Secret Dead Men by Duane Swierczynski Read Free Book Online Page A

we'd spend the rest of the day doing simple chores or listening to music or any number of things I can't do right now because you see, my wife Alison, she's dead!"
    I watched his chest heave and his face disappear into his hands. Somehow, through all of this, I'd forgotten the crime at hand. A man and his wife had been murdered in cold blood. Why couldn't I be a wee bit more sympathetic? Come to think of it, this was the root of all of my problems with the residents of this hotel. I scooped them up, expecting them to be so full of fire and spit that they'd heap stacks of evidence on my desk and wait patiently as I brought my years-long quest to an end. How arrogant of me.
    But I couldn't find a way to articulate this without sounding full of it. Instead, I walked over to the table and freshened up his Brain scotch, even though he hadn't touched it yet. I freshened my own drink and sat back down. "Tell me what happened, and let's see if we can't piece this together."
    This seemed to rouse him from whatever fugue state he'd entered. I thought I heard him mumble, "okay," but he might have just been clearing his throat.
    "The day of the murder," he started, then corrected himself: "...murders, I was working on a paper."
    "Ledger books?"
    "No, a paper . A thesis on the love poetry of John Donne. I'm sure you've heard of him."
    Only a few days ago, to be honest. Donne was the author of the blood-drenched poetry book I'd found in the Wit Protec house.
    "I always worked in the morning hours. It was when my thinking was clearest. I'd read the texts the night before, let them absorb overnight, then wake up and start fresh. I loved our reading time in bed the most. Of course, Alison wasn't much into Donne. I think the book she'd been reading was something by Jacqueline Susann."
    Now this Susann woman, at least, I'd heard of. She'd died about a year ago. She was most famous for a novel that became a movie about actresses and housewives taking a lot of drugs.
    "Anyway, I know it was morning, because I was working, and I always stopped whatever I was working on by noon to have lunch with Alison. So it was maybe 10 or 11. Alison was listening to music on our portable radio--the only modern appliance we kept in the house, aside from a refrigerator and a toilet."
    Flash memory: the radio, still playing when I arrived at the crime scene.
    "I remember her dancing around to some silly ballad from a couple of years ago--'Baby, You're Mine' or something. She was trying to distract me from my work--which I usually hated, but in this case, I couldn't resist how goofy she was being. Pushing her hips into my back, touching my hair..."
    Brad pulled his drink to his lips and took a sharp, joyless swallow. I knew I had to snap him out of this mood. Fast.
    "Do you remember what radio station was playing?"
    "Why is that important?"
    "It's not," I said. "Just another detail."
    "I don't remember."
    "Okay. Go on."
    "Well, this song was playing, and Alison was dancing around, and all of a sudden there was a knock at the door. This is the moment I've been playing over and over in my head these last couple of days. Why didn't I think anything of that knock? After all, I was a government witness, hiding out hundreds of miles from home so that I could stay alive long enough to testify at a federal trial. Why did I think that knock was ordinary, like mail being delivered or the phone ringing?"
    I had no reply for Brad. I was about to mumble something stupid when he saved me the trouble.
    "I'll tell you why. Because Alison and I weren't raised that way! We didn't have it beaten into our heads from age five that you couldn't trust people! That you wouldn't always have somebody around to protect you, even when they said they were going to! So, for the briefest of moments, I forgot where we were, and I thought nothing of letting Alison answer the door. I went back to a line in my text and started reading again. No, I'll tell what I had really thought: Thank God for the