Shadow Games by Ed Gorman Read Free Book Online Page A

swimming trunks, or in the lobby of a French restaurant where the girl on his arm would look very much like his daughter, and a slightly whorey one at that. Mildred Fenwick was convinced that once her husband saw how ridiculous he looked in such photos, he would come to his senses and return home.
    Puckett didn't necessarily believe that the aging American male was all that sensible, but he wasn't being paid for his beliefs. He was being paid to tail Fenwick, and get photos of him in as many contexts as possible. And that's how Puckett, good gumshoe that he was, came to be in Chicago tonight.
    "I'm a real fan of your writing."
    "Thank you," Anne said to the caller.
    "Do you have any opinions about where Cobey Daniels disappeared for that nine month period?"
    Several years ago, Cobey had vanished. Utterly. A nationwide manhunt ensued. But no Cobey . Then one day he simply showed up again. He would never talk about where he'd been or what he'd done. Ever.
    "I'm afraid I don't know any more about it than you do," Anne said.
    Hearing her voice again, Puckett couldn't help himself. He picked up the hefty Chicago phone book on the seat next to him, looked up the number of the station where Anne was, and then called the place and left a phone number for her to call—and the name of the hotel where he was staying. The receptionist treated him about the way he'd expected—as an unholy masher.
    Twenty minutes later, Puckett's replacement showed up—the agency, thank God, had a working agreement with a Chicago investigative agency—and Puckett went and found himself a Hardee's drive-up. He did not exactly have gourmet tastes...
     
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    A round eleven, Puckett decided Anne was neither going to call or show up, so he took off his trousers and watched the second half of Jay Leno in his shorts.
    He also spent a lot more time than he wanted to thinking about Anne Addison.
    Two years ago, after the magazine she was writing for assigned her to interview a private detective, she spent a week with Puckett on the job. She was a bright, fetching woman with coppery hair, little-girl freckles and one of those great, odd smiles that seemed to contain both joy and sorrow.
    Their relationship lasted much longer than either of them planned, ending one night when she smashed up a good share of his living room after he told her, as gently as possible, that she was an alcoholic. She called him arrogant, smug and uncaring, all the things most alcoholics call people who try to point out the obvious.
    Puckett still felt sorry for her, of course. She was a thirty-one-year-old woman who'd endured an abusive first marriage and, four years earlier, had seen her five-year-old son dash out into the street and be struck by a car. Donny had died six days later, having never emerged from the darkness of his coma.
    So Anne drank: at first just to kill the pain, but then out of habit and, finally, out of overwhelming need. By the time Puckett had first met her, she had two distinct problems: the loss of her son and her alcoholism...
    Puckett had phoned her many times following their terrible, violent argument in his apartment but it had done no good. She wouldn't return any of his calls. He'd even written her twice. She wrote RETURN TO SENDER on the front of the envelopes and mailed them back. He wanted to know how she was doing. He cared about her, more than he imagined he might. Hell, he'd been half-assed in love with her when they'd had the shootout that night. If they'd kept on seeing each other...
    Toward the end, things had gotten pretty crazy, her drinking taking more and more of her sanity, her anger becoming more frequent and more strange...until one night in the parking lot of a cocktail lounge, trying to steer her into his car, Puckett had watched as Anne raised a gin bottle she'd stolen from the lounge—and smashed Puckett's windshield in, shattering both safety glass and bottle as she did so.
    As he tried again to grab her, she startled him by