Her Last Scream by J. A. Kerley Read Free Book Online Page A

vacation on Hudson’s Bay.
    “So what can I do for you?” Krebbs asked, closing the door.
    “We’re here about your wife, Mr Krebbs,” Harry said as I gave an eyeshot to Krebbs’s physique: shoulder-heavy with thick biceps and triceps. But his legs were soft and the tightly belted shorts showed a couple inches of love-handle slopping over the gunnels, a guy who built the showpiece muscles, slacked on ones he could cover with clothing.
    “Which wife?” Krebbs said, inching toward us, his toes edging our comfort zone, broad arms crossed to further fatten the guns, showing us it was his home and he was Alpha Dog.
    “Lainie D. Krebbs,” Harry said quietly, sliding his six-four, two-thirty body two inches closer to Krebbs’s chest. Krebbs stepped back a foot, like needing room to think. “That bitch ran off two months back. Nine weeks to be exact. And two days.”
    “By bitch, I take it you mean your wife?”
    “If you take wife to mean a person who cooks decent meals and keeps a house clean, I’ve never been married.”
    “Let’s use a legal definition, then,” Harry said. “You were married to the former Lainie Place for three years.”
    “I guess. It felt a lot longer.”
    “You seem fuzzy on wives, sir,” I asked. “I take it you were married before?”
    “I’ve been married four times. And don’t give me that look. I’m either a sucker or an optimist. I probably should have my head examined.”
    I left that one alone, said, “You didn’t report Mrs Krebbs as missing?”
    “You’re not hearing me, officer. She wasn’t missing, she ran off. The woman broke her vows.”
    “You weren’t interested in Lainie coming back?” I asked.
    “You can tell her or her shyster lawyer that she signed a pre-nup. She’s not eligible for a red nickel.”
    I looked into his eyes. “We don’t serve documents for lawyers, Mr Krebbs. We’re here to tell you Lainie was found in Denver yesterday. Dead. She’d had her eyes cut out, her breasts wounded, and her body dumped into a tank of sewage at the water-treatment plant.”
    I’d hit him with a bat, expecting shock. Instead, Krebbs put his hands in his pockets and jingled his change, wandering to the front window. “Shouldn’t you be looking for her pimp?” he asked after a few seconds of reflection.
    “You think Lainie turned to prostitution?” I said.
    Krebbs sighed. “A woman like that runs off, a failure with no brains and no education, how else is she going to live? She’s got one natural talent … Not that she was any good at that, either.”
    Somehow I managed to keep from ripping the man’s pathetic hairpiece from his head and shooting it. “You don’t seem sad, Mr Krebbs,” I said instead, “at the death of someone you lived with and, presumably, loved.”
    Krebbs turned away, like figuring out how he was supposed to look. His face came back about the same. “I’m sorry it all happened. But she never learned respect, never figured it out.”
    “There was one thing Lainie could figure out, Mr Krebbs,” I said. “How to call the police when you were beating her. And file restraining orders, which you twice violated. That was just the last Mrs Krebbs. Seems you have a record of this kind of action with the Krebbs wife corps.”
    The eyes flashed. “I fall for these, these ridiculous sensitive women. Once they settle into the cushy life, they turn on me.”
    “Seems Lainie was the one who filed the order, not you.”
    Krebbs’s face reddened with anger. “I never touched the bitch. I’d yell at her – hell yes, she pissed me off – and she’d gimme this big shit-eating grin and smack her face against the fridge or the microwave, call the cops. You people would show up, see a tiny little scrape on her face, and fucking pull me out of my own home.”
    Harry held up his notes. “So all these charges should have been filed against your appliances?”
    Krebbs spun to my partner, fists balled, the anger-control classes a waste of