“John Gallo. Theodore Danner is my uncle.”
“Was,” Temple said. “He died of pneumonia. I regret your loss, Mr. Gallo.”
“My uncle was seen in Louisiana only yesterday. We’ve verified his fingerprints. Which means that you’re in trouble, Temple.”
“That’s not possible,” Temple was no longer pale but flushed with anger. “It’s some sort of a mistake. You can’t pin anything on me.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Gallo said softly as he crossed to stand before Temple. “I’m only going to listen to you. I’m very angry, you know. I loved my uncle, and I have an idea he was victimized. You can either prove you weren’t the one who did it or face the consequences.” He stared him in the eye. “You’re a doctor. You know how easy it is to cause a massive hemorrhage if you know what you’re doing. I do know what I’m doing. It would take me less than fifteen seconds.”
“It’s broad daylight.” Temple said hoarsely. “There are people all over the green. You wouldn’t do it.”
“Fifteen seconds. And no one is noticing anything but their own games. I’d put you in that golf cart and just walk away.” He took a step closer. “Look at me. Then tell me I wouldn’t do it.”
Eve inhaled sharply as she looked at his expression. She had only seen that raw ferocity once before in Gallo, and it was truly intimidating.
Temple jerked his gaze away. “You asshole. I think you’d do anything.”
“Get in the cart, Eve,” Gallo said. “You drive us to the parking lot, and I’ll sit in back with Dr. Temple.”
“You’re going to let him do this?” Temple asked Eve. “It’s kidnapping, you know.”
“No, it’s an invitation to join us in our car for a drive and have a discussion,” Eve said as she got in the cart. “Anything else is entirely in your court.”
Temple hesitated, then moved jerkily toward the cart. “It’s all a mistake. I’m innocent of any wrongdoing.”
“Pat phrase. You sound like you’re in a court of law already,” Gallo said.
“You can’t prove anything.” Temple got into the cart. “And Danner would be a fool to testify that I was guilty of anything. He’d be convicting himself. They came to me. He was supposed to just disappear, dammit.”
“You may be right.” Gallo got into the cart. “You may not be worth our while. We’ll take a little drive along the river, and you can convince us…”
“LET ME OUT HERE, AND I’LL forget this ever happened,” Temple said, as they cruised by the river thirty minutes later. He turned to Gallo, who was sitting next to him in the backseat. “I have a decent amount of money. We can make a deal.”
“I believe you’ve already made a deal,” Eve said over her shoulder from the driver’s seat. “Who approached you? Danner himself?”
He hesitated. “Look, I can’t talk about this. I was warned that it could mean-” He broke off. “I didn’t do anything to harm anyone. I just signed the damn death certificate. Nobody cared whether Danner lived or died.”
“I cared,” Gallo said. “Who paid you off?”
Temple was silent. “You wouldn’t really cause a stir and tell everyone that I committed a crime? That would be… awkward for me. I have a reputation here.”
Eve couldn’t believe it. Temple was sitting next to Gallo, who was angry and probably the most dangerous man he had ever met, and he was worried about his reputation? Either his vision or his priorities were seriously awry. “We don’t care about your reputation, Temple. Give us answers, and you just might survive to play another golf game.”
He frowned. “Golf is important. It’s not only a game, it’s a way to cement my status in the community. I realized as soon as I got here that an affluent practice could be just a stepping-stone to get me where I want to be. I have a chance to run for lieutenant governor next year.” He gazed warily at Gallo. “You can see that I can’t let you libel me.”
“Talk to me,” Gallo said. “Who gave you the money to declare my uncle dead?”
He hesitated. “You’ll protect me? It’s not as if I did anything really wrong.”
Gallo put his hand on Temple’s throat and squeezed. “Talk.”
Temple gasped, and Eve could tell that the lethal danger of the situation had finally become real to him. “You’re crazy. Jacobs told me that this wouldn’t happen. He said nobody cared about Danner.”
“Then you should have asked him why he was trying to cover his tracks.” Gallo’s grasp loosened. “It was Thomas Jacobs? How? Why?”
“I don’t know why. It didn’t matter to me.” He added bitterly, “Just because I was near the bottom of my class at med school, I was stuck in that hospital treating a bunch of vets. Do you know how much I made there? Guys I went to school with had jobs on easy street. I deserved better.”
“Those vets deserved better,” Eve said. “I’m beginning to be glad Jacobs bribed you out of there.”
“Jacobs didn’t mention why he wanted Danner declared dead?” Gallo asked.
Temple shook his head. “He just said he wasn’t important, and no one would follow up if there was a certificate that stated Danner was dead.”
“He was a patient at the hospital? You were his doctor?”
“No, he had been discharged after he’d been treated for pneumonia. I’d never met him.” His hands clenched. “At first I thought maybe Jacobs had helped Danner to cross to the other side because of insurance or something. I was scared I’d be an accomplice. But I checked the hospital records, and Danner didn’t have insurance. So I thought it was safe to take Jacobs’s money.”
“Pretty flimsy,” Gallo said. “There are other reasons than money to kill a man.”
“I
“So you scrawled your name and took the cash.”
“I didn’t hurt Danner. I didn’t hurt anyone. Jacobs promised me that Danner was safe, and he just wanted to disappear. He said it was sort of like the witness protection program. After all, Danner was an ex-Ranger. It could have been true.”
“And you didn’t give a damn if it was or not.”
“No.” His lips curled. “But if Danner’s still alive, as you said, then maybe Jacobs was being up-front about it after all. Go find Jacobs and ask him.”
“I found him. So did Danner. Jacobs ended up with a knife in his chest.”
“Oh, shit.” Temple moistened his lips. “That’s not good.”
“Yes, it might interfere with your political plans.”
Temple recovered immediately. “You can’t prove I had anything to do with it. Jacobs paid me in cash and told me that it wouldn’t be smart for me to mention his name again. I never saw him after that. Why would I? I had what I wanted.”
“But maybe you wanted to eliminate a possible roadblock in your political plans?” Eve suggested. “The police might be interested in your-”
“No!” His chest was rising and falling. “You can’t do this to me. I never saw Jacobs after the night he gave me the money.”
Eve was not sure that they hadn’t plumbed the extent of Temple’s knowledge. “You said you checked the hospital records. Was there anything in them that-”
“I was only checking for insurance. I didn’t care about anything else. I’ve told you everything I know.” His teeth bit into his lower lip. “Jacobs is really dead?”
“Very. Did Jacobs tell you where this witness protection program was going to send Danner?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Of course you didn’t. You wanted to erase him from your mind. Just a signature, then off you went. No forwarding address in Danner’s records?”
“No.”
It was like pulling teeth. “Who were his doctors at the hospital?”
“That was years ago. You expect me to remember? I didn’t care who was treating him. Probably some loser.
