Birds of Prey by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online Page A

where her ex-husband was hiding. And then, moments later, I would once again be standing in the bare-bones waiting room at Harborview Hospital. The doctor, still in surgical scrubs, would come through the swinging door. He would catch my eye over the heads of Sue’s two bewildered young sons and give me the sign — that slight but telling shake of his head — that said it was over. Sue Danielson hadn’t made it.
          No matter how many times I relive those wrenching scenes, they don’t get any better. I’ve been to the departmental shrink. Dr. Katherine Majors tells me that I’m suffering from post-traumatic stress. She claims that’s why I keep having flashbacks. Not the kind of flashbacks that makes broken-down vets think they’re back in ‘Nam and under attack by the Vietcong, but close enough. Close enough to keep me from sleeping much at night. Close enough to make me wonder if I’m losing my grip. Close enough to make me postpone accepting the attorney general’s offer to go to work on her Special Homicide Investigation Team based down in Olympia.
          It’s not as if this kind of stuff hasn’t happened to me before. I was there years ago when Ron Peters was hurt and later on when Big Al Lindstrom got shot, but those incidents didn’t affect me quite the same way. Ron may be confined to a wheelchair now, but he’s reclaimed his life. He has his daughters, Heather and Tracy, and a new wife. And now Ron Peters is the proud father of a recently arrived son who also happens to be my namesake.
          As a result of his injuries, Big Al Lindstrom was forced to take early retirement, but as far as I can tell, he and his wife, Molly, are both enjoying the hell out of it. The AG’s office made Big Al the same offer they gave me, and he didn’t even think twice about saying thanks, but no thanks. Molly probably would have killed him if he had tried to go back to work.
          With Sue Danielson, though, it’s different. She’s dead. Her sons are orphans, and no amount of psychobabble from Dr. Majors is going to change that. No amount of talking it over and “getting it out of my system” will alter the fact that Sue won’t be there to see her boys graduate from high school or college. She’ll never be the mother of the groom at a wedding or have the chance to cradle a newborn grandchild in her arms. I continue to blame myself for all those things — to feel that, justifiably or not, there must have been something else I could have done that would have fixed the situation and made things turn out differently.
          And, Lars and Beverly’s honeymoon aside, that was the other reason I was on the Starfire Breeze — because I hadn’t yet figured out what to do with myself or how to forget.
          “Is this seat taken?”
          I looked up to find the beaming face of Naomi Pepper, my seatmate from dinner the night before, smiling down at me. She was holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate piled high with fresh fruit and melon in the other.
          “No,” I said. “Help yourself.”
          “You’re the only familiar face I saw,” she continued. “I hope you don’t mind.”
          “No, really. It’s fine.”
          Naomi settled down across from me. “Everyone else seems to be sleeping in.” She grinned. “I’m the only early bird.”
          “Does that make me the worm?” I asked.
          Her smile disappeared. “Are you always this surly?” she returned.
          Her question took me aback. I had been making a joke that didn’t strike me as particularly surly. “What do you mean?”
          “How about, ‘My wives are dead. Both of them’?” Naomi continued mockingly. “For somebody who’s supposed to be a fortune hunter, you don’t have much of a knack for it. That’s not what I’d call getting off on the right foot. In fact, you made it sound as though you personally were responsible for