Claiming His Family Page 7

  Dex sank to the bed and let the phone fall into his lap.

  Alyson scrambled across the bed to his side. She grasped his arm. “What happened? What did he say?”

  Dex looked at her. His mind raced, searching for an answer he could give. An answer he could accept.

  “What did he say, Dex?” Alyson’s eyes widened with fear. “Did he say something about Patrick?”

  Dex managed to shake his head. “Not Patrick. Mylinski.”

  Alyson gasped. “He found out Al located Connie Rasula?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he do?”

  Images bombarded him. Mylinski’s bloody body in a ditch. Or charred beyond recognition in his car. Or lying in a Dumpster with a slit throat. Dex gritted his teeth. He’d had it with guessing games. He needed answers. He punched Al’s cell number into the phone.

  Alyson watched him, her bottom lip clamped between her teeth, her fingers digging into the flesh of his arm.

  The phone rang in Dex’s ear. No answer.

  He disconnected the call, punched in 9-1-1 and turned to Alyson. “Get dressed. Hurry.”

  DEX PACED the floor of the ICU waiting room. He and Alyson had reached Mylinski’s house just as the paramedics had carried Al Mylinski out of the front door on a stretcher. They’d found him in bed, shot several times through a nearby window. He’d been bleeding badly, barely clinging to life when he’d reached the hospital. The doctors had rushed him into surgery. Now there was nothing they could do but wait.

  And pray.

  “It’s not your fault, Dex. You know that, don’t you?” Alyson’s voice washed over him.

  He’d felt her eyes on him since the moment they’d discovered exactly what Smythe had done to Mylinski. She’d been trying to read his thoughts, to gauge his emotions. She needn’t bother. “You might as well save your breath. It’s not going to work.”

  “What isn’t going to work?”

  “Your attempt to keep me from feeling guilty. I should have asked the police to discontinue the search for Connie Rasula the moment Smythe made his demands.”

  “How do you know they would have done what you asked? What reason would you have given them?”

  She had a point. As district attorney he worked in partnership with the police, but he wasn’t exactly in a position to give orders. And he couldn’t have told Mylinski’s superiors about Patrick, not without involving the sheriff’s department, a move that would have raised Smythe’s ire tenfold. “I should have done something. If I had, Mylinski wouldn’t be fighting for his life now. I can’t fool myself.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I just think you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

  He gritted his teeth and kept up his relentless pace. If anything was worse than his own guilt echoing in his ears, it was Alyson’s charity. “Listen, I appreciate you trying to support me, but I don’t need it.”

  “I think you do. You just don’t want to take it.”

  Maybe not. Maybe it reminded him too much of the support and love and trust he’d once thought was between them. Maybe it made him want to believe those things could be between them again. “I’ll be fine. It’s Mylinski you should be worrying about. Not me.”

  Footsteps approached from down the hall. Dex spun in the direction of the sound. A young-looking man in blue scrubs stepped into the waiting room. Circles hung under the man’s wide brown eyes, making them look as droopy as a bloodhound’s. He leveled a serious stare on Dex. “Are you waiting to hear about Alfred Mylinski?”

  Dex stepped toward the doctor. “How is he? Will he live?”

  Alyson stepped up next to Dex. She slipped her palm in his and held on. Her skin was warm and soft, and Dex felt a surge of strength from her grip in spite of himself.

  The doctor glanced from Dex to Alyson and back again. “Mr. Mylinski is in rough shape. He took three bullets to the chest. They seem to have missed vital organs, but he’s lost a lot of blood. He made it through surgery, but I’m afraid we won’t know anything more for a while.”

  “When can I talk to him?”

  “I don’t know how coherent he’ll be.”

  “I need to talk to him. It’s important.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket and showed the doctor his D.A. shield and identification.

  The doctor nodded. “All right.” He turned and walked down the hall in the direction he had come.

  Dex followed hard on the doctor’s heels. Alyson fell into step beside him. They strode down the gleaming tile floor and entered the ICU.

  A row of rooms set off by sliding-glass doors flanked each side of the long hall. In the center, nurses stood behind a long desk, eyes on machines monitoring patients in various stages of critical condition. The doctor slid open one of the doors and led them inside.

  Al Mylinski was not a small man, but he looked small in the sea of white sheets. Tubes snaked from his arms, hooking him to an IV bag and various monitors. A clear oxygen tube threaded under his nose.

  Dex opened and closed his fists by his sides. It seemed unreal to see Al Mylinski this way. Since Dex had first met him, he’d always been strong, able, with a crooked smile on his lips and a wry sense of humor twinkling in his eyes. A far cry from this shell of a man barely grasping life.

  Alyson stepped close to the bed and laid her hand on Mylinski’s, careful not to dislodge tubes. She stroked her fingers over the detective’s skin. “Al.”

  Dex forced his feet to step up next to her. He bent over the still form. “Al? Can you hear me?”

  Mylinski’s eyes fluttered but remained closed.

  “It’s Dex. I need to talk to you.”

  His parched lips opened slightly. “Dex.”

  “What happened?”

  “Got shot.”

  “I can see that. Did you see who shot you?”

  “Asleep. Guess I should have worn Kevlar pajamas.”

  Dex couldn’t help but smile. Here was the Mylinski he knew. Mere bullets couldn’t diminish that sense of humor.

  Mylinski opened his eyes for a second, then closed them again. “Hey, Alyson.”

  Tears sparkled in the corners of Alyson’s eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Hang in there, Al.”

  His face grimaced. “Trying.”

  “It was Smythe.” Dex couldn’t keep the snarl out of his voice when he pronounced the scum’s name. “He called after he shot you. He found out you were looking for Connie Rasula.”

  Al tried to nod, the attempt ending in a painful grimace. “Did you find her? Did you talk to her?”

  “She was dead. Raped and murdered on the deck outside her home.”

  “Smythe is covering his tracks.”

  “Any word on Jennifer Scott?”

  “Found a large deposit in her bank account.”

  “So Smythe may have paid her to disappear.”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Wherever she went, she didn’t take the money with her.”

  Dread gripped Dex’s shoulders like a cold hand. After seeing firsthand the way Smythe had paid Connie Rasula for helping him, he didn’t hold out much hope for Jennifer Scott. That is, if the scientist had actually helped Smythe. “Did you try to trace the money? Do we know if it came from Smythe?”

  “Working on it. Don’t know yet.” Mylinski’s eyes fluttered. He took a labored breath. “Even if it came from him, might not be able to prove it.”

  Alyson grasped Dex’s arm, her touch gentle but firm. “He needs to rest.”

  Dex nodded. She was right. Mylinski needed all his strength to hang on to life. The detective couldn’t help. Not until he recovered. And by then it might be too late. “One more thing, then I’ll let you sleep.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”

  Mylinski tried to shake his head, the movement ending in a grimace. “You couldn’t have kept me away.” Jaw growing slack, he slipped back into a morphine sleep.

  Dex stood at his be
dside, listening to the beeps and whirs of monitors and watching Mylinski’s chest rise and fall with each breath.

  Alyson released Mylinski’s fingers and placed her hand on Dex’s arm, holding him, supporting him, the way she had since they’d watched the paramedics load the detective into the ambulance. In the waiting room he’d told her he didn’t want her support. That he didn’t need it. But standing here, feeling her touch, smelling her gentle scent so near, knowing she was beside him, seemed to fill a void inside him. A void he didn’t know existed.

  Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

  She looked up at him, scanning his face. “Let’s check on the results of that E.D.T.A. test. Jennifer might not have helped Smythe. Her disappearance might not have anything to do with him. And if she didn’t help him, someone else did.”

  DEX STARED at the analysis Alyson handed him. Leaning on the edge of her desk in the DNA lab, he felt the now familiar sensation of his heart fluttering into double time as he looked at the piece of paper. “Insignificant amounts of E.D.T.A.”

  Alyson moved close and peered at the report. “The blood under Connie Rasula’s fingernails was fresh.”

  “So if the money in Jennifer Scott’s account came from Smythe, it wasn’t to pay her for smuggling blood from the crime lab.” He was relieved at the thought. He’d always thought the criminal justice system was run by the good guys—from beat cops to lab technicians to attorneys.

  At least he’d believed that until he’d discovered Fitz’s dirty secrets.

  It felt good to know that in this case, the source of the blood under Connie Rasula’s fingernails—the blood that had sprung Andrew Clarke Smythe from prison—wasn’t an employee of the crime lab. He only hoped that didn’t mean the corruption had come from another agency. His.

  “Do you think the story she told Valerie about the Smythe Pharmaceuticals job could have been just that, a story?” Alyson asked.

  He looked up from the paper, tension tightening the knot in his gut once again. “I don’t like coincidences. Not where Smythe is concerned.”

  Alyson nodded. “Jennifer could have been involved with helping Smythe some other way. Some way that didn’t entail smuggling blood from the crime lab.”

  “Sounds possible. Any ideas?”

  “She might have told him how to fake the rape.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “She used to volunteer for evidence collection.”

  “Evidence collection? I thought she was a chemist.”

  “Some of the people who work here volunteer to be on call to process crime scenes for jurisdictions that don’t have their own crime scene units. I never used to because I always wanted to spend more time with you.”

  He remembered those times. Times they’d spent working together on remodeling his house until late into the night. Times she’d appear at his office after he’d had a hard day in court and cajole him into enjoying dinner with her instead of just grabbing a sandwich from a vending machine. Times they spent all evening and night in bed with no thoughts of anything but each other. Dex shifted uncomfortably. “So she could tell Smythe exactly how to stage a crime scene.”

  “Or maybe she staged it herself.”

  “I doubt it. There were a number of mistakes in the scene itself. Mistakes an experienced crime scene technician probably wouldn’t make.”

  Curiosity sparked in Alyson’s eyes. “What kind of mistakes?”

  “There was no evidence that Ms. Rasula was chloroformed, for one thing. Even though she insisted she was, her blood test came back clean. All of Smythe’s assaults were blitz-style attacks. He sneaked up on his victim and covered her nose and mouth with chloroform.”

  “That’s how he attacked me.”

  Anger surged through Dex’s bloodstream at the thought of Smythe touching Alyson. He clenched his fingers tightly on the E.D.T.A. report and tried to stifle his rage. “And that’s how Connie Rasula should have been attacked if the same perpetrator committed all the rapes. We should have seen evidence to back up her claims.”

  Alyson nodded. “I guess he didn’t pay her enough.”

  “Or the person who set up the scene didn’t know the importance of making the attack appear to be like the others.”

  “Which leaves Jennifer out.”

  “So it seems.”

  “She still could have told him how to do it. Or at least she could have given him the idea. That would be enough reason to offer her the job at Smythe Pharmaceuticals.”

  “And enough reason to make her disappear. Unfortunately the only way we can learn what her role was is to ask her.” Silence hung between Dex and Alyson like a pall. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, the chances of Jennifer Scott being alive were slim and growing slimmer.

  “So we’re back to his prison visitors. I was hoping not to have to face another scandal in the district attorney’s office.” The reference was out of his mouth before he could censor it. At one time he’d used allusions to her father to lash out at her, to pay her back for the choice she’d made—a choice that broke his heart. But now he wanted to bite back the words. Alyson had suffered enough. The last thing he wanted was to cause her more pain. He ran his fingers down her arm in an attempt to apologize for the blunder.

  Alyson set her chin and met his eyes, as if determined not to let him see her flinch. “I can’t believe John Cohen would do something like that, no matter how burned out and cynical he’s become.”

  Dex had to force himself not to nod in agreement. He couldn’t believe it, either. But then, he hadn’t been able to believe a lot of things over the years, and all of those things had come back to bite him. “John was the only one with access to Smythe in prison. He’s the most likely candidate.”

  “What about Smythe’s defense attorney?”

  Lee Runyon. Dex nodded slowly. He’d love to believe Runyon was Smythe’s lackey. It would be much easier than coming to terms with the alternative: that his office was as corrupt as Neil Fitzroy’s. And that once again reality had fallen far short of his perception.

  Pushing himself up from the edge of Alyson’s desk, he handed the test results back to her. “Maybe it’s time we have a chat with Lee Runyon.”

  ALYSON HELD ON to her visor with one hand and the dash of the golf cart with the other. Dex sat beside her, piloting the cart through the twists and turns of the asphalt path. They’d tried to contact Runyon at his office downtown with no luck. He wasn’t in. And he wasn’t in court. That left only one place he could be. At a golf course.

  It hadn’t taken long to track him to University Ridge Golf Course on the far west side of town. The course was scenic, prestigious, and the tee fees were high. The logical place for a man like Runyon.

  Alyson tried to shuck the tremor of nerves in her stomach. She didn’t know Runyon well. Except for being cross-examined by him in court, she’d only seen him at a handful of her father’s political functions. But what she knew of him hadn’t endeared him to her. He struck her as a pompous man. One who liked to wear his wealth on his sleeve to make himself feel more important.

  She spotted him right away on the seventh-hole green. The bright sunlight glared off his bald head as he lined up his putt. She pointed in his direction.

  Dex swung the cart off the path. They bumped over the rough. Finally he came to a stop near the green and turned off the ignition. He turned to Alyson. “Well, here goes. Just follow my lead.”

  She nodded and climbed from the vehicle. She had no problem following Dex’s lead. Especially where Runyon was concerned. The man reminded her of a bulldog—so homely he was cute until he sank those crooked teeth into your flesh. She’d felt those teeth more than once in the witness box while testifying about DNA evidence in a case. She didn’t relish the thought of feeling his bite today. Not when she needed so much to find something, anything, that would lead them to Patrick. “I’m right behind you.”

  Dex strode across the grass and onto the green. His strides were even, h
is head held high. The picture of strength and confidence. A warrior who wouldn’t be denied his victory.

  Spirits buoying, she walked at his side. Runyon wouldn’t know what hit him until it was too late.

  With one smooth swing, Runyon sank his ball. When he stooped to scoop it out of the hole, his dark gaze landed on Dex and Alyson. “Well, what do we have here? I would think the district attorney’s office and the crime lab would be too busy saving the world from big, bad criminals for the two of you to be out on the fairway this afternoon.”

  Dex shot him an all-business stare. “I need to have a word with you.”

  Runyon glanced at his golf partners. “Why don’t you go on to the next hole? You could use the head start. I’m tired of standing around waiting.”

  With a bit of grumbling and a few insults tossed back at Runyon, the men gathered their clubs and sauntered on.

  Runyon turned his hawklike eyes on Dex. “So, what is this about, Harrington? I sure hope it’s not something that could have waited until I was back in the office tomorrow.”

  “When was the last time you talked to Andrew Smythe?”

  “Ah. The Smythe pardon. I should have known that’s what you’d want to talk about. I told you when we tried that case that you wouldn’t win in the end. You really should have listened to me, you know.”

  Dex stared at him with a poker face. “When was the last time, Runyon?”

  “I don’t know. Ask my secretary. She does the billing.”

  “Did you know he’s suspected of committing a rape and murder up in Minocqua?”

  “No. But I’m sure if the cops up there had any solid evidence against Andy, I’d be up north right now seeing that his rights aren’t trampled instead of enjoying this lovely June day on the course.”

  “Just wait,” Alyson threatened. “The crime lab hasn’t had time to complete the DNA testing.”

  Runyon shifted his eyes to her. “Would that be the same DNA testing that proved there is another man out there with identical DNA committing rapes while my client was behind bars?”