Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller) by Joel Goldman Read Free Book Online Page A

streets that now ran two hundred feet beneath where she stood. Microscopic people glided by Oak Tower, as distant from her and her loss as those who had dug their way from the river. Robin’s death had stopped time for her and everyone else in the room, the rest of the world swirling around them, sweeping past without a second glance.
    “Can I have your attention, everyone.”
    Alex turned around to see the woman who had joined them. She was slender, her sandy hair cut in a bob. Half a head shorter than Alex, and in her forties, she was dressed in a dark-green pantsuit from the Hillary Clinton collection. On Alex’s beauty scale, Bonnie was at the top and everyone else was ordinary, though this woman was ordinary-plus in spite of the pantsuit, the strength in her face and the glint in her hazel eyes setting her apart.
    “My name is Meg Adler. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. I work in the St. Louis PD’s office—at least I did until I got the call about Robin. I caught the seven a.m. flight on Southwest and got here as quickly as I could. I’ve been assigned to take Robin’s place—not that anyone can really do that—until a permanent replacement is chosen. I know what a difficult time this is for everybody, but—and I don’t mean to sound callous—we’ve got clients, cases, and trials. We’ll let you know about funeral arrangements as soon as we can. I’ll be stopping by each of your offices so we can get better acquainted. In the meantime, I know this may sound corny, but from what I’ve been told about Robin I think it’s true—let’s get back to work because that’s what she’d want us to do.”
    Alex took the long way to her office so that she could walk by Robin’s, lingering in the open doorway, imagining Robin sitting behind her desk, glasses halfway down her nose, engrossed in her latest bureaucratic tangle. She’d given up the courtroom to be an administrator, keeping the office afloat with the budgetary equivalent of bubblegum and Band-Aids.
    The credenza behind her desk was crowded with framed photographs of her five children, a timeline of their lives. She wore last year’s styles, buying them on sale to save money for her kids, did her own hair and nails, and told everyone else how great they looked. Fifty-five years old, she’d earned every wrinkle and every extra pound that she wished she could lose. She was a single mother, divorced when her oldest child was not yet ten, her ex-husband long removed from their lives. Alex had always marveled at Robin’s grit, raising two families, the kids at home and the people at work. Thinking of both families made her heart hurt.
    There were a few nonfamily photographs tucked in among the rest. One showed Robin shaking hands with the governor, one showed her in the bleachers at a Royals game after she caught a home run ball, arms stretched to the sky in celebration, and another, taken six months ago, showed her receiving an award at the annual Missouri State Bar Association meeting at a hotel in St. Louis. Judge Anthony Steele, who’d recently been elevated from circuit court trial judge to judge for the Missouri Court of Appeals, presented an award to Robin for outstanding service. In the photograph, the two of them were shaking hands and smiling for the camera. Alex had been there. True to form, Robin gave all the credit for the award to the lawyers and staff in her office.
    Alex smiled at the memory, not for the award but for what she saw later that night in the hotel bar. Robin and Judge Steele were huddled together in a dark corner, rubbing shoulders, their faces inches apart, oblivious to anyone else. She had kidded Robin about it the next morning, Robin telling Alex she was being ridiculous not only because Judge Steele was married but because both the judge and his wife, Sonia, were her close friends. But she was blushing nonetheless.
    Though Robin never confided in Alex about her personal relationships, Alex knew that she didn’t