?” Bradley sat up straighter when he saw the shock on Harris’s face. “I knew it. Jesus Christ. I knew it. I should’ve said something sooner.”
“Whoa, whoa, hang on,” Harris said. “Let’s start at the beginning, okay?”
David returned with the waters and set them in the middle of the table and retreated to the corner of the room and leaning against the wall.
“The beginning,” Bradley said. “Okay. Well, I work with Dr. Richard Langford at Candler Hospital. I didn’t know him in school, but we started at Candler at the same time. We’ve worked together for, uh, some years. I’m sorry, I can’t—I can’t remember how long.”
“It’s okay,” Harris said. “Take a deep breath. Drink some water. There’s no rush here, okay? Get through it in your own time.”
Bradley nodded and grabbed one of the water bottles. This new side of Harris surprised Cassie. She was calm and compassionate. This was the side she showed when she talked to victims and their families. The side of her that cared about people. The side that remembered why she did this job in the first place.
Bradley drank half the bottle of water. He screwed the top back on and placed it on the table. “Richard Langford and I have known each other for, oh, I’d say, six or seven years. I wouldn’t call us friends, but there’s no outward animosity between us. We didn’t socialize, and if we had to work together, we kept it professional.”
“Sounds like a decent work colleague,” Harris encouraged.
“I’ve had worse.” Bradley laughed, but not for long. “Langford can be a bit of a dick, to be honest. I learned to steer clear of him and he left me alone. I know he was cheating on his girlfriend with a couple different nurses at the hospital.”
“Did you know his girlfriend?”
“I’d seen her at the hospital a couple of times. She’d bring him dinner once in a while when we worked late. She seemed sweet, but we never talked. Langford complained about her all the time, but I took it with a grain of salt. I doubted half of what he said was true. The rest of it was probably blown out of proportion. And one day, I noticed she had disappeared.”
“Did that surprise you?” Harris asked.
Bradley shook his head. “Not really. He played the part for a couple days but seemed to get over it rather quickly. It didn’t sit right with me, but people grieve in their own way. And I hoped maybe she dropped him, you know? Got out of a bad situation.”
Harris’s eyebrows knit together. “According to Langford, they got into a fight and she fell down the stairs. He covered up the accident and made it look like she left town.”
“Oh.” Bradley stared at an imaginary spot on the conference table. “That’s too bad. She seemed sweet.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Harris continued, her voice gentle, “but I don’t think you’re here to talk about Lucy, are you?”
Bradley cleared his throat and took another drink of water. “No. About a month ago, I noticed he was distracted. He’s a good doctor, but his bedside manner has always sucked. He went off on a couple of patients and a few nurses, but nothing major. Most people figured he was still grieving.”
“But not you?”
“He stole some things from the hospital,” Bradley said. “One of them was a bone saw. I saw him take it. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I thought maybe he was selling tools on the side. Like, maybe he had gotten in with some bad people and he was doing anything he could to make extra money.”
“That could’ve explained his girlfriend’s disappearance, too,” Harris offered.
“I didn’t know for sure.” Bradley’s eyes were wide. “I didn’t have any evidence and I didn’t want to accuse him—”
