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“My head hurts,” he said when Vanessa asked him what was wrong. “And my arm and shoulder.”
“Okay, let’s take a look then to make sure your arm is okay.” Vanessa pushed up his sleeve to check his arm. “Where does it hurt?”
He pointed to his elbow, then a spot on his shoulder. The elbow looked fine, but on his shoulder was a deep purple bruise.
“How did you get the bruise?” she asked.
He glanced over at it and mumbled, “I fell at recess.”
Something in the way he said it put her on alert. “Fell doing what?” she probed.
“Umm, just running around.”
It sounded like a cover up, for sure. She’d have to make a note of it in his chart. If she had serious suspicions, there were people she had to contact about it.
Her mind wandered for a moment, back to LA. Sitting in a hospital, watching the doctor look at the bruises on Opal. He’d given her a stern look and asked, “Did you do this to her?”
Vanessa flushed and pulled the boy’s shirt sleeve back into place. “Some Tylenol should help the pain. Be more careful out there, okay?”
The boy nodded, took the pills, and left the office.
# # #
Hunter walked down the hall in the five-star hotel and stopped in front of room 319. He knocked and waited.
“Hunter Perrin?” came a voice from inside.
“Yes,” Hunter said. The door opened and Hunter stepped inside. He shook the man’s outstretched hand. “Jeremy Beale?”
“Yes.”
The man was dressed in a nice suit. Must have money, this guy. To choose this hotel and be wearing that outfit? He could certainly charge him full price without hesitating.
“Let’s get down to it, then,” Hunter said. He sat in the office chair and spun it to face Jeremy, who sat in the other chair. “A few things you need to know up front. My rate is $50k, and I’m worth every dollar, but I don’t kill just anyone. I guess I’m a kind of a hit man with a conscience. I only kill people who deserve to die.”
“Well, no worries there,” Jeremy said. “My ex-wife certainly deserves to die.”
“Ex-wife?” Hunter stood to leave. “I don’t kill women. Sorry.”
“Wait. Can I explain?”
Hunter looked into Jeremy’s pleading eyes. It was worth hearing him out. He’d come all this way, after all. Might as well see why the guy thought his ex shouldn’t live.
Hunter sat back down. “Let’s hear it.”
“We have an eight-year-old daughter, Opal. My ex-wife abused her. It’s been a horrible few years. I can’t tell you how many times I came home from working all day to find Opal curled up in a ball, crying. I’d talk to her and she would tell me things like ‘Mommy got mad and hit me.’ One time she said she threw her phone at her. She yelled at her constantly. You can’t imagine what it was like. At first, I just thought Opal was clumsy. She’d tell me she fell or banged into something. But when I saw Opal flinch when my ex raised her hand to brush her hair, I started to think something else was going on. And I was right.”
Hunter leaned back in the chair. “How often did you find bruises on her?”
“Seemed like every day there was a new one. Sometimes a cut. Opal blamed the neighbor’s cat, but I think it was from her mother’s fingernails. That wasn’t even the half of it, though. My ex is just mean. She was always ordering Opal around, telling her she didn’t do something right or that she was no good. I tried to stop it, but she’d threaten me, too. Said I’d never see my little girl again. So I just had to sit there and watch her treat my daughter horribly until the divorce went through.”
“And now?” Hunter asked. “Why don’t you use the court system to get her?”
“I am. But they take too long. And now my ex has disappeared with my daughter. I’m afraid that she’s going to take all of this out on Opal. That she’ll go too far or get into the wrong circles. I wouldn’t put anything past her. She’s used to living a nice life. I make good money, and I provided for them well. And now she has nothing. She threatened to sell Opal on the streets before when she wasn’t listening. What if she turns around and does something that horrible now to get money? Her coke habit isn’t cheap.”
“She’s on drugs, too?”
“Of course. She was almost always drunk. Then she got her wisdom teeth pulled and came back with fewer teeth, but a new addiction to pain pills. When the pills and the booze weren’t enough, she turned to the harder stuff.”
