Bad Moon Rising by Katherine Sutcliffe Read Free Book Online

with a card: Have a happy life, asshole.
    Angel Gonzalez had a sheet of priors as long as his
arm, including child molestation and arrests for solicitation and assault on
prostitutes. Swabs taken from the vagina of the last murdered hooker had
matched Gonzalez’s DNA. But when he heard Jerry Costos’s shitty, circumstantial
evidence, J.D. had known in his gut that Angel was innocent, a man at the wrong
place at the wrong time—just as his family had been, according to the investigators
who wanted like hell to close the books on his wife’s and kids’ murders. It was
one thing for prostitutes to be slaughtered. It was another for a mother and
her kids to be murdered. Their deaths had sent panic through the city like a
wildfire.
    There was no doubt in his mind now that Angel Gonzalez
had not been the monster who had murdered his family—or the prostitutes who had
undergone the most brutal slayings in Louisiana history.
    The state had not prosecuted Gonzalez for all the
crimes, only one of them, but that had been enough to get him the death penalty
from a jury who had been shaken to tears during a trial the entire country had
watched with morbid fascination. After all, as Governor Damascus had
proclaimed, “You can kill a man only once. No point in bleeding the state’s
budget any more than necessary.”
    Never mind that three of the victims had been the governor’s
daughter-in-law and two of his grandchildren.
    With Gonzalez’s conviction, the case had been closed
on his wife and kids, all tied up in a neat little package with a few grumbled
words of sympathy from Jerry Costos. Never mind that Laura’s, Billy’s, and
Lisa’s deaths did not fit into the victim profile. His wife was not a
prostitute and the children had not been decapitated—the killer had been kind
enough to only slit their throats.
    Honey, who had discovered Cherry Brown’s body, couldn’t
have been more correct. If the public got wind that the state could have—had,
in fact—executed the wrong man, there would be hell to pay. The repercussions
would be felt all the way to the White House. The advocates against the death
penalty, NCADP in particular, would burn the state’s politicians on every cable
network news station in the country.
    Rolling over, he hit the replay button on the
telephone answering machine beside his bed. The message had come in at
eleven-thirty.
    “John ... it’s
Beverly. I need to talk to you. Desperately. It’s Patrick again.” Pause. She
cleared her throat. “I found him with ...” Pause. “I don’t want to talk about
it on the phone. I need to see you as soon as possible. Call me. Please.”
    As the machine kicked off, he left the bed, wandered
to the kitchen nook, opened the fridge and extracted a Coors Light, then
returned to the bed where he slid his hand between the mattress and box springs
and withdrew his gun, a Beretta Model 92 9mm automatic boasting a fifteen-round
magazine and weighing less than three pounds fully loaded. As he balanced it in
his hand, he glanced down at the phone. The clock beside it glowed two
forty-five in bright red numbers.
    He walked to the open sliding glass doors, stepped out
on the rickety balcony that overlooked the river and the Lucky Lady Casino.
Lights from Tyron Johnson’s penthouse winked in the dark.
    He imagined Beverly pacing the floor, waiting for him
to call. Beverly, with her soulful green eyes and floral fragrance. Beverly
who, over the last years, had become a balm to his decomposing soul. She was in
love with him, though it had never been spoken aloud. It was evident in the
trembling touch of her hand, her quivering smile, in her gaze that pierced to
the very heart of him. He suspected that her problems with Patrick were only an
excuse to reach out to him, though she probably didn’t realize it herself.
    There had been moments, over the last four years, when
he had come close to saying to hell with it and taking her to bed. They had
been friendly in college.