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“No one’s blaming you. You couldn’t have known. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Harris waited until Bradley nodded reluctantly. “What made you recall the bone saw?”
“The news,” Bradley said. “Something wasn’t adding up. I looked at his schedule and noticed he had one of the nurses move his shifts around. For all four murders, he wasn’t working the previous night. He was off every single time.”
“You did the right thing coming to us,” Harris said. “And I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that you were right. We caught Langford in the act and he’s in custody.”
“Good.” Bradley swallowed hard. “Good.”
The silence stretched on until David was the one to break it. “Why don’t you seem reassured?”
Bradley took another large gulp of water. “Well, see, I don’t think he was working alone.”
Cassie and David exchanged looks, but Harris kept her eyes on the man across from her. “Why’s that?”
“Because.” Bradley looked at each one of them, redirecting to Detective Harris. “My father, William Baker, had something to do with it, too.”
Thirty-Seven
The room was dead silent for a solid thirty seconds. Harris sat up and placed her hands on the table. She seemed almost too calm for the current situation.
“What makes you say that?” Harris sounded stern.
Bradley took a deep breath, held it for the count of three, and let it out in one large rush. “My father and I aren’t close, but we do see each other about once a month or so and have for the las
t three years. Ever since he had his first heart attack.”
Cassie couldn’t help the little “oh” that escaped her mouth.
“Yeah.” Bradley ran a hand through his hair. “Look, this is going to sound nuts—”
“It won’t.” Harris glanced at Cassie. “Trust me when I say this case has challenged my own perception of reality. I’ll give anything a chance at this point. Tell us your story and we’ll figure out what it all means in the end, okay?”
“My father and I aren’t close,” Bradley repeated. “We never have been. He’s the stereotypical man’s man and I was always more sensitive than he wanted me to be. As soon as I turned 18, I left home and decided to become a doctor. I think it was the first time he was proud of me. Of course, I saw being a doctor as a way to help people. He saw it as a path to earn respect and wield power. But I didn’t care about power. I wanted to travel the world and cure people in remote villages. Help the people who were always overlooked.”
“That sounds like a good dream to follow,” Harris offered.
Bradley’s smile was tight. “Well, my father didn’t think so. He thought it was a waste of time. He wanted me to work in New York City and earn loads of money. He didn’t want me to waste my inheritance on people he thought would be better off dead anyway.”
“So, you had a falling out?”
“For about eight years,” Bradley said. “Then three years ago, he had his first heart attack. My parents are divorced but my mom is still his beneficiary. They called her when he was in the hospital and of course, she called me. I visited him a few times, but it was hard. He couldn’t understand why he was having a heart attack. He was healthy. Athletic, even. Not pushing seventy yet. I tried to tell him that sometimes that’s how the dice are rolled. Genetics could play a huge part in it.”
“How did he take that?”
“Not well.” Bradley laughed, but it was cold. “He went crazy. Went through doctors like candy. If one wouldn’t give him what he wanted, he found another. Started getting into holistic medicine. He started looking…elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Harris asked.
Cassie’s skin pricked.
“My dad inherited a lot of money when my grandfather died. After my parents divorced, my dad went off the deep end. Became a recluse. I don’t know how he lived when I wasn’t talking to him, but it wouldn’t take a doctor to see that something was off about him. It got worse after he had his first couple heart attacks. He started taking flights all around the world, looking for anyone who could cure him.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” David interrupted, “but modern medicine can do wonders these days. Having a heart attack today isn’t like having one fifty years ago.”
“You’re right,” Bradley said. “We have devices that’ll regulate your heartbeat. We can put in stents to help keep arteries open. Hell, we can take a healthy heart out of a person who’s passed on and put it in a different person.”
“But none of that was good enough for your father?” David asked.
“Apparently not. He wanted a cure, not a temporary fix. He kept having heart attacks and doctors kept saving his life. But every time he walked out of the hospital, he’d start ranting and raving about finding a way to live forever.”
