The King of Swords (max mingus) by Nick Stone Read Free Book Online

forest, while on another was a large posed family photograph in a gilt frame. All the victims were there. Lacour was in the middle of the second row, his hands on the shoulders of his two teenage sons, beaming proudly. His wife sat in front-a good-looking, if slightly plump dark-skinned woman smiling an unforced, good-natured smile. Next to her was the old man in the wheelchair. Max guessed, from the strong resemblance, that he was Lacour's father. He was holding a baby in his lap. To his left, was his wife. Lacour's young daughter was sitting up on the floor between them.
    'No sign of the baby?' Max asked Joe.
    'No,' Joe said. 'Maybe someone was lookin' after it while they partied.'
    'I don't think so. This was a family party. Just them celebrating the Lemon City deal. The baby would've been there too.'
    'So what do you think? He took it with him?'
    'Perhaps,' Max said.
    Joe walked away to check out the rest of the study. Max continued examining the faces in the portrait. They wouldn't hold the slightest clue as to what had happened and why, but he wanted to imagine them alive, going about their day-to-day business, what their voices sounded like ringing around the house, what their habits were, what united and separated them. He'd always done this, humanized the dead, summoned their ghosts and listened in on them. Thinking about them as people instead of statistics helped keep him focused on the job and what it was really about. A lot of cops working homicide became so jaded and indifferent, so numb inside, that death was a numbers game to them-one they were resigned to losing before they'd even started playing. They forgot they were dealing with people just like them, people whose lives had been cut short before their time. Yet, looking at the Lacours, Max felt for the first time a sadness and something collapsing within himself, a support giving way and an ideal crashing to the ground: if this is what people were doing to each other now, turning in on themselves and those closest to them, there was no hope any more. And if there was no hope, there was no point in being a cop.
    'Max,' Joe called out, 'come see this.'
    Joe was standing by the windowsill, holding up one of a row of photographs he'd picked up from there. It showed Lacour standing on a stretch of grass with his sons and daughter. They were all holding hands with chimps dressed in shorts and Primate Park T-shirts. When they looked closer they saw the picture had been taken at roughly the same spot on the grass verge where they'd found Lacour's body.
    'Looks recent,' Joe said. 'Maybe that's why he went back there.'
    'Who knows?' Max sighed. 'Who'll ever know?'
    Max noticed the evidence bag Joe was holding.
    'What've you got?'
    'Found it in the parents' bedroom.' He handed Max the envelope. 'Smells of almonds.'
    It was a small red and white striped candy wrapper.
    'Where d'you find it?'
    'Under the cot.'
    'Babies don't eat candy.' Max gave him the bag. 'And this house is clean and tidy, orderly. My guess is, when they run prints on that wrapper they ain't gonna find any, 'cause the person who dropped it was wearin' gloves. But if they do get something, it won't belong to any of these people.'
    'So you're sayin'…?'
    'Yeah,' Max nodded grimly, 'Lacour didn't do this on his own. He had help.'

PART TWO
    A pril-May 1981

5
    ' Man. I dunno why you keep on lettin' freaks like that out, 'cause y'all know they gonna do it again-sure as man followed monkey,' Drake murmured, passing Max Mingus a book of matches over his shoulder. They were from a motel called the Alligator Moon in Immokalee, a small town right in the middle of the Everglades.
    Max memorized the address as he lit a Marlboro, and then gave the matches back without turning his head. He now had the information he needed: the child-killer Dean Waychek's whereabouts, his hiding place, the rock he'd crawled under as soon as he'd come out of prison.
    Drake and Max had been doing business like this for most of the