Read Dust Up: A Thriller for Free Online

wish she would.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “So I could tell her we know she didn’t do it, that we’ll help her any way we can.” He sniffed, and I realized he was crying.
    I gave him a few moments to get himself together. We talked a little more after that, but I didn’t get anything much more out of him. When we were done, he said, “If you see her, tell her we love her, okay? And that we’re here for her, that we’re all mourning together.”
    By the time I got off the phone with Brian Hartwell, I had an absolute certainty of Miriam’s innocence. It lasted the whole way back to the Roundhouse.
    “The gun’s a match,” Suarez said as I walked in. He was standing outside his office, talking to Mike Warren, who was leaning—practically sitting—on my desk. Suarez held up a sheaf of papers. “The prints are a match, too.”
    Warren gave me the finger but quickly pulled it down as Suarez looked back at him. As I approached, he pushed himself off my desk.
    “There’s another match, too, Carrick,” he said, snapping his fingers as he walked past me. “My ass and your face.”
    “Hey, Lieutenant,” I called out as I sat in my chair. “Someone got stupid all over my desk!”
    “It was already there, Carrick,” Warren called over his shoulder.
    Suarez laughed, then his face turned serious. “Both matches. It’s definitely the murder weapon, and her prints are all over it. She did it. Now we just need to find her. Can you let it go now?”
    “Nothing to let go, Lieutenant.”
    “It wouldn’t be so bad if some other fool was out there obsessed with doing your job the way you’re so obsessed with doing Warren’s. But there isn’t. So you need to let Mike Warren do his job, and you need to focus on your job. Okay?”
    “Like a laser beam, sir.”
    He took a deep breath and shook his head. Then he turned and went back into his office.
    Ten minutes later, I was in the basement with Bernie Lawrence, one of our ballistics experts.
    “Definitely a match,” he said. “You can see for yourself if you’d like.” The two slugs were still mounted on the comparison microscope.
    “No, that’s okay.”
    “Not what you were expecting?”
    I shook my head. “What type of gun was it?”
    He reached behind him and handed me a gun in a sealed plastic evidence bag. “SIG Sauer P223.”
    I smoothed out the plastic so I could see it clearly. I was familiar with the SIG P223, but I wasn’t familiar with this one.
    “Standard?”
    He shook his head. “Not even close. Combat grip, custom rail, night sight. And the numbers have been removed. And not half-assed filed off, they’re gone gone.”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah. Looks like a pro. Why?”
    “This is from the shooting on my front steps a couple nights ago.”
    “Oh yeah, right. Sorry to hear about that. But it seems like Mike Warren wrapped it up pretty quick for you. Probably a record for him. That’s got to be a relief.”
    “Kind of, I guess.”
    “Something bothering you about it?”
    “A couple things. He’s saying the wife did it and her prints are on the gun. But this looks like something a pro would use, not a five-foot-tall, hundred-pound nurse with no priors.”
    He grunted at that.
    I held up my hands. “I’m not saying a woman can’t be a gun nut or an assassin or anything, but it doesn’t seem to fit, you know?”
    “No, I hear you. Actually, the rounds were special, too. Jacketed, custom made.”
    “Right. Okay, well, thanks. Good information.”
    The prints and ballistics were pretty damning, but I couldn’t reconcile the petite nurse with the souped-up SIG P223 and the custom rounds. And I was having a hard time believing that she would kill her husband in the midst of ongoing fertility treatments. Not impossible, but unlikely.
    And none of it explained why Ron Hartwell had my address in his GPS.

 
    13
    I’d said I was going to leave it alone, but Suarez had said Warren had the case under control. I guess we both lied.
    Ron and