Don't Know Jack by Diane Capri Read Free Book Online Page B

single plank step to the porch, and entered the house through the open front door.
    Kim stayed where she was.
    Gaspar, too, seemed momentarily transfixed.
    “What a hole,” he said. “My wife would never have moved out here in a million years. What kind of woman lives like this?”
    “The killing kind, apparently,” Kim said. She reached into her bag and found her camera. Then she opened her door and stepped onto the hard red ground.
    The first thing she noticed was the quiet noonday, bizarrely still. She was a city girl. Noise was normal; quiet was not.
    Out in the woods, no one can hear you scream.
    “Did you know?” she asked.
    “Know what?” Gaspar said.
    “Why he gave us the eleven-thirty deadline. Why he put us in that room at that time.”
    “You don’t trust me, do you?”
    “He wanted us to be there when the call came in. He wanted us out here at the crime scene. That how you read it?”
    “Yes,” Gaspar said.
    “What about Reacher?”
    “Reacher’s irrelevant.”
    “To what?  This homicide?  Or is the whole assignment bogus?”
    He shrugged. “You’re number one. You figure it out.”
    She could feel sweat above her lip. She couldn’t figure it out. She hated that. She said, “Take pictures, OK?  And don’t be obvious about it.”
    If Gaspar resented her orders, he didn’t show it. He just turned back to the Blazer and got his own camera. She watched him from behind her sunglasses.
    Was he limping?   FBI field agents didn’t limp. Physical fitness was one of the basic requirements of the job. Definitely no limping allowed. She reached up and dabbed the sweat from her lip, and then she headed for the house, matching Gaspar’s longer stride step for step. As they walked his limp became less pronounced. Maybe it was just a cramp.
    Maybe she could rely on him.
    Only one choice.

 
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    Inside the house the tiny hallway was full of people and full of familiar muted crime scene sounds. Then one guy moved right and another moved left and Kim got a clear line of sight into a messy bedroom. Time stood still, like a single freeze frame in a video.
    Harry Black’s body was face down on bloody sheets, right where his faithful bride had shot him seven times less than two hours ago.
    Not a chance.
    Complete bullshit.
    Kim smelled him even over the skunk perfume. She saw the rigor and the lividity from all the way across the room. Every professional in the house had to know Harry Black had been dead a lot longer than two hours. The GHP trooper must have known when he called in the homicide.
    People shifted again, blocking her view. The freeze frame ended. The video moved on. Gaspar looked at her and nodded. He had seen it too. The interior of the building matched its exterior for bleakness. There were four rooms. A total of maybe 800 square feet. Lots of pine, lots of gaps and warps. The living room had two worn recliners and a 60-inch flat screen TV. There were fashion magazines on a folding table. The windows were opaque with dirt.
    Gaspar had moved farther into the house, observing everything, just as she was. He was taking pictures from time to time.
    Of what?
    Am I missing something?
    Kim recalled Gaspar’s question. What kind of woman had chosen to live in this place?  She glanced toward the kitchen and saw the answer right there.
    Mrs. Sylvia Black sat on one of the two kitchen chairs, head down. Cuffed hands hung between her knees. She held her palms together, rhythmically opening and closing each set of matched fingers, one set at a time, like a metronome, counting.
    Counting what?   
    She had a recent manicure. She had perfectly shaped nails, quite short, painted pastel pink. She had a large square onyx ring with a silver cable around it on her right index finger, and a smaller turquoise ring by the same designer on her right pinky. She was wearing the kind of black patent sandals that fashionable women covet, and she had a fresh pedicure. Her toenails were polished deep