Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (i can read books TXT) 📕

front door. Then you push the police button on your alarm panel. As the siren screams, you lower the gun and, shaking, go to your husband. So much blood. Face swollen, nose split and flattened, he is barely conscious, but his eyes are full of tears mixed with blood. Setting down the gun, you slip a thumb and forefinger into his mouth to remove the wet rubber ball. He tries to speak, utters something that sounds like, “sorry,” but you cannot be certain with the alarm so loud. You say, “Shhh,” as his head lolls to one side and he vomits more blood. Uncertain what else to do, you return to the desk to pick up your dropped scissors so you can free him. The desk phone begins to ring as you cut the cords holding him up. The security company. If you do not answer, they will dispatch help at once. You let the phone ring and ring.

The police have to break down the door because the alarm is still screeching and through one of the sidelight windows they see Grant’s legs on the carpet. Like the dead assailant in front of the couch, Grant’s twitching has long since stopped. Police find you cradling his head in your lap and shrieking as you hold his .357 Magnum to your temple. The alarm makes it impossible to hear each drop of the hammer onto an empty chamber, but every time you squeeze the trigger and find yourself still breathing, you scream anew and pull the trigger again.

6

Bobby was in the hospital for three days and spent the next few weeks restricted from his usual schedule of board meetings, public talks, and coffee with friends. His partner, retired Family Court Judge Kayla Baker McQueen, abandoned her waterfront condo to move in and care for him—as he had moved into her place years earlier after she had surgery. Serving as a cross between a caregiver and a gatekeeper, Kayla prepared his meals, though he was a better cook than she was, and monitored his steady stream of visitors.

Bobby’s third-floor apartment was right above mine on two. For the first week, I let myself in each morning to check on him before I went to my office. The first few days, Friday through Tuesday, I found Kayla in the kitchen and Bobby either lying on the sofa or still in bed, annoyed at abdominal discomfort or in the throes of a headache. By the following Friday, the rich brown skin of his face was tighter than it had been after surgery, and he was dressed as he read the morning paper over coffee. The second Monday the kitchen was empty. From behind the bedroom door came the voice of Isaac Hayes singing “Walk on By,” which in Bobby’s day, he once told me, had meant not to knock on the dorm room door. I eased the apartment door shut, deciding to call before my next morning visit.

Evenings were different. From the beginning, however worn out he looked, Bobby would receive visitors after dinner. When I entered his book-lined living room his first Friday evening home, I saw Kayla beside him on the leather sofa and Eduardo Colon perpendicular to them in the matching stuffed chair. A DACA teenager Phoenix had represented pro bono after his mother was deported to El Salvador, Eddie was a shy, lanky kid with thick black hair, light brown skin, and no trace of a Spanish accent. He had been joining us for holiday meals since last summer and had slept on my futon when his dorm was closed during semester breaks. He was family enough to be on my call list when Bobby was hospitalized.

Hoping to become an investigative journalist, Eddie had helped me solve a murder in Ohio last May. Now at the end of his freshman year as the first recipient of Buffalo State’s Robert Chance Scholarship in Language Arts and Communications, he had come at the start of exam week to check on his benefactor. By the time I came home, he was summarizing for Dr. Bobby and Miss Kayla the highlights of his year—Dean’s list first semester and likely the second once exams were done, two student journalism awards, a public speaking award, and a poem in the campus literary journal. His Intro to Journalism professor forwarded to the Buffalo News his essay on immigration. In it, he described how his half-sisters and their father found asylum with cousins in Canada while Eddie and his mother were denied entry at the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls because Pilar Colon and Alberto Vega had never married. The essay’s publication had got Eddie a summer dorm room and an internship at the paper.

“I’m so proud of you,” Bobby said in a fluttery voice when Eddie finished. “Your mother must be pleased.”

“I write her two letters every week,” Eddie said. “She always tells me to thank my professors…and to pray every day for you, Dr. Bobby, for everything you’ve done for me.”

“I hope you can take me to meet her someday,” Bobby said, “and the rest of your family in Toronto.” At the limit of his endurance for the day, he cleared his throat and tried to rise. Kayla helped him, adjusting his robe. “When I’m able to get around better, let’s have a nice dinner to celebrate.”

Most nights I heard voices and laughter or music before I let myself in. Usually, Bobby had one or two visitors, sometimes three or four—old friends, former students, and retired colleagues from Buff State. Some of his visitors I knew, while others I had heard of but never met. The students were grateful to have studied under him. Stunned at the news of his assault, they came to reassure themselves he was all right. No matter how much pain he was in, Bobby beamed with pride when they talked of the milestones in their lives—career accomplishments, marriages and children, unusual travel. Likewise, over beer or wine, both of which