Dead in the Rose City: A Dean Drake Mystery by R. Barri Flowers Page B

meaning he’s got
ulterior motives?”
    O’Malley turned dark pink, backing away, as
if he wanted no part of this. “What you do and who you do it with
has never been a concern of mine,” he stressed. “You know that,
D.J.” His eyes averted the heat of my glare. Our differences aside,
I’d never known O’Malley to be a racist, though the word prejudice
did come to mind from time to time. “But we live in America and
people talk,” he said defensively, “especially when it crosses
racial lines and ends up deadly.”
    “Whatever happened to innocent until proven
guilty?” I had a feeling that so-called presumption supposedly
afforded all criminal suspects had somehow become lost in the
shuffle. At least as it related to me . “Or does that
go out the damn window when it concerns an ex-cop trying to make a
living as a private eye?”
    “That was your choice,” O’Malley
reminded me, his voice full of bitterness.
    “Damned right,” I responded tartly. “That
doesn’t make me a cold-blooded killer stupid enough to bury myself
in circumstantial evidence. Think about it—”
    For the first time, O’Malley seemed to
remember we once rode together and needed each other about as much
as two homicide detectives could. He took a drag on the cigarette.
“Cool down, Drake,” he said, smoke pouring from his mouth like an
overheated engine. “I didn’t say everyone in the department had you
convicted and given a lethal injection. As far as I’m concerned,
this is just standard procedure for a murder investigation and
nothing more.” He added apocalyptically: “You haven’t been charged
with anything—yet.”
    It was the yet that worried me. In cop
jargon that usually meant the charges were a mere formality,
needing only the right person to say book him . The best I
could hope for was that it didn’t happen before I could get to the
bottom of the deepening mystery that started out as a routine
cheating spouse case and ended up with my head on the chopping
block.
     

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     
    Gregory Sinclair came charging at me like a
man possessed. He had disrupted my less than friendly chat with Lew
O’Malley, and seemed bent on rearranging my face. But I wasn’t in
the mood to have my appearance altered. So I blocked his swing with
my forearm.
    “You son of a bitch!” he roared. “You
murdered my wife!” His contorted facial expression matched his
convincing performance.
    My eyes became slits. “No, I didn’t murder
your wife,” I responded sharply. “But maybe you did—”
    Once again Sinclair made like an avenging
devil, out of control, and tried to rip my throat out.
    But this time O’Malley and another detective
came between us. This did not stop Sinclair from trying to get at
me. Or, for that matter, me at him.
    “You’re not gonna get away with this, you
bastard!” shrieked Sinclair, growling at me like a German Shepherd
protecting its owner from a prowler.
    “Someone sure as hell will pay for it,” I
promised, forcing myself to refrain from slinging mud with him.
    Sinclair took one more half-hearted lunge at
me before he was driven back by the husky detective to whom
O’Malley ordered: “Get him the hell outta here!”
    Afterwards, O’Malley apologized to me, sort
of. “That wasn’t staged, Drake. Apparently Sinclair just saw his
wife at the morgue. None of us knew who he was until he was on top
of you.”
    I took him at his word on that, but was
pissed nevertheless. “You’d better keep him away from me,
O’Malley,” I warned. “Next time Sinclair won’t have you to protect
him.”
    “You heard the man,” the coarse voice said.
Frank Sherman had entered the room, looking cool and refreshed in a
tailored Deputy D.A.’s suit. “I think we both know Drake no more
murdered Catherine Sinclair than you or I did, O’Malley.”
    Frank Sherman was maybe the last person I
expected to come to my rescue. He personally vouched for my
innocence, refusing to press charges. The man