Eden in Winter by Richard North Patterson Read Free Book Online

the hallway, Adam passed beneath more cameras, still unseen. A few last steps, swifter now, took him to the entrance.
    Slowly opening the door, Adam re-entered the night.
    As he stepped on to the asphalt, headlights sliced the darkness. In an instant, Adam grasped that the patrol car was arriving. As its lights caught Adam, the driver hit the brakes.
    Whirling, Adam sprinted down Main Street, footsteps pounding cement. In one corner of his mind he gauged the time it would take the patrolman to swing back into the alley toward the street, picking him up again.
    Suddenly, he swerved, cutting back through the lawn of Whaling Church and then a stand of trees bordering a neighbour’s backyard. Behind him he heard brakes squealing, a door opening, the footsteps of the cop scurrying from his car.
    Adam had little more time to run; in minutes, more police would converge, on foot or in patrol cars. Nor could he drive away. His last hope was to hide.
    Bent at the waist, he crossed another yard, heading for his truck.
    It was parked in a line of cars along the crowded lane. As headlights entered the lane, Adam reached his truck, sliding to his stomach at the rear. Clawing asphalt, he pulled himself beneath it, invisible to anyone who did not think to look.
    He heard the patrol car pass, then his pursuer, still on foot, reaching the lane near Adam’s truck. Listening to the man’s laboured breathing, Adam imagined him looking about, mystified by the absence of sound, the sudden disappearance of his quarry.
    Move on
, Adam implored him.
    Another car passed without stopping, and then the man’s footsteps sounded again, fading as he moved away.
    Adam removed his mask and gloves. Damp face pressed against the asphalt, he glanced at his watch.
    Three-twenty. Two hours until dawn. Head resting on curled arms, Adam waited.
    First light came as a silver space between the tyres of his truck. Sliding out, Adam looked around him, and saw nothing but the still of early morning.
    He climbed into his truck, started the motor, and drove out of town at a slow but steady pace. Glancing in the mirror, he saw that no one followed. As had been his plan, he headed back toward Dogfish Bar.
    The beach was empty, the only sign of human existence the footprints left by fishermen. Satisfied, he changed back into his fishing gear, and drove to a restaurant overlooking the Gay Head cliffs. He ordered breakfast amidst the tourists and tradesmen, a nocturnal angler as determined as Ben Blaine had been, refuelling after hours of solitary fishing. He made a point of joking with the waitress.
    On the way home, he tossed the garbage bag filled with his clothes in a pile of refuse at the Chilmark dump, and dropped Lew’s device in its incinerator. Parking at his mother’s, he saw Clarice drinking coffee on the porch. ‘You look terrible,’ she observed.
    Adam fingered his dark stubble. ‘The price of watching the sun come up. All that’s left when you catch no fish.’
    ‘Get some sleep,’ his mother suggested with a smile. ‘You’re not twenty anymore.’
    Climbing the stairs, Adam closed himself in a room thatstill held the artifacts of his youth. For a moment he had contemplated Jenny Leigh’s photograph, a painful remnant of the time before his break with Ben. Then he downloaded the images he had taken into his computer, reviewing the documents he would provide to Teddy’s lawyer.
    The process took two hours, more disturbing by the minute as the mosaic of evidence began forming in his mind. The witness statements conformed to what he knew: the Blaines, Jenny and Carla Pacelli all denied knowing about the will, and his mother and Teddy’s central assertion – which, in his brother’s case, Adam had no longer believed – was that neither had seen his father once he left the house. Far more lethal were the crime-scene and pathology reports. He was not surprised that someone besides Benjamin Blaine – no doubt Teddy – had left distinctive boot