Free Time Clock Hero by Spikes Donovan Page A

removed a trifold packet.  He threw it on the table in front of Phoenix.  “Read it – I want you to know why I’m going to kill you.”
    Phoenix, with his eyes still glued on Sam’s face, picked up the document and slowly unfolded it.  He looked down.  “So, she’s leaving everything to me.  Wait a minute.  Seventeen million dollars and her condo in South Miami? She must’ve thought I was gay.”  He looked back up when he heard a click.  Sam Cotton had pulled back the hammer of his chrome forty-four.
    “Before you kill me, Mr. Cotton, I want to tell you that the missing persons’ cases, and that’s persons plural, by the way, has just been ratcheted up a notch.”
    Sam got up and walked closer to Phoenix.  He stopped just to the right of Phoenix, about a foot away, and put the barrel of the pistol up against his right temple.  “That’s easy to say when you’ve just been willed a fortune and somebody’s pointing a gun at your head.”
    “Okay, Sam,” Phoenix said.  “She tried, but she could never bring herself to do it – and it wasn’t any of my doing, either.  She was the one, Sam.  Now, does that make you happy?”
    “You killed her, Detective Malone – if there’s a will, there’s a---”
    “Then there’s a body that’s about to show up.  I got that.  But I will tell you that, after I talked with her doctor, things started getting funny.”  Phoenix quietly lifted his left foot and pushed over one of the chairs.  Sam Cotton turned just enough to take his eyes off Phoenix.  Phoenix ducked, backhanded the pistol from Sam’s hand with his right, feeling the pain of a cut on his knuckles, and he punched Sam in the crotch with his left. 
    Sam doubled over, reached down, and started falling backwards until Phoenix stood up and grabbed him by the lapels.  He steadied him and waited while Sam composed himself, and then he walked him gently back to the chair and set him down.  He picked up the pistol, heavy and chrome with ivory handles, and he admired it for a second or two before sitting back down.
    Sam, still in agony, put his head down in his hands and took several deep breaths.  He started to recover a minute later.  He sat up, straightened out his dark green jacket, and he reached up and checked his yellow tie.
    “Now, if you’d let me finish,” Phoenix said.  “Lucky for Roxy and me, we never did anything – can’t say I wasn’t hoping for it.”
    Sam just sat there looking at Phoenix.
    “I’d questioned her about the disappearance of a friend of hers, and that’s when everything started happening.  Her friend---”
    “That would be Lisa Dobbs,” Sam said.
    “Yes, Lisa Dobbs.  She and your wife have the same doctor.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Lisa had been to see him the day of her disappearance.  Roxy told me she and Lisa were supposed to have lunch, but that Lisa never showed up, which is not something Lisa does.  I called the good doctor, Doctor Marshall, and made an appointment.  I showed up and I interviewed him.  He seemed clean to me.  But Roxy goes in the next day and she disappears.  I go back and the office is empty.”
    Sam shook his head; tears began to form in his eyes.
    “And if it’s any consolation to you, Sam, I had to shoot my wife today,” Phoenix said.  “Right now, I’m numb and I’m angry – and I want to find out who messed her up.  After I do, you can shoot me.”  Phoenix looked at the pistol and spun it around on the table. When it stopped, the end of the barrel was pointing in his direction.  He gave the gun back to Sam, handing it to him, grips first.
    Sam Cotton seemed to come around slowly, the glare in his eyes giving way to a slack, dull expression.  After fidgeting with the gun, he flipped it over and looked at it.  Then he set it down carefully on some of the papers scattered on the desk.  “I could never have done it – not in a thousand years.”
    “You say you couldn’t,” Phoenix said.