Tell No Lies by Gregg Hurwitz Read Free Book Online

touching the switch. Stomach gone to ice. He felt an overwhelming urge just to head upstairs to the warmth of his bed.
    But.
    He pressed the switch, bringing the lights back on. Slowly, he turned his head to take in that mess of dumped-out mail on the coffee table, limned again in the dim glow.
    Peeking from the mound, partially buried, was a second department-gray clasp envelope. And, protruding from the far edge, a third.
    On both he could make out a familiar uneven scrawl.

 
    Chapter 8
    Swimming in Daniel’s San Francisco Giants shirt, her hair taken up loosely in a butterfly hair clamp, Cristina paced furrows in the floor while Daniel sat on the couch over the two neatly positioned, still-sealed envelopes. The rest of the mail he’d swept off onto the Turkish rug. Ridiculously, he was wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, which he’d used to sift through the mound so as to give Homicide Detail’s elaborately named “police secretarial assistant” at the other end of the phone a precise number of how many department-gray clasp envelopes he had in his possession.
    Two.
    Three, actually, but the third with its neatly typed label was in fact intended for him—the termination agreement Kendra had discussed with him in the hall.
    The PSA told Daniel to sit tight and signed off, first assuring him that Inspector Dooley would get back to them.
    Which left him and Cristina alone at 11:51 at night with two death threats staring at them from the coffee table like cocked guns.
    lyle kane
    316 bay st
    san fransico
    And beside it:
    marisol vargas
    1737 chestnut st #2
    san fransico
    They’d Googled both names already, finding nothing on Lyle Kane and scattered mentions of various Marisol Vargases, none of which mentioned any crime.
    Cris chewed at a cuticle. “I wonder what they’re doing right now. Lyle and Marisol.”
    Daniel was having trouble removing his eyes from the scrawled words. Two names, two lives.
    “Sleeping,” he said.
    “And they don’t know. They have no idea…”
    He laced his fingers, the stupid yellow gloves squeaking together. For some reason he hadn’t taken them off. He’d thrown on jeans and a sweatshirt as well, wanting to face the matter dressed. “We don’t know that these letters are death threats, too.”
    “They don’t look like Christmas cards.”
    “No, they don’t.”
    Those gouged pencil marks. The envelopes, thin and nearly weightless. Each one, like the first, seemed to hold a single sheet. What the hell did they say?
    Cris checked the phone in her hand, as if a call had somehow been missed in the last thirty seconds. “Where the hell could Dooley be?”
    A fresh consideration soared in and skewered him. The words stuck in his throat, so he swallowed and tried again. “What if they’re dead already? What if their deadlines already passed, like Jack Holley’s?” He didn’t say the rest: Then a mix-up over the goddamned mail would have cost two more lives.
    At this, Cristina finally halted. Despite the cool nighttime air, her cheeks were flushed. Through the south-facing window, the city lights gleamed and wavered like something living.
    She said, “Should we … open them?”
    The question had been working at him like an ulcer since he’d laid eyes on those envelopes. He forced a measured answer. “Wouldn’t that screw them up as evidence?”
    “Not if you use gloves.”
    “How do you know?”
    “ CSI: Miami. ” Cris crouched and set the ledge of her folded arms on the far side of the coffee table. Stared across those envelopes at him. Tapped the antenna of the cordless phone against her lips. “Between your mailbox and here, you’ve already touched them plenty. The cop told you to use the gloves to count them. It’s not like opening them’s gonna compromise them all of a sudden.”
    Daniel reasoned along with her. “Whenever the hell Dooley gets her hands on them, she’s just gonna do it anyway.”
    His mouth had gone sour. The mounted clock behind him