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She thought of some of the projects that she needed done around her house. “Maybe I need a husband, too. And don’t say husbands need husbands.”
Martinez leaned a hip against her desk. “I just got off the phone with Milo Gibbs’s attorney.”
“He’s already lawyered-up?”
“I think Vera found the guy. In her church, no less. Anyway, it’s been hinted that Gibbs is probably going to talk. Work with us. Try to come up with a deal to avoid a long sentence.”
“Maybe we don’t need a deal. There’s a good chance we can figure this out ourselves.”
“Of course, we can, but I’m talking about saving time.”
“Take a look at this.” She pulled up a picture on her computer screen. “It’s the fake driver’s license for Brandon Hall.”
Martinez looked over her shoulder. “Uh-huh.”
“And here”—she clicked the mouse, and another image came up—“this is Oliver Hedges’s second son, the one who survived. He’s got a beard now, but . . .” She hit a few more keys, and the screen changed. “I did some digging, and here’s a shot of him twenty years ago, with no facial hair.”
“Brandon Hall in the flesh.”
“I think so, and the same initials? Both BH? Not very clever. But then he wasn’t the smart one. OH2, the older brother, went to Stanford, but this guy”—she tapped a finger at the image on the monitor—“bombed out at a junior college.”
“But he survived.”
“Trouble was, from what I understand, OH2, the oldest son, thought he was smarter than everyone else, but . . .”
“He’s the one who died.”
“Apparent heart attack, and the family didn’t ask for an autopsy. Nor was anyone in the P.D. interested at that time, so the body was released and he was cremated.”
“You’re thinking he was killed?”
She lifted a shoulder as she heard a cell phone ringing in a nearby office. “An awful lot of people associated with Oliver Hedges have been murdered, so it’s a big question mark. I’ve got a call into OH2’s wife, you know, Marilee? The woman who married both father and son? Waiting to hear back from her.”
“That should be interesting.”
“Very.” She smiled thinly, then drained her cup. “Conveniently, she lives in Las Vegas. As does the rest of the clan. OH Industries is located, for the most part, in Southern California, but they have on-site managers and run the company from Vegas, only show up at the offices a couple of times a month.”
“Okay.”
“I think we can interview them. Get to the bottom of this without Gibbs’s confession.”
“It might make things easier.”
“Do we really need to give this scumbag a break? He murdered two people for sure, attempted two more, possibly three, if you lump Jade Kim in with Remmi Storm and Noah Scott. How does he think he’s got any wiggle room?”
“A deal would avoid the cost of a trial.”
She knew that, of course, but it bugged her. She didn’t want to think of Gibbs getting anything less than the worst sentence possible. It killed her to be practical, but she grudgingly asked, “Does he have any other bargaining chips?”
“He thinks so. Claims he was an assassin for hire, and he’ll give up names if he gets a deal. We pushed, and he did admit this much: way back, twenty years ago, he was working two ends against the middle.”
“Meaning what?”
“He was hired by Didi first. Apparently, once she swapped the first baby, the girl, for the bucks, Gibbs was supposed to get the kid back from Hedges. The baby was dressed in blue to look like a boy, but Didi knew he wanted a son even more, so she was going to make another play. But the old man got wind that something was up—maybe from Shawna Whitman is my guess—so he overbid Didi and hired Gibbs to make it look like Brett died. How? By killing a guy about the same size as Brett Hedges, in this case a homeless man Gibbs found at random.”
“So, that was all for Didi’s benefit? Because Brett Hedges is alive and well and living in Las Vegas.”
“That’s what Gibbs says. They wanted her to believe Brett was dead. But everything went haywire when Noah Scott showed up in the desert, and Didi double-crossed Hedges.”
