Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 by Total Recall Read Free Book Online

goodwill. Why don’t each of you take thirty
seconds to summarize your positions, before we say good night. Ms. Wiell?”
    Rhea Wiell looked at the camera with a wide, serious
gaze. “We often like to dismiss other people’s horrible memories, not because
we’re not compassionate. And not because we don’t want to be victims. But
because we’re afraid to look inside ourselves. We’re afraid to find out what
lies hidden—what we’ve done to other people, or what has happened to us. It
takes a lot of courage to take a journey to the past. I would never start
someone on that journey who wasn’t strong enough to make it to the end. I
certainly never let them travel that dangerous road alone.”
    After that, Professor Praeger’s rebuttal sounded cruel
and unfeeling. If the rest of the viewing audience was like me, they wanted
Wiell back, wanted her to say they were strong enough to travel to the past,
and good or interesting enough that she would guide them on the way.
    When the camera faded to commercials, Morrell switched
off the set. Don rubbed his hands.
    “This woman has book, six figures, written all over
her. I’ll be a hero in Paris and New York if I get her before Bertelsmann or
Rupert Murdoch does. If she’s legitimate. What do you two think?”
    “Remember the shaman we met in Escuintla?” Morrell
said to Don. “He had the same expression in his eyes. As if he saw into the
most secret thoughts of your mind.”
    “Yes.” Don shuddered. “What a horrible trip. We spent
eighteen hours underneath a pigsty outwaiting the army. That was when I decided
I’d be happier working full-time at Envision Press and letting people like you
hog the glory, Morrell. So to speak. You think she’s a charlatan?”
    Morrell spread his hands. “I don’t know anything about
her. But she certainly believes in herself, doesn’t she?”
    A yawn split my face. “I’m too tired to have an
opinion. But it should be easy enough to check her credentials in the morning.”
    I pushed myself upright on leaden legs. Morrell said
he’d join me in a minute. “Before Don gets too carried away with this new book,
I want to go over a few things about my own.”
    “In that case, Morrell, we’re doing it outside. I’m
not dueling with you over contracts without nicotine.”
    I don’t know how late the two of them sat up: I was
asleep almost before the door out to the porch closed behind them.

V
    Sniffing for a Scent
    W hen I got
back from my run the next morning, Don was where I’d left him the night before:
on the back porch with a cigarette. He was even wearing the same jeans and
rumpled green shirt.
    “You look horribly healthy. It makes me want to smoke
more in self-defense.” He sucked in a final mouthful of smoke, then ground the
butt tidily on a broken piece of pottery Morrell had given him. “Morrell said
you’d operate the coffee thingy for me; I suppose you know he’s gone into town
to see someone or other at the State Department.”
    I knew: Morrell had gotten up when I did, at
six-thirty. As his departure date loomed, he’d stopped sleeping well—several
times in the night I’d woken to find him staring rigidly at the ceiling. In the
morning, I slid out of bed as quietly as possible, going to the guest bathroom
in the hall to wash, then using his study to leave a message for Ralph
Devereux, head of claims at Ajax Insurance, asking for a meeting at his
earliest convenience. By the time I finished that, Morrell was up. While I did
my stretches and drank a glass of juice, he answered his mail. When I left for
my run, he was deep in an on-line chat with Humane Medicine in Rome.
    My return route took me past Max’s lakefront home. His
Buick was still in the driveway, as were two other cars, presumably Carl’s and
Michael’s rentals. There didn’t seem to be any signs of life: musicians go to
bed late and get up late. Max, who usually is at work by eight, must be
following his son’s and Carl’s rhythms.
    I