The Heir Hunter Read Online Free

anything,” he finally said. “If the coroner finds anything suspicious, we may take another look at it, but I don’t expect anything unusual to come of that autopsy. One thing I want to make clear, Edmund: under no circumstances are we involving the local police.”
    “Fine. We can close the book on Mr. Jacobs, then?”
    “I don’t anticipate anything out of the ordinary on our end. Do what you need to do to close it out.”
    “Jacobs was a strange one,” said Arminger quickly. “Did you look the file over? It’s very incomplete. I don’t understand why this man wasn’t screened better.”
    “We’ve got the same file. It is a bit . . . lacking in some regards.”
    “Why exactly were we hiding this man?”
    “I don’t have the specifics in front of me,” replied Gordon. “I assume there’s a reason we weren’t provided with the particulars, and I don’t have a reason to feel interested at this point.”
    “I’m
very
interested, Arthur. I need to know about all WP’s in my jurisdiction.”
    “He’s not your problem anymore,” said Gordon. “A death in Witness Security means less work, not more. Bury your curiosity with the old man and move on.”
    “That’s not easy with this one.”
    “But it’s smart. Don’t get preoccupied with this, Edmund. When you’re in my seat, you’ll learn more than you want to know. Close this out by the book and forget about it.”
    “That’s what I intend to do, Arthur.”
    “Good. Call me if you have any other questions.”
    He hung up and ran his hand across his face. Of the hundreds in witness protection, something was distinctly different about this eighty-seven-year-old. Gordon frowned as he reached for the phone. He knew enough about the Jacobs file to suspect he wasn’t about to be enlightened.

CHAPTER

3

    N ICK AWOKE FROM dreamless sleep and squinted into the half-darkness of his bedroom. The clock indicated he had slept for nearly an hour, a solid nap but not nearly enough to make up for three nights of neglect. He let his head fall back to the pillow as a police car screamed by on the street. As it always did, the wail of the siren brought him back.
    He turned his head to the framed picture on the nightstand, a three-by-five-inch portal to a previous life. He studied his expression in the photo, the smile of a twenty-three-year-old rookie cop in his department-issued black uniform, shaking hands with a proud father who had worn the badge himself for twenty years. Bill Merchant would have gladly worn that piece of metal another ten years if he hadn’t discovered his true passion.
    He had read about heir finding in a PI magazine article and proceeded to build Merchant and Associates from nothing, turning his company into a tiny yet persistent thorn in the behind of General Inquiry, Hogue and McClain, and all the other big players. With his only son moonlighting from SFPD as his part-time partner, forty-seven-year-old Bill Merchant had found himself a calling. And what a wonderful calling it had turned out to be. For eight years, father and son had the time of their lives findingpeople and telling them all about inheritances they never knew they had.
    But it had all ended quickly one night. Despite what Nick had told Emma McClure, Bill Merchant hadn’t retired at all. That wasn’t even close to the truth.
    Somehow Nick knew the drinking would have a hand in it. It didn’t matter whether it was behind the wheel, on the street, or in bed; the bottle would have its final say. As chance would have it, it happened outside a bar, a dive Bill Merchant probably shouldn’t have been in by himself. A knife was pulled, and William Merchant—cop turned PI, widower turned drunk—was dead in the gutter. A handful of witnesses to interview but ultimately no arrests. Four years had passed since that terrible moment-no arrests, no new leads. Just another unsolved homicide gathering dust in a file cabinet.
    For Nick, quitting the force was really no decision