Dust Up: A Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

seem like a killer. She definitely didn’t seem like someone who had just killed. I guess there’s all different kinds of killers, but what I saw was terror and pain.” I told her what the women in the office had said, about how they seemed nervous but still very close.
    “So maybe they were up to something,” Nola said. “Together.”
    I nodded. “So why were they coming to me?”
    “Maybe they weren’t selling information; maybe they were just trying to share it. Expose it.”
    I looked at her. “You mean like whistle-blowers?”
    “Maybe.”
    I laughed. “I’m sure there’s all sorts of proper channels for anything they might have found. Why come to me?”
    “You know how powerful and connected these companies can be. Maybe the proper channels didn’t seem safe.”
    Twice, I’d tangled with big biotech companies outside of the normal course of my job. I’d seen how the pressure not to mess with them rolled downhill with a vengeance.
    I thought about that for a long moment. “But why me?” Both my altercations with big biotech had been declared secret, non-events, kept quiet ostensibly for national security and because I didn’t like talking about them.
    When I looked up, Nola shrugged. “You’ve got history in that area. You’ve taken them on and won. And I know it’s supposed to be secret or whatever, but people talk. Word gets around.”
    Seemed like a bit of a stretch to me. “Maybe. Meanwhile, if she didn’t kill her husband, she might have seen who did.”
    “She could be an important witness.”
    “Meaning whoever did it is probably looking harder for her than Mike Warren is. She could be out there on the run, terrified. Not just the police after her but whoever killed her husband, too.”
    Nola looked at me for several seconds, solemn, maybe picturing herself with me murdered and the whole world coming after her. “Are you going to find her?”
    “I’m going to try.”

 
    11
    The next day was a bad one for Miriam Hartwell, wherever she was.
    “They found a gun,” Suarez said when I walked in.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “SIG Sauer P223. Looks like a match for the gun that killed Ron Hartwell. It’s down in ballistics. Prints all over it. Preliminary match for Miriam Hartwell. Warren wanted me to tell you. I’m not going to say what else he wanted me to tell you.”
    “Where’d they find it?”
    “Laundry room of their apartment building. Under the change machine.”
    “Anonymous tip?”
    He shook his head. “Landlord called it in.”
    “Hmm.”
    He nodded and slapped a hand on my shoulder as he turned to go. It was an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture between us. “I know Warren’s a bonehead, but it looks like this time he’s right. I hope you and Nora can take comfort at least now we know who did it.”
    He always referred to her as Nora. I corrected him the first ten times, but now I let it serve as a reminder, if ever I forgot, that I really didn’t like the guy.
    He went back into his office and closed the door. I dropped into the chair behind my desk.
    I still didn’t see it, still didn’t think it was the wife. Partly it was a hunch, naïve assumptions based on Miriam Hartwell’s photo, her expression as she drove away. Part of it might have been because I really didn’t want Warren to be right. But there was no explanation as to why he was on my front doorstep, why he’d been coming to see me. From my point of view, that was the most important part.
    Danny was out of town meeting with the DEA. I was supposed to be chasing down leads on our favorite new drug kingpin, but I’d gotten a head start—a productive midmorning that netted me three more names on Derek Hoyt’s growing Christmas card list.
    The way I looked at it, I was ahead of the game.
    It wouldn’t take long to match the gun to the bullet that killed Ron Hartwell and to match the prints to Miriam. I suspected both would come back as positive matches, and I also suspected I