Read Online Lou Mason Mystery 03-Cold Truth by Joel Goldman - Free Book Online

closet.
    Mason's body was regaining consciousness in waves, each one cresting with fresh complaints. Though his arm was still numb and his ribs raw, his head throbbed like a psychotic sub-woofer, filling his ears with static. Disconnected sounds filtered through the white noise. Running footsteps. Snapping voices. He wondered if he'd made up or dreamt Samantha's voice until he heard her again.
    "Ease it open, Kenny. Let's meet the neighbors."
    Mason scrunched his eyes as light flooded the closet. Opening them, all he could see were shoes, ankles, and shins.
    "Lou!" Samantha said. "When did you start playing extreme hide-and-seek?"
    Before Mason could answer, two paramedics ran their hands over his body checking for obvious injuries. They soon straightened him out, eased him onto a spine board, and lifted him onto a gurney.
    "Sam," he said as she smiled down at him, stroking the side of his face.
    "Don't talk," she said. "You're shaken but not stirred. I'll see you at the hospital."
    "I want my goddamn key back! Ask him about the key," Trent Hackett said.
    Samantha looked up, Mason rolling his head to the other side of the gurney, Trent Hackett standing behind the paramedics as they packed up, pushing his way past them, Kenny holding him back.
    "I think it can wait, Mr. Hackett," she told him.
    "My father made me give him a key to Gina Davenport's office. I didn't have any since you guys took them all," he said to Samantha. "So I had to give him a passkey. It's twenty-five bucks if he lost it."
    "Lou, were you in Gina Davenport's office tonight?" Samantha asked him, no longer willing to wait until he got to the hospital.
    "Yeah," he said. "Should have taken the stairs."
    "What were you doing there?"
    "I've got a client you're interested in."
    "Jordan Hackett?" Samantha asked.
    "She's the one," Mason answered.
    "We think so too," Samantha said. "She confessed to the murder of Gina Davenport an hour ago."
    "Should have taken the stairs," Mason said, closing his eyes.
    Samantha was standing at the end of Mason's hospital bed when he woke the next morning. He had always liked the way she looked when they woke up together. Blond hair fanned across her pillow, green eyes grinning as she teased him about snoring. He liked watching her walk naked to the bathroom, her slender body catching rays of sunlight peeking through the shades. At first, they were more friends than lovers, the sex more needy than heartfelt. Then Samantha wanted the whole package, Mason pulling back when he couldn't give it to her, the friendship somehow surviving.
    "Have you been here all night?" he asked her.
    "Are you nuts? That's what nurses are for. How do you feel?"
    Mason rubbed his stubbled face with both hands, aware for the first time that his left arm was back in service. "I'd have to feel better to die, but at least I've got my health." He slipped his left arm out of the hospital gown and examined the bandage that was wrapped around his biceps.
    "You sliced it deeply enough to bleed a bucket, but not enough to cut it off, according to the doctor. When you jumped off the elevator, you must have hit a nerve in your shoulder. Football players call it a stinger. It goes away and you're fine."
    "How do you know about the elevator?" he asked.
    "You mumbled enough on the way to the hospital that I could figure out some of what happened."
    "You rode with me in the ambulance?"
    "Don't get excited. I was just taking advantage of your condition to find out what happened before you decided not to tell me." She said it with a smile that covered her concern, though Mason knew she was telling the truth, just not the whole truth. "Here," she said, handing him a mirror, "take a look."
    Mason groaned at the black eye he would carry around for the next week. "I guess that's from hitting my head when I jumped into the closet."
    "Don't forget the bruised ribs. You had quite a ride. Fill me in on the details you left out while you were delirious."
    "How did you find me?"