The Innocents Nathan Senthil (i wanna iguana read aloud TXT) 📖

them the story about drive-by shooters trying to kill Joshua and Peter on Livernois Avenue, on April 8.

The same day his dad drunk dialed him. Now Gabriel understood why he had been out of it that day. He had never been shot at in his life. Traumatized but being too adamant for his own good, Joshua drank to let some steam off and calm his nerves. He had gone to Detroit with a purpose and he neither half-assed his work nor bailed in fear.

But the story didn’t add up. It had a huge gaping hole in it.

In his notebook, Joshua wrote something that Gabriel researched and found to be true.

Lolly never missed.

Chapter 34

May 11, 2019. 05:01 A.M.

 

A series of impatient knocks on the door startled Gabriel out of his sleep.

That was not Bill.

He grabbed his Glock from the bedside table and crouched to the door. The peephole was dark. Had it always been like that?

Not willing to take a chance, he picked a shoe and put it over the fisheye. If the person on the other side was an adept criminal element, Gabriel’s knockoff Adidas would be blown to smithereens.

But it wasn’t.

He chucked the shoe and saw through the hole.

A chubby woman with blonde hair and in a pantsuit stood outside, her arms tied across her chest.

Since there was no axiom that soccer moms couldn’t moonlight as hitwomen, he took cover behind the wall and asked, “Who is it?”

“Agent Chase?” the woman said. She had the voice tailor-made for oratorical jobs, like podcasts, motivational or unboxing videos. “This is Carla Brooks with the OCR.”

“What’s an OCR?”

“Office of Civil Rights, from the Department of Health and Human Services. Got a call from the Attorney General’s office last night. And I would rather have this conversation with a human than a talking door.”

Except Conor and Bill, no one knew about this new lead. So Gabriel pocketed his pistol and grabbed the doorknob. He invited Brooks in and directed her to the only chair in the room while he took a seat on the bed.

He said, “Waking me up this early means you have good news.”

“I’m sorry, but I was told it’s urgent. And yes, I do have good news.” Brooks proceeded to explain. HHS and AAG of the Criminal Division came to an agreement. Lolly must be caught at any cost, but they couldn’t bypass HIPAA by giving unsupervised access to protected health information.

So the HHS temporarily appointed a person from OCR, Carla Brooks, to supervise the operation and make sure nothing got lost. Meaning they would allow Gabriel and Bill to read all the medical records, but Brooks would act as a proctor.

Gabriel had to laugh because the billing services of almost every hospital in the US exported their PHI, aka medical records, to Eastern hemisphere call centers.

She took out an envelope and a pen from her suit and passed them to Gabriel. “Inside it is the agreement. You have to sign it before we let you near the medical records.”

Gabriel never partook in pissing contests that sprouted from ego and misplaced sense of self-esteem. He would do anything to establish justice, even break the law, or in this case, give in to this inconsequential mandate.

He skipped to the last page of the agreement. It was approved by the Assistant Attorney General from the DOJ and Deputy Secretary of HHS.

When he signed it, Brooks said, “That’s a bummer.”

“What is?” he returned the documents and pen to her.

“That you signed it without any protest. I had a whole argument prepared on my drive here.”

“It’s alright.” Gabriel stood up. “You give your presentation while I bathe and get ready.”

* * *

Brooks rode shotgun and Bill sat in the back. She had got his signature too as soon as she met him. After that, no one spoke for around fifteen minutes. Then Bill broke the silence.

“I’ve been thinking, Agent Chase. About how Lolly’s friend has this condition and that’s helping us track him?”

“Yeah?”

“We can apply the same method with Lolly.”

Interested, Gabriel asked, “How do you mean?”

“Like you did yesterday, I performed an internet search last night about the causes of indigestion and heartburn.”

“Because the old lady said that Zesty is used to soothe acid reflux?”

“That’s correct. The results were too many to be useful. And then I repeated the same search,” Bill paused. “But this time for kids.”

To Gabriel’s surprise, Brooks chipped in. “Because that problem is fairly uncommon in a younger and brisker anatomy.”

Gabriel glanced sideways.

“What?” Brooks asked. “I know. I’m a mom.”

“That’s correct,” Bill said. “Kids don’t suffer acid reflux as much as adults do. But Lolly was using Zesty in 1981, when he was a kid. He continued to use it until 2019. So I assume he suffers from some sort of chronic indigestion problem and he uses Zesty for the symptoms.”

Gabriel pondered over the bridge robbery. Lolly had vomited before killing the security guard, not after. Maybe guilt and disgust with himself wasn’t the reason Lolly puked. Maybe it was because of acid reflux, which only worsened when doing something that released a busload of adrenaline into the body. Like T-boning a fucking truck with a backhoe and pushing it off a bridge.

“Okay?” Gabriel said, proud of Bill. “What do you suggest we do now?”

“These problems with the esophagus are relevant to what the Internet calls gastroenterology. Since we’re already on our way to the medical record archives of the Children’s Hospital, it wouldn’t hurt to sieve through that department, too.”

Gabriel angled the rearview mirror and caught the eyes of the depressed but brilliant police officer. “Bill?”

“Yes, Agent Chase?”

“It’s time you take up the detective exam.”

Chapter 35

May 11, 2019. 06:37 A.M.

In the hospital, Brooks took them across a