When No One Is Watching by Hayes Joseph Read Free Book Online Page A

prospect of watching every pitch on his new high-definition TV, one of the few luxuries he permitted himself.
    By the third inning, Slazak realized that one of his passions was interfering with the other. He was watching every pitch, but he was distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about the car wreck he’d been called to the previous night. He couldn’t shake the rage he felt at that hotshot lawyer who had almost killed Terry McGrath and left two young children without a father. Yet something else was distracting him, too—a nagging sense of duty that was telling him he should be investigating the incident right now. Witnesses needed to be interviewed while events were still fresh, before their memories became fuzzy and before they had a chance to concoct some other version of what had happened.
    Slazak picked up the old Titleist golf ball on the table beside him and began tossing it softly from one hand to the other as he stared at the TV. It was an old habit. When the wheels began turning in his mind, he tossed the golf ball back and forth. The more intense the deliberations, the quicker the tosses became.
    There seemed to be little mystery to the previous evening’s events. A guy got drunk and ran somebody off the road. How much simpler could it get? Still, some part of him required certainty, and the only way to attain that was through diligence, hard work, and attention to detail. Experience had taught him that, every once in a while, things were not as they seemed. He had seen other detectives embarrassed when they got it wrong. He had seen them ridiculed by their colleagues and criticized by their bosses. He refused to subject himself to those risks, so he forced himself to be thorough and meticulous in his handling of even the simplest cases.
    “You shithead! Can’t you get anybody out?” Slazak yelled at the White Sox pitcher. It was just the top of the third inning and the Cubs had already scored five runs, putting him in a foul mood. His cursing was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone.
    “What?” Slazak shouted impatiently into the phone.
    “Detective? This is Officer Wilson. We met last night at that car wreck. You asked me to call you today.”
    “Yeah, fill me in, Wilson. Did you take him to the ER?” Slazak had instructed Wilson to take the suspect to the hospital for two reasons: first, to protect the police department against liability claims in case the suspect had been seriously injured, and second, because the emergency room routinely took blood tests, and it was a great way to get irrefutable evidence of intoxication. Most people signed the consent form along with all of the other hospital paperwork and didn’t think to object to a hospital-administered blood test.
    “Yeah, I took him there. Had to wait almost two hours before they examined him. He was fine. He wouldn’t take the blood test, though.”
    “Shit,” Slazak muttered. Another Cub base runner had scored as Wilson delivered this news. “So he wasn’t hurt at all?”
    “Nope.”
    “Not even any minor scrapes or cuts?”
    “I wasn’t in the room when the doctor examined him, but I didn’t see any. The doc said he was fine and sent us on our way. We got to the station around four o’clock, and they put him in lockup. I heard he was bailed out by one of his law partners this morning.”
    “Did you get any information out of him?”
    “He said he was at some French restaurant downtown last night. The big shots at Champions HealthCare threw some sort of party in his honor. Other than that, he didn’t say much.”
    “Okay, thanks, Wilson. Hey, one more thing. Find out where his partner lives.” He hung up.
    Slazak turned his attention to the ball game once again. The golf ball flew from hand to hand with increasing speed as two more innings went by. As the fifth inning ended, Slazak grabbed the remote control and turned off the game in disgust. The Cubs were pounding his beloved White Sox 10–1; he couldn’t