Free For Everything a Reason by Paul Cave Page A

could
improvise and get yourself another wad of cash.” The lines at his eyes abruptly
disappeared as his face became serious. “Now, either take the fucking thing, or
get the fuck out of my sight. I ain’t got time for two-bit losers.”
     

 
    Chapter
Eleven
     
     
    Detectives Tyler and Carter arrived at the crime scene.
Three white jumpsuits moved around the tiny room, each completing their tasks,
before moving out, arms laden with sealed bags and plastic cartons. The
forensics investigators vacated the room, the last bidding the detectives to
enter. Carter moved over to the dead man’s bed. Tyler joined him on the
opposite side.
    Carter looked down at the old
man’s body. “So who’ve we got?”
    Tyler took a pair of latex
gloves from her pocket, slipped them on and then reached out to take the chart
from the foot of the bed. The clipboard was covered in white powdery swirls,
some large, others small, but all the potential signature of a killer.
    “Mr. Henry Jones,” Tyler said.
“Aged eighty-six. Suffering from chronic pneumonia, which had become
untreatable - according to this, and the hospital were simply doing their best
to make him feel comfortable.”
    “Right,” Carter nodded. “So
they must have had him on a steady drip of morphine?”
    Tyler took a moment. “Yes, here
it is. He was being administered 10cc’s every hour, automatically.” She turned
her head to examine the pump at her side. It was nothing special, just a
cream-coloured plastic box, which had a clear tube running into it at the top,
and a similar tube out the bottom. A small dial at one side had a range of
measurements and speeds, which would invariably feed the morphine at the
desired rate required. Again, forensics had been busy powdering down the
instrument. The bag of morphine that must have been hanging from the stand
behind the pump had gone, and she guessed that forensics had bagged and tagged
it.
    Carter took a clear bag from
his pocket. The short note that Joseph had written earlier was held inside.
“According to Ruebins, the old man said, ‘they wouldn’t dare touch him now’?”
    “Maybe he meant the hospital
staff?” Tyler offered.
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning, they may have
manhandled him a little – you know, a nurse having a bad day, consulting
physician too busy wondering how he was going to explain to his wife the
presence of an unknown receipt for a hotel they hadn’t stayed in, or a relative
who couldn’t wait to be rid of the old man.”
    “Okay, that almost fits his
next comment. ‘That ‘they’ thought they ran the whole show’.”
    “See, he’s probably referring
to the staff. Hospital’s can be somewhat abrupt, especially the expensive type
– types that run to the tune of profits and turnover.”
    “So you think he means a doctor
or nurse? Maybe they wanted their bed back, sooner rather than later. For
another paying customer?”
    Tyler shrugged. “Can’t be too
certain about anything. Too early to say.”
    “Yeah,” Carter agreed. “But
what about his comment about ‘insurance’ or ‘his secret’?”
    “The guy was at death’s door.
Who knows what he meant? He was so high on morphine. Would we be as concerned
if he’d expressed a wish to fly away with the pixies?”
    Carter’s lips almost curled
into a smile – almost.
    Tyler said, “When we’re done,
I’ll get a full list of all his visitors since he arrived, and see if anything
stands out. You know, a distant relative, here watching over their favourite
uncle or grandfather, eagerly awaiting their cut of his or her inheritance.”
    “Hang on.” Carter returned his
attention to Joseph’s note. “Says here, he did make a couple of references to
his ‘inheritance’.”
    “Exactly,” Tyler agreed. “We’ve
both seen the Jerry Springer Show, right? And how many times have some family
of hicks been duped out of their inheritance – only to find out that their
recently deceased loved one willed all of it to their