The Body of David Hayes by Ridley Pearson Read Free Book Online Page A

detective.”
    “I can’t make any promises. At least not the one you’re asking for. I’ll need to make some calls.”
    She felt a victim again, much as she had after the meeting with David. Lou had boxed her into something she’d not seen coming, and she deeply resented the way he felt it was his right to make decisions for her.
    “I’ll try to do whatever you and Danny ask, Lou, but I will not be excluded from the decision-making process. You, or someone, is going to offer David a deal. I will bring him that deal, if necessary.”
    “We’ll protect the mother if we can. Depending on where she lives.”
    “California, somewhere.”
    “That’s more problematic, but not impossible. As I said, I need to make some calls.”
    She felt the principal had dismissed her, but she wasn’t done. “As far as I’m concerned, the worst thing that can happen is that we allow this to drive a wedge between us.”
    “Which is why Danny and I are now in charge,” Lou said. “Because that’s
not
the worst. Truth be told, it doesn’t even come close.”

    Alone now, Boldt wondered why her affair had to resurface, why Liz had to remind him that he should feel something more than his general sense of numbness allowed. Over the past six years, he’d figured out how to hide much of this behind a carefully erected wall. Now, despite all his emotional masonry, that wall had crumbled down around him. Around them both.
    Boldt phoned Danny Foreman, prepared to feel impotent and the source of another’s unspoken amusement. Cuckolded. He lacked a cohesive strategy but knew time was of the essence. Danny would already be working angles that he, Boldt, had yet to see. To wait too long was to be completely excluded. Liz had put herself in the center of this, and now Boldt needed to extricate her as quickly as possible.
    Foreman didn’t pick up at his office, nor did he answer his mobile. Boldt left a pair of messages, but he knew in advance that there was good reason for Foreman’s silence.
    Danny Foreman was already hard at work, and Boldt was playing catch-up.

    It was an unspoken rule in the Boldt home that police business not be discussed, and so the collision of these two worlds caused repeated violations, begun the previous morning with the discussion of Danny Foreman’s assault and continued now through the post-dinner kitchen cleanup. As Liz patrolled the table and countertops, Boldt parked himself in front of the sink and splashed his way through a pile of pots and dishes, most of which were on their way to the KitchenAid dishwasher to his right, a noisy, prehistoric contraption that needed replacement. The thing would outlive most dogs without ever failing, but its churning, swishing, and occasional grinding amounted to an invasion of privacy, as far as Boldt was concerned, so he didn’t turn it on when the time came. Instead, he eavesdropped on his son, Miles, practicing piano.
    “It’s beautiful,” Liz said, finishing off a countertop with a damp sponge. He sensed in her the desire to reestablish their lives as normal.
    “It’s astonishing,” Boldt said. “His age…and as little training as he has had.” He was wondering what came next and how he could work to separate Liz from the investigation.
    “Chip off the old block,” Liz said. “Off the old
bolt,”
she corrected, amusing him. For a moment, even to him, they felt like husband and wife again.
    “I don’t have a tenth of that kind of talent.”
    “He got it listening to you. Watching you practice as much as you do.”
    “I’d love to take credit for
any
of that, believe me. But that’s more your department… more divine intervention than learned behavior. He’s special.”
    “You’re both special,” Liz said. “And Sarah, too.”
    The wall phone rang, interrupting the few moments of distraction away from the case. With the chiming of those tones, both husband and wife went silent, caught in a pregnant pause of indecision as to who should