Shattered by Jay Bonansinga Read Free Book Online Page A

wry chuckle.
    Another voice piped in: “What are we matching them with?”
    Grove recognized the voice of Petra Bartoni, a young whiz kid working her way up the ranks of the FBI’s byzantine headquarters staff. Grove told her to match them up with anybody in the same region with a criminal jacket or a history of mental illness.
    â€œGot it.”
    Another voice: “Been a lot of press on this one, a lot of flight opportunity.”
    Grove let out a sigh. He knew the sound of skepticism in Big Bill Menner’s voice, and he knew there was a distinct possibility that the killer could indeed be halfway around the world by now. But something bone deep inside Grove told him that the killer was within his grasp. A clock ticked in his brain now—the same clock that always began incessantly ticking as he closed in on a subject.
    â€œI think he’s savoring all the ink,” Grove finally said as he descended the escalator into the baggage claim area. Ahead of him, the giant glass doors loomed, streaked with rain, leading out into the parking complex. “We can talk more about this tomorrow…right now I’m going to have to sign off. We can reconnect tomorrow with the lab people.”
    Everybody said their farewells, which was followed by a series of clicks.
    Grove snapped his phone shut, then shrugged on his raincoat, grabbed his suitcase, and headed for the exit…completely oblivious to the complex dance that had already started.

FIVE
    By the time Grove got home it was close to midnight. The rain had stopped hours earlier, and now the stars had come out over the Shenandoahs. Grove’s little neighborhood lay glistening in a hushed tableau, the air perfumed with pine and wet tar. Only the crickets and the dripping gutters were audible as Grove pulled his sedan into his garage.
    The house was as silent as a church. Upstairs Maura and the baby were both sound asleep.
    Grove went into the kitchen and found a note Maura had left for him on the butcher block island welcoming him home and telling him about the leftover pork chop in the fridge and Aaron’s new bottom front tooth and the basement toilet getting clogged by a stray baby wipe. Grove stood there in his damp raincoat, savoring every word of the note.
    All this banal domestic minutia was a salve on Grove’s burning, restless soul. He was still plagued by visions of dark men and dark acts, still driven by a blood heritage he could not fully understand. But just as he was born to hunt monsters, he was also born to be a husband and a father.
    He was making himself a nightcap—a single malt with a splash of water—when he heard Aaron stirring and cooing anxiously behind the door at the top of the steps. Grove put down his drink, then hurried up the carpeted stairs, careful not to wake Maura.
    Aaron’s room was sultry with powdery baby smells and humidified air. A night-light burned in the corner—an orange plastic Tigger head. As Grove entered he could see the silhouette of his firstborn son busily flapping his arms inside the bars of his crib.
    Little Aaron Grove was a big, brown, doughy baby with huge eyelashes and close-cropped nappy black hair. His looks were a pleasing mixture of his light-skinned black father and WASPy mother, though his personality was all his own. He was simultaneously cheerful, noisy, and sickly. He always seemed to have some sort of discharge going, either a leech trail of snot from his little turned-up nose or a crust of gummy mucus in the corner of each gigantic doe eye. But whenever he grinned his snaggletoothed grin at Grove, he was just about the most beautiful creature ever to cross Grove’s path.
    â€œC’mere, Slick,” Grove muttered genially under his breath as he scooped the baby out of the crib.
    â€œPuh!”
    The word—if you could call it that—came out of the little duffer on a half belch, and the sound of it made Grove’s eyes water with glee. It