Bonnie - Iris Johansen [45]
“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 wanted that money. I had to have the money. It was my chance.”
“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. What difference does it make to you? He’d been released.”
“But he might have kept in contact with his doctor or nurse if they