Chapter 41:
"Hello?" Sharon heard the woman's voice again.
"Yes, this is Captain Raydor from the LAPD," she cleared her throat and continued to talk.
Richard shut his eyes and listened to her giving his address and answering some quick questions before ending the call.
"Richard," she called him and he opened his eyes slowly. "Lieutenant Flynn… you sent those gangbangers to kill him, didn't you?" her voice was low, but steady.
"Tell me he's… dead," Richard tried to laugh but could barely smile. Sharon frowned and shook her head in disbelief.
"No, he's not. But John Martin is, so he's joined the long list of people that you and your cartel got killed. God, what happened to the Richard I knew in college?" Richard could hear the pain in her voice and smiled again.
"He died… long time ago," he whispered and shut his eyes again. His head fell to the side and Sharon stared at him for a moment.
"You're going to die for the second time, then," she muttered and got on her feet quickly. A look around the room revealed two more lamps, and Sharon pulled out of her purse two tissues, one for each hand, before she hurried to turn the lights on and open drawers and cabinet doors in search for anything else that might reveal her affair with Flynn. A pile of documents, which seemed to be related to a business of Richard's, lied on the coffee table. Sharon looked at it but left it there to be found later, during the crime scene investigation. She couldn't find anything about her affair with Flynn, but when she opened the last drawer she saw her face looking back at her from a picture, which rested on dozens of others.
"What the…" she muttered as she went over them carefully. Richard had her followed more times than she thought. Flynn wasn't in any of the pictures, so Sharon put them back in the drawer and closed it, just as she heard voices from outside the apartment, and knew that the paramedics have finally arrived.
(***)
"Mom! Where have you been?!" Cat asked when Sharon entered the apartment early in the morning, and both Cat and Rusty rushed to the door to see if she was alright.
"At work. I texted you about it," Sharon said tiredly as she put down her purse and started walking to the kitchen.
"Yeah, your text said 'can't talk, very busy' and then you didn't answer our calls for the rest of the night," Cat said and Rusty nodded, both following her.
"Don't tell me you two stayed up all night."
"We slept very little. We were worried. You never ignore our calls," Rusty said quietly and Sharon stared at him for a moment with an apologizing look in her eyes.
"I'm sorry; I didn't even check my phone all night."
"What happened? Something serious?" Cat asked and Sharon nodded slowly. She wanted to go straight to bed and sleep for the next 24 hours, but she had so much to do, including telling her daughter something terrible.
"Sit down," she said, looking at Cat.
"What? Why?"
"Catherine… sit down," Sharon said again in a very serious manner, and Cat sat quickly at the table.
"I'll be in my room," Rusty muttered and rushed to the hallway, glad to be avoiding an unpleasant situation.
"Mom, what's going on? You're scaring me."
"Honey… it's your father. He…" Sharon cleared her throat and tried to pick the right words.
"Oh, my god… is he dead?" Cat asked quietly.
Sharon swallowed hard and nodded. It wasn't the first time she notified a family, but she never thought she'd have to do a notification inside her own home.
"How?" Cat asked.
Sharon shook her head. "I'm not really allowed to talk about it."
"You can't even tell me how he died? How's that possible?"
"He… he was shot in his apartment."
"What?!" Cat got on her feet and covered her mouth with her hands for a moment. "Who did it?"
Sharon got up too and put her hand on Cat's shoulder. "We don't know yet, we're investigating it."
"It wasn't just a random murder during burglary or something, right? I knew there was something off about him. Dammit."
"What do you mean?" Sharon frowned as she looked at her daughter and wondered if she was holding back something about her father's criminal affairs.