you’d rather stay here for a while,” Dugan told her, looking perfectly serious.
No, it was definitely better for her to be around other people. “No, I—”
“I’m kidding, Scarlet,” he told her, waving away his previous words. “Just hang on. We’ll get you and your girl to the hospital and all of this will seem like just one bad dream,” he promised.
“No, I didn’t mean that—” the woman began, but Dugan was already on the phone.
Holding up his hand as a silent request that she should hang on to her thoughts until he was able to get off the phone, he started to talk to the person on the other end.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” a female dispatcher asked.
“This is Detective Dugan Cavanaugh,” he said, then gave the woman on the other end of the phone his badge number. “I need a bus sent out right away to the corner of Dyer and Santa Rosa. I’ve got a mother and a baby here.” He smiled at them as he said it. “The city just gained a new citizen about three minutes ago. Mother and baby seem to be doing fine, but I’ll leave that up to you to determine,” he told dispatch.
“Very good, detective. I can have an ambulance out there within the next ten minutes. Will you be there, as well?” she asked.
“Got nowhere else to be,” he answered, still looking at the woman and the baby he had helped to bring into the world.
“Fine. Ten minutes,” the woman repeated, then ended the call.
“Are you coming with me?” the new mother asked, looking at him above her mewling baby.
“Unless you’d rather end our beautiful friendship right here,” he said, giving her the option.
“No,” she answered. And then, in words that had been entirely unfamiliar to her these last few years, she said, “I’d like you to come.”
“Then I will,” he told her. Cocking his head, he listened for a second, then said, “I think the ambulance’s already coming. Must be a slow night,” he told her with a wink.
Just then, as the baby began to cry, he felt his phone ringing. “I think I spoke too soon,” he said as he took out his cell phone and looked at the call number on the screen. “Yup, I spoke too soon.”
The number on the screen was one he knew very well.
“Dugan Cavanaugh,” Dugan said as he answered the phone.
“We’ve got a problem, Cavanaugh,” the voice on the other end of the line told him. It was the detective he’d been partnered for over the last year and a half, Jason Nguyen.
Dugan watched as he saw the ambulance pulling up into the alley. “Now?”
“No, tomorrow,” Jason answered. “Of course now. Look, tell the honey you’re with you’ll get back to her as soon as you can, but that something’s come up and you need to go.”
“For your information,” Dugan informed the other detective, “I’m not with a ‘honey.’”
“Good, then that’ll make it easier for you to get over here,” Jason said. Dugan could hear noise in the background, but he refrained from asking what was going on. Jason had a habit of leaving no detail untold if he could possible help it.
“Look,” Jason was saying, “I don’t like getting up out of a dead sleep, either, but you need to have gotten your tail out here at least five minutes ago.”
The ambulance had arrived and the paramedics were getting out. Dugan silently waved the two men over toward the woman’s car even though he was still on the phone.
“Why?” he asked, asking Jason. “What won’t keep until tomorrow morning?”
“Mitch Gomez was just fished out of the lake twenty minutes ago,” Jason answered flatly.
“That’ll do it.” Dugan didn’t have to ask if the man was dead. Nguyen wouldn’t be calling him if he wasn’t. “Where are you?” He paused as the other detective rattled off the address. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Dugan said grimly.
He terminated the call and put the phone back in his pocket.
Meanwhile, the two paramedics were bringing around the gurney. “You the father?” the paramedic closest to him, Jeff, asked.
Still in the vehicle, the woman cried, “No, he’s not!”
Dugan shook his head. “Just a Good Samaritan in the right place at the right time,” he told the paramedic.
“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ll get you and your baby to the hospital quickly,” the other paramedic, Nathan according to his tag, was saying to the woman. Before he tried to get her and her baby out of the car, he looked back toward Dugan. “Are you coming with her, Good Samaritan?” he asked.
The next moment, he handed the baby over to his partner and then he took the woman gently into his arms. With a minimum of effort, he transferred her carefully to the gurney.
“Something I have to do first,” Dugan answered the paramedic. When both the new mother, now on the gurney, and the paramedic looked at him, Dugan explained, “I’m a cop. Something’s come up.” Turning his attention toward the woman he’d just aided, he told her, “But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding.
Dugan had a feeling she didn’t believe him, but there was nothing he could do about that right now. All that mattered was that she was in safe hands and that was all that really counted, anyway.
“I’ll see you later,” he told the new mother as he watched the paramedics place her gurney in the back of the ambulance.
“Right, later,” she replied, then added, “Don’t worry about it.”
Dugan frowned. He should have called his aunt’s ambulance, he thought as he watched the paramedics close the doors and then round to the front of the vehicle. He knew all the drivers there. But there was nothing he could do about that now.
Dugan sprang into action. He quickly closed up the woman’s car and then, finally, ran to his own a block away.
Starting it up, he took out the detachable light and stuck it on top of the roof. He didn’t like doing it to the Mustang, but the situation was dire and he needed to get there ASAP.
He still couldn’t believe that Gomez was dead. He’d only managed to finally talk the guy into being his confidential informant less than a month ago.
* * *
“I don’t think he ever knew what hit him,” Jason said as he stood there, looking down at the sprawled-out body lying before him.
Dugan had managed to get there in record time. Luckily, at this time
