Murphy's Law by Lisa Marie Rice Read Free Book Online

suit. He wondered if the dead professor had anyone at home who even cared what he would be buried in.
    Dante remembered when his Uncle Francesco had died seven years ago. Aunt Sara had insisted her husband be buried in a new suit and new shoes. He had accompanied his cousins Laura and Andrea to buy the suit and they had picked it with exactly the same kind of care and disregard for expense that would have gone into buying a suit for a wedding. They had chosen pure cotton underwear and shoes that wouldn’t pinch.
    Professor Kane was lying supine with his right hand over his stomach. There was a long, sharp stiletto knife about a meter away. Dante examined it without touching it. Knebl was finely engraved on the haft.
    It was a good German brand that produced excellent cutlery and knives. Sold both in Europe and in America. Only lab analysis would yield any information on the blood, and Forti, his lab tech, would be lifting any latents, though he knew Faith Murphy’s fingerprints were already on it.
    A dumb move for what looked like a smart woman. Unless she’d killed him.
    If she had, touching the stiletto had been a very smart move. She’d instantly had a perfectly reasonable motive for her fingerprints being on the knife that had killed a man.
    Dante had seen lots of dead bodies in his twelve years as a police officer, especially when he’d been stationed in Naples. The dead bodies he’d seen in Siena had been traffic accidents mostly. Overturned tractors. Once, horribly, a child drowned in a well. A few fires.
    As a policeman, Dante had seen most of what life did to humans and his soul had hardened some. But murder still gave him a primeval sense of dread—man usurping the natural order.
    He wasn’t a religious man. Dante didn’t believe in an afterlife. There was only this life—with all its sweetness and bitterness, to be drunk down to the dregs. There wasn’t anything after this. There were no second chances. This was it.
    This was certainly it for the man lying on his back in the sunlight-filled room. Outside the window of cell seventeen could be seen Siena, the graceful tower whose bell tolled constantly on the mornings of the Palio, the copper cupola of the cathedral gleaming in the distance, the brick walls shining red-gold in the sun.
    The man had had one of the best views in the world, but he would never see it again. He would never feel the summer sun’s rays on his face again. He would never go strolling in the countryside again. He would never make love to a woman—or to a man if his tastes ran that way—again. He would never sip coffee in an outdoor square with friends again. Life had flown from his body.
    The dead man didn’t have a face that looked as if he had enjoyed many cups of coffee with friends.
    How a murdered man had lived his life was the greatest clue to his death. Dante would be hearing a lot about Professor Roland Kane in the next few hours and days.
    He would interview Professor Kane’s colleagues. He would find out whether Kane’s colleagues loved him, hated him or merely tolerated him. Uncle Lorenzo would be emailing him the professor’s history, as would his close friend Sam Murray of the Southbury PD. Sometimes the bare bones of a life were enough to know whether that life had been lived well—in peace with loved ones—or badly, in constant strife.
    Judging by the harsh lines crisscrossing Professor Kane’s face, frown lines more than laugh lines, Dante was sure there couldn’t have been too much love in the professor’s life.
    Hatred, then. Envy and jealousy and hostility. And once he had learned all there was to know about the dead man, as day follows night, Dante would know who had killed him.
    There was a clatter in the hallway.
    Shaking his head at the waste, Dante rose to let his men in.
    He really, really hated murder.
     
     
    Faith followed her nose back to the refectory, but Murphy luck was holding true. The waiters had cleared away the breakfast things and