Bermuda Heat Read Online Free Page B

Glendale, Los Angeles Church bells rang someplace. Well, it was Sunday, David thought morosely, while he climbed the cracked, weed-infested steps up to the house where his CI said Bart Trimble could be found.
    Trimble was a person of interest in a botched liquor store robbery that left one guy dead and another in Glendale Memorial.
    Supposedly, Trimble had been present at the robbery. No one could say whether he’d been a part of it or simply a bystander.
    Either way, he and Martinez needed to find the guy.
    No warrant, so they had to find Trimble and persuade him to talk. A curtain swayed in the window beside the front walk.
    David rapped on the wooden door and a dog barked, deep. He shared a glance with Martinez. Big dog.
    He brushed his hand over the butt of his Smith & Wesson.
    Knocked again.
    “LAPD. Open up. We need to talk.”
    The door opened wide enough to let a girl peer up at them.
    She looked young and scared. David knew Trimble was thirty-six. So… daughter?
    “Your dad home? Bartholomew Trimble? Is he here?”
    A dog’s head pushed the door opened more. The mastiff’s scarred muzzle curled open in a silent snarl. David freed his gun.
    “Trimble,” he called over the dog’s growling. “Call the dog off and get out here.”
    The girl vanished. So did the dog. Replaced by a hatchet-faced man with unshaved cheeks and a cigarette jammed in his mouth.

    20 P.A. Brown
    “Bartholomew Trimble?”
    “Yah. Watcha want?”
    “I need you to come out here so we can talk,” David said.
    He’d holstered his weapon, but kept his hand near it. No telling when this could turn hinky. “Now, Mr. Trimble.”
    “All right, all right.” He yanked the door open all the way and stood in the foyer wearing paint-covered gray sweats and a loose wife beater that showed off flabby flesh. He carried a half empty bottle of Old Milwaukee in one hand and held the dog’s collar in his other.
    The mastiff strained toward the two cops and both David and Martinez kept wary eyes on both it and Trimble.
    “We’re looking for Tony Sutton,” David said. “You know where he might be?”
    “Sutton? Never hearda him. He do somethin’?”
    The dog snarled and twisted in its efforts to reach the two armed men. David had had enough. “Sir, put the dog away.”
    When Trimble hesitated he snapped. “Now. Don’t worry. We’ll wait.”
    Trimble grumbled but huffed his way back into the house.
    A moment later, an inner door slammed and he shuffled back.
    He took the cigarette out of his mouth, took a slug of beer and popped the butt back between his lips. His teeth were as yellow as his fingertips.
    “We’d like to come in, sir. We’ll only take a minute of your time.”
    Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard, “What the fuck they want with us? Get rid of them, Bart.”
    When Trimble returned Martinez snarled, “You want us to vamoose, dirtwad, you answer our questions.”
    Trimble seemed torn between listening to his wife or the cops on his doorstep. The cops won. He waved them inside.
    In the living room a wide screen TV was blaring out some BeRMudA heAt 21
    frenetic music, and some bizarrely colored animated characters were being ignored by everyone. All eyes were on the intruders.
    A copper-headed woman sat on a green and gold sofa between two children; the girl who had opened the door to them and an older teenage boy. Four pairs of eyes watched on intently.
    From the back room the surly mastiff kept snarling and yowling.
    The hairs on David’s neck stood up. They still needed to do what they came here for.
    “I want you to tell me what you saw last Thursday at Mike’s Liquor Store on Verdugo.”
    “Wasn’t there.”
    “We know that’s not true,” David said. “Don’t waste our time.”
    “And we won’t waste yours,” Martinez added, taking a step closer to Trimble. In the back room, as though knowing it was needed, the dog howled and threw itself against a door. Neither cop looked toward the outburst. Their