Dr. O Read Online Free

once played Swisher.
    At that time, Lieutenant Joe Swisher had been chasing down a small-time creep named Camera, beating heads together for any information he might gain concerning the drug lord who dared work Swisher's territory. She and Tom had stepped in with a deal, seeing to it that the game plan went another way, intercepting Swisher, snatching up Camera as well. Camera was wired and returned to the streets to do a bigger job for the Feds. Camera walked as part of the deal. They had had to squeeze Joe Swisher pretty hard, using some old files from a police shrink against him. After it was over, Swisher torched the files and the Feds told him that he owed them.
    Camera was relocated, given a new identity, the whole package, but someone managed to get to him anyway —a large .44 through the skull at close range. Detective Joe Swisher was at the top of the list of suspects.
    Time was just right to pick some fruit from that tree again. Since Sykes's brutal death, Thorpe had come to believe that she understood Joe Swisher's unquenchable thirst for violent revenge.
    Another of Joe Swisher's supposed victims had been a child-porn filmmaker and child-brutalizer by the name of Julio Zaragoza. Zaragoza had died of drowning, found head-down in a toilet bowl, his feet in the air. His head and face had been battered and he'd been knocked unconscious before he drowned.
    Dr. Maurice Ovierto would have approved, no doubt. Ovierto had made brutality a way of life; it seemed that Swisher had also. Ovierto was a raging psychotic who coolly masked his psychosis; so was Swisher. It takes a thief...
    At the moment they were swamped with missing persons believed to be kidnapped, some taken across state lines. These kinds of cases seemed on the rise and typically turned into murder.
    Thorpe got on her phone, called Chicago, Precinct Thirty-one, and asked for Lieutenant Joe Swisher. Told the lieutenant was indisposed at the moment, she persisted.
    "Indisposed?"
    "Out on duty."
    Thorpe wondered what mayhem the lieutenant was into.
    "This is urgent. Could you patch me through to his vehicle?"
    "Who is calling, ma'am?" asked the female dispatcher. "FBI."
    "I see," she said with a mind full of doubt. "I'll need a name, ma'am."
    "Hoover, godamnit! J. Edgar."
    "Thank you Ms. Hoover, and please hold."
    "No, thank you, dear," she said with mock politeness.
    "I’ll try to hail his frequency, ma'am, but he's on a ten eighteen."
    "Ten eighteen, that's suspect injured, isn't it?"
    But she was off the line, trying to get through to Swisher. It took more time than she had patience for. She was about to slam down the receiver, when static struck and was replaced by the sound of another female voice.
    "This is Sergeant Muro."
    "Who?"
    "Joe's partner... in the field... can this wait?"
    "No, it can't"
    "You're not going to come back at him with all that phony crap about knockin' off your witness, again, are you?"
    "I have Swisher's best interest at heart, ahh... Muro"
    She laughed. "Sure you do, you FBI bitches are all alike."
    "Hey, Muro, I'm just trying to alert him to a danger in your sector."
    "What danger?"
    "Serial killer who seems to like high-powered scientists as targets. You read about the three in England? Everybody's read about that. Now it's starting here, and if our information is correct, Chicago and Dr. Ibi Oliguerre is next, along with a possible second physicist working out at your Fermilab. Is that reason enough to alert Swisher? I'd like him in but it's completely unofficial."
    Muro hesitated a moment before saying, "Why should Joe want anything to do with you? You break into his shrink's office, lift his file, use it against him-"
    "Muro! This is bigger than us, or old sores!"
    "Why does it sound like a set-up to me? Unofficial?"
    "I can't explain it over the phone. Will Swisher meet with me if I fly there? Tonight?"
    "You nuts? He wouldn't give you the time of day."
    "Put him on! This is too damned important, Muro."
    There was more static