Eleventh Hour

studio, someone who worked on the series. But I don’t know who.”
    Sherlock said, “I see. So it has nothing at all to do with the fact that you seem to be trying your best to murder your father?”
    “No, dammit. Do you have any idea what he’s done to me all my life?”
    Weldon looked ill, but he held on, sucked in a deep breath.
    “No, no one knows anything,” Delion said. “Listen, Weldon, someone murdered four people in San Francisco. You hired that moron Milton to kill Nick at the funeral because she saw you in the church. Then there’s Pasadena. It’s times like this I’m really glad I live in California and we’ve got the death penalty. They’re gonna cook you, Weldon.”
    The pain was glazing his eyes. He was holding his foot, crying, pleading. “No, listen to me, I wouldn’t kill anybody. I’m not like that.”
    Savich said, “Tell us exactly why you tried to kill your father. This time in nice plain English.”
    Weldon’s voice was soft now, so quiet it was like listening to him again on the video. He was getting himself back in control. He’d finally managed to regain some calm, control the pain in his foot. “I can’t. There’s too much at stake here.”
    “That’s not a very good start, Weldon,” Dane said.
    Weldon lowered his head and moaned at the pain in his foot.
    Delion snorted, stood, his hands on his hips. “Sherlock has called on her cell phone and rounded up a doctor for you. Let’s get you back to the parking lot. Detective Flynn and I will help you.”
    Weldon DeLoach tried to get up on his own, but ended up moaning again, clutching his foot. Flynn and Delion got him up and half carried him back to the facility.
    Dr. Randolph Winston, a geriatrician, was waiting for them at the front entrance to attend to the foot, a thick black eyebrow arched. “A woman shot him in the foot? Here, at Lakeview?” The eyebrow went even higher when Detective Flynn just shrugged.
    “No elderly person I’ve treated has ever been shot in the foot. Let’s get him to the hospital.”
    Dane nodded. “We’ll follow. We’ve got lots more to talk about with Mr. DeLoach.”

THIRTY-ONE
    Delion and Flynn read the riot act to the two policemen assigned to keep an eye on Captain DeLoach, then rode with Weldon to the hospital. The rest of them walked back to Captain DeLoach’s room.
    It appeared that Captain DeLoach’s brain had faded into the ether again. Or it was all an act, one at which he excelled.
    He was still singing “Eleanor Rigby.” Nurse Carla said, just shaking her head, “The fact that his son tried to kill him—I think it knocked him right off his mental pins again. I was with him several times during the morning and he was with it the whole time, but not now. Poor old man. How would you like to have a son who keeps trying to kill you?”
    Nick moved away from Captain DeLoach and said, her voice low, “Something is very strange here. When Weldon was in the captain’s room, he called his father a monster, said he had to stop him. But Captain DeLoach, he wasn’t afraid at all. He taunted Weldon.”
    Savich walked to the old man, who was still singing softly, vacantly, in his wheelchair.
    “Captain DeLoach? You’ve met me before. I’m Dillon Savich. I’m an FBI agent.”
    Slowly, the old man stopped singing “Eleanor Rigby” and raised his eyes to Savich’s face. Then, slowly, he raised his hand and saluted.
    Savich, without pause, saluted him back.
    “I saluted that girl, too,” Captain DeLoach said in a singsong voice. “I thought it was weird to have to salute a girl, but I did it. Respect for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you know? It’s a sign of the times that the Feds would allow a girl to join up. I always wanted to be an FBI agent, but I couldn’t. And now it turns out she isn’t a cop, just a girl who’s homeless, leastwise that’s what Weldon said. Hey, is that little redheaded girl a cop?”
    “She certainly is, an excellent FBI agent.”
    The old man gave her a toothy grin and saluted her. Sherlock didn’t salute him back, just gave him a little wave with her fingers. He gave a dry, cracking laugh, shook his head. “That girl over there, the homeless one, she saved me from Weldon, the little pissant. I don’t think he would have killed me. You see, Weldon’s a coward. I never could teach him to be a man. He’s always hated blood, wouldn’t ever go hunting with me. Once I tried to get him to butcher a buck, but he vomited all