Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (3 page)

I can think of five other times in my career when I’ve had to run into a terrified crowd with my gun drawn. Three of those times I was in uniform, and twice in plain clothes with my badge on a chain around my neck. People were always relieved to see me, and the looks on their faces said it all.
Thank God—here comes the cavalry
.

Not this time. This time the reactions were more like,
oh shit—crazy man with a gun
. People either froze in their tracks, screamed, or both. Clearly, I’d have been a much more welcome sight if I had been wearing pants.

“LAPD. Get out, get out,” I yelled, hoping that none of them were brave enough to try to tackle me.

I advanced down the hallway, barely looking at faces, just scanning the crowd for a weapon.

And then I saw him step through the center door at the far end of the corridor—white, middle-aged, balding, rimless glasses—hardly menacing, except for the Mossberg Pump-Action shotgun in his right hand.

“LAPD. Drop the gun,” I bellowed.

He looked at me, dazed.

“LAPD,” I shouted even louder. “Drop the gun. Now.”

The gunman spooked, darted back into the office, and slammed the door behind him. I kicked it open, rolling to the floor as I came through the doorway.

Patients were huddled in corners, looking for protection behind fashionable teak side chairs that wouldn’t protect them from a stiff kick, much less a 12-gauge shotgun blast.

“LAPD,” I announced, jumping to my feet and looking in every direction.

A big beefy man closest to the door was acting as a human shield, his arms and body covering the woman beneath him. “In there,” he said in a loud whisper, pointing toward an inside door.

I edged against the wall. All my training said,
wait for backup
. But my instincts said,
no time
. I dropped to a crouch and dove into the room.

The shooter was behind a desk in front of a window, the shotgun in his hand. But he wasn’t pointing it at me. The barrel was tucked under his chin, and his right hand was extended all the way, his thumb on the trigger.

“Don’t come any closer,” he said.

I stopped cold. I’d had suicide prevention training, but I hadn’t put it to use in years. Not only was I rusty, but I’m pretty sure the instructor never covered what to do if there’s a dead man in a blood-soaked white coat lying on the floor only a few feet from the man whose life I was now obligated to save.

“I’m not moving,” I said as slowly and calmly as I could. Meanwhile, my brain was racing back to the course material.
Introduce yourself. Give plenty of reassurance
.

“My name is Detective Mike Lomax,” I said. “I’m with LAPD. I’m here to help.”

“Too late, Mike.”

“At least let’s talk about it. What’s your name?”

“Calvin Bernstein.”

“Do you mind if I call you by your first name?” I asked.

“Cal. Call me Cal. Where the hell are your clothes?”

“Funny thing about that, Cal,” I said. “I was at my doctor’s office down the hall when—”

“I had no choice,” he said. “I had to do it.”

“Well that’s definitely something we should sit down and talk about.”

I could hear the sirens now. The building had been full of people. I could only imagine how many calls 911 logged since the first shot was fired. Cal heard them too.

“I’m sorry,” he said, starting to sob. “I’m really sorry. I think you should leave now, Mike. You don’t want to see this.”

“Don’t do it, Cal.” I said. “We can work this out.”

“Tell Janice I love her.”

“I have a better idea, Cal. Why don’t you pick up the phone on the desk, call Janice, and tell her yourself. I’m sure she’d much rather hear it from you.”

“You’re right. She would.”

And then he pulled the trigger. Blood, bone and gray matter pelted the walls and the window behind him.

Nothing in my training prepared me for this. I’d only known Calvin Bernstein for the last two minutes of his life, but I took the loss personally. I stood there, stunned, shaking my head in disbelief. “Aww, Cal,” I said. “I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were going to call Janice.”

Cal didn’t answer. If he could have, I’m sure it would have been something like,
It’s not like I didn’t warn you, Mike. I told you to leave. I told you that you don’t want to see this
.

Whatever remained of Calvin Bernstein from the neck down had toppled to the floor. He was side by side with his victim, who was sprawled faceup on the rug, his frantic eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. I knelt down to get a closer look.

“Jesus,” I said.

I knew him. His name was Kristian Kraus, and he was by far the best-known, most beloved fertility doctor in all of Los Angeles. Couples who desperately wanted to have a baby lined up at his door in the hopes that he could help them conceive one of Kristian’s miracles.

Five years ago, my wife Joanie and I were one of those desperate couples. We tried every trick in the fertility handbook—stimulating ovulation, collecting sperm, screwing on a schedule. It cost a fortune, but nothing took.

And then, one day, about a year after we started, Dr. Kraus delivered the one thing we never expected—the news that Joanie had ovarian cancer.

Two years later, she died.

A voice came from behind me. It was young, female, and very shaky. “LAPD,” she said. “Don’t turn around. Just put the gun down nice and easy.”

I didn’t argue. I lowered my Glock to the floor. “I’m on the job, Officer,” I said, not daring to turn around. “Detective Mike Lomax, Hollywood Division, Homicide Unit.”

“I don’t care who you are. Just stand up real slow, and put your hands in the air where I can see them.”

I stood up. My hospital gown with the impossible-to-close slit down the back was embarrassing enough, but when I raised my arms high above my head, the gown hiked up, and the already immodest opening parted like the Red Sea.

I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.

“You think this is funny?” she said.

I looked down at the two bloody corpses on the floor. “Officer, from where I’m standing, nothing is funny, but I’ll bet from your point of view, this little tableau has got to be a fucking laugh riot.”

CHAPTER 3

AND THEN, A
familiar voice. “Don’t shoot him, Officer. He’s one of the good guys.”

“Are you sure?” the cop asked. “You can’t see his face.”

“Are you kidding?” the voice drawled. “I’d recognize that asshole anywhere. He’s my partner.”

“Officer,” I said, “if Detective Biggs has finished making a bad situation worse, can I put my hands down and lower my skirt? I’d like to show a little respect for the dead.”

“Trust me,” Biggs said. “The living will be even more grateful.”

I dropped my arms and turned around. The cop was young, blond, and pretty—not an easy trifecta for a woman trying to get ahead in a male-dominated department. But to her credit, she was the one holding the gun on me.

“Detective Lomax,” she said, holstering her weapon. “I’m sorry. I’ve never seen anything like this. You had a gun. There were two dead bodies. I just—”

“You did fine. What’s your name, Officer?’

“Barclay, sir. Dawn Barclay.”

“This building is about to be inundated with cops, Barclay. Before they come running and gunning, get on the radio and tell them the situation is contained.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And tell them nobody leaves. Get IDs and hold everyone who hasn’t already bolted until we find out what happened here.”

“Yes, sir,” she said and backed out of the office.

“So,” Biggs said, “apart from the body count, how’d that prostate exam go for you?”

“I managed to get out of it again. Meanwhile, you were parked in front of the building. I figured you’d come running when the first shot was fired. Where the hell were you, anyway?”

“Victoria’s Secret, shopping for peignoirs.”

Terry Biggs wants to be a stand-up comic after he retires from the force. So he’s always on. The problem is, he doesn’t know when to turn it off.

“For God’s sake, Terry, look at this mess. Lighten up on the jokes, will you?”

“I’m not kidding. You said you’d be about thirty minutes. Next week is my anniversary, so I drove over to the mall. I was trying to decide between a lace camisole and a satin baby doll when I heard ‘shots fired’ over the radio. At least give me some credit—I got here in time to save your sorry ass. Not to change the subject, but is that your gun on the floor?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t bend over. I’ll get it.” He reached down, picked up the Glock, and smelled it. “You didn’t fire your weapon,” he said.

“No. The man on the left is Calvin Bernstein. At least that’s what he told me just before he gave himself a Mossberg Pump-Action facelift. But first he unloaded three rounds into the other guy. Him I know. His name is Kristian Kraus. He was Joanie’s doctor.”

“Holy shit. He was Joanie’s oncologist?”

“No. He’s a fertility specialist. He tried to help us get pregnant, but in the end, all he managed to do was be the one to deliver the bad news.”

“Fertility doc,” Terry said, handing me my gun. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of profession that gets you peppered with a
12-gauge. You think it was personal?”

“I don’t know. The last thing he said to me before he killed himself was ‘Tell Janice I love her.’”

“Then let’s go find Janice,” Terry said.

“I have a better idea,” I said. “Why don’t you walk over to Heller’s office and find my clothes?”

“Me? I’m a goddamn detective. Send a uniform. Tell Barclay to go get your stuff.”

“Terry, there is no way in hell that I’m asking a hot blond cop to bring me back my pants and underwear,” I said. “You get them.”

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “It took less than ten minutes for me to go from fondling Victoria’s gauzy thongs to retrieving Mike Lomax’s ragtag skivvies.”

He started to leave, stopped, and turned around. “Y’know, as long as you’re dressed for it,” he said, grinning, “are you sure you don’t want to toddle on across the hall and get that pesky prostate exam over and done with?”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” I said. “And if you see a guy wearing a white coat and a latex glove with a glob full of K-Y jelly on one finger, tell him to—oh, hell, you’ll think of something—you’re the comedian.”

CHAPTER 4

JESSICA KEATING KNELT
over the body of Kristian Kraus and shook her head. “Three shotgun blasts to the chest. Talk about overkill.”

“Don’t judge our shooter too harshly,” Terry said. “It’s still early in the investigation, but I think we’ve established that Mr. Bernstein was not exactly a professional.”

Officer Barclay returned. “Nobody else was hurt,” she reported, “although I’m sure several of the people I interviewed will be upping their Xanax intake for the next few days. Security cameras have the shooter’s Volvo pulling into the parking lot at 1:14 p.m. He sat behind the wheel for eighteen minutes, finally got out, removed a four-foot-long canvas case from the trunk, and entered the building. Three minutes later, all hell broke loose.”

“Any witnesses?” Terry asked.

“A long list, most of whom described a crazy man with a gun running down the hall half-naked, but the doctor’s receptionist had a face-to-face with the shooter. Her name’s Michele Melvin. She’s waiting for you at the front desk.”

I knew Michele. She’d worked for Kraus when Joanie was a patient, and despite the fact that she’d met thousands of infertile couples since then, she recognized me immediately.

“Detective Lomax,” she said, offering me her hand. “I’m so sorry about your wife.”

“You knew?”

“Dr. Kraus told me. He was very upset.”

I nodded. My pants and my dignity had been restored, but I was still shaky after first staring down the barrel of a Mossberg, and then watching helplessly as Cal Bernstein blew his brains out. Bringing up my dead wife didn’t help calm me down. “Can you tell us what happened?” I said.

“The man—the one who shot Dr. Kraus—came in. He was walking fast. He gets to my window and says, ‘I’m meeting my wife, but I desperately need a bathroom before I sign in.’ He’s squirming all around like you do when you have to pee real bad, so I buzzed him in.”

She closed her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. Cops see it all the time—an eyewitness reliving a moment of sheer horror that would stay with her for the rest of her life. We waited.

“And then I heard him yell Dr. Kraus’s name,” she said, opening her eyes. “Only it was more of a question, like he wanted to make sure he was talking to the right person. Then I heard the first shot, and I went on automatic pilot.”

She looked at me and Terry to make sure we understood. We did, but we let her elaborate.

“I grew up in East LA. You hear gunfire; you take cover. You try to run, and you could wind up running into a bullet. I dove under the desk and prayed until I heard someone say, ‘LAPD. Drop the gun.’ That was you, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

She smiled. “You’re the answer to my prayers.”

“Did you know the man who shot him?” Terry asked.

“Never saw him before, but we get new patients all the time. It’s the nature of the practice.”

“His name is Calvin Bernstein. See if he’s in your records.”

She hesitated.

“What’s the matter?” Terry said.

“Dr. Kraus is big on patient confidentiality, but I guess I’m
allowed to break the HIPAA laws if my boss gets gunned down.”

She searched her computer. “We’ve got six Bernsteins—no Calvins.”

“Try Janice Bernstein,” I said.

She went back to the computer. “Sorry. And nobody named Bernstein had an appointment today.”

“Can you think of any reason anybody would want to kill Dr. Kraus?” I asked.

“No. You knew him, Mike. He dedicated his life to trying to give couples the one thing they wanted most in life.” She pointed to a wall in the waiting room that was covered from floor to ceiling with baby pictures. “And even when they didn’t conceive, he still gave them hope. People loved him.”

“Somebody didn’t,” Terry said. “What can you tell us about his personal life?”