Bad Medicine by Eileen Dreyer Read Free Book Online Page A

honestly.
    Actually, his name was John. John Jason Butler. But back when he'd been a uniform, the women had started calling him Rhett, and it had stuck. Why, Molly wasn't sure. A more unlikely Rhett Butler, she'd never seen. This one was middle-sized, middle height, with thinning brown hair over a high forehead and a face that had been arrested at about age thirteen. It was said down at homicide that Rhett had an almost perfect confession rate, because even the nastiest mopes ended up trusting those guileless brown eyes. Rhett enthusiastically sported the trappings of office; ubiquitous police detective mustache, limp gray suit, and snap brim hat. None of it did squat to make him look like anything but a kid.
    Sizing up the uncomfortable detective as he would have an underperforming employee, Sam finally pulled his hand free from Molly to dispose of his cigarette. It landed along with several others in a clump of dandelions. "Well, young Mr. Butler," he chastised, "we Jews have a saying."
    Molly fought another smile. Jewish mothers, more likely.
    "I apologize," Rhett immediately responded, obviously well acquainted with that tone of voice. "I wouldn't interrupt if it weren't important."
    "Rhett here missed at least one autopsy this morning," Molly explained as if Rhett were a recalcitrant kindergartner. Technically, Rhett was not expected to sit in on the autopsy of a suicide. That didn't mean he wouldn't have questions about it, though.
    "It was unavoidable," he protested.
    Molly still didn't face him. "And, if I'm any judge of character—and I am—"
    Sam nodded, Molly nodded, and Rhett squirmed out in the August heat in his brand-new homicide suit with half the neighborhood watching him.
    "The chief medical examiner will not now return his calls about what she found on said autopsy. Correct, Detective?"
    The detective looked as if he wanted to crawl in with the cigarette butts. "I tried to explain."
    "You don't explain to the chief medical examiner," Molly said. "It makes her even more angry."
    "So then she isn't talking to either of you," Sam concluded.
    Molly nodded. "Exactly. Which is why I'm going to help this young man."
    Ten minutes later Molly saw Rhett's eyes widen as he stepped into her entry hall. She caught him sizing up the original Hoppers and Rembrandt sketches, the gleaming woodwork and pristine eggshell walls and high white ceilings. She imagined what he thought and ignored it, just as she would anyone else. Instead, she walked through to the kitchen with its red tile counters and windowsills of African violets and old green bottles, and she poured them glasses of iced tea. Then she led him out to the back patio, where the catalpa trees whispered in an afternoon breeze and the goldfish circled lazily in her little pond.
    Rhett didn't look any more settled on the black wrought-iron chair than he would have on the Chippendale settee in the living room.
    "This is..."
    Molly settled into the chair across from him and began picking dead buds from the hot pink impatiens and purple pansies that filled the planters. "Something else," she obliged for him.
    "Nice," he corrected, yanking at his tie.
    Molly knew it was unfair to make him sit out in the heat. There was no way she was going to discuss suicide inside that house, though.
    "So," she said, "you caught both Tyrell and Pearl?"
    Rhett's attention was all hers. "Just my lucky night. I got more press on my ass than Madonna, and not a damn thing to sing."
    "Got anybody on Tyrell yet?"
    He shook his head. "Looks like North Side Posse, but no IDs. How's his mother?"
    Molly sighed and rubbed at her own tired eyes. "You tell me. He was the third son she's lost."
    For a minute they both paused, the only tribute time afforded a little boy. Afforded a family shattered on the stones of violence. And then, dispassionately and clinically, Molly told Rhett the findings of the autopsy. She told him that Tyrell had not bled to death, had not drowned in his own blood. She told