The Famous and the Dead by T. Jefferson Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

with a prison-style pass-through about waist high. This door he opened with a different code, then stepped into his new wine cellar.
    Hood had built the cellar beneath his home at some expense, and it was only recently completed, though he owed twenty more monthly payments on the loan. He had sold his restored IROC Camaro to help pay for it. The four underground rooms were cold and high-ceilinged and there were no windows or doors but the light was incandescent and good. White walls—lath and plaster, hard as stone, not sheetrock—and a textured concrete floor. High in the ceiling of each room was a steel grate, but no light came through the heavy grids. The cellar was only minimally furnished, with racks and a few bottles of red wine aging. A couch and entertainment center with a TV and some DVDs. There was a small bath and shower, a kitchenette, and one of the rooms had an empty bookcase and a double bed, made up.
    He sat in a folding chair at a folding table in the bedroom and let his eyes wander the tabletop: a laptop, an external hard drive, an envelope containing eight eight-by-ten-inch photographs of Finnegan, a row of identical photo booklets containing four-by-six copies of the same photos. A coffee cup brimming with pencils, a pad of graph paper dense with notes and scribbles, a stapler. It was all very neat. He’d had to move his work space down here with the arrival of Beth, Erin, and Reyes, but this had allowed him to discard the chaff and keep the wheat.
    Hood looked up at the grate, beyond which was only darkness. He remembered Veracruz, and the quick grind of the knife blade against his skull, and the wash of blood that draped his eyes and blocked his vision while Mike fled down darkened M. Doblado Street. Hood ran his finger along the scar and thought,
I’ve got room for you
. He looked into the amber twinkle of the glass and he sensed that he could become lost in it, and he wondered again if his sanity was eroding, and he told himself again—for what, the thousandth time?—that no, no, no, his mind was sound and his mission was clear and right. Just look at the neatness and order of the tabletop, he thought, a reflection of sound thinking. He reminded himself that he had seen what few had seen. This is why he had been given the scar. As a seal of authenticity.
I’ll find you
, he thought.
And when I do, you will never so much as brush up against another person on this earth
.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    Back in the living room Hood saw the flicker of headlights coming up the steep dirt drive. “He’s here,” said Erin. She sat at the far end of a long leather sofa, close to the fire, a Pendleton blanket over her. Even through the heavy blanket, her middle registered as a large, stout ball. Her face was pale and flushed and slightly fuller these last few weeks. Her hair shined red in the firelight. “Thanks again for waiting up for me.”
    â€œYou know I don’t mind.”
    â€œBeth should be home soon.”
    A minute later the motion lights outside the house came on and Hood saw Bradley’s black Cayenne pull into the carport. The dogs were already at a window, up on their back legs for the view. Hood undid the locks and swung open the heavy wooden door, then walked back to the living room and sat.
    Bradley swept in, the untucked tails of his shirt trailing, his face pinched and hollowed, eyes hard until he saw Erin. He held a long spray of cut red roses in one hand and a white plastic sack in the other. He stopped and stared at her in silence. He set the flowers on the sofa beside her, then slid a colorful box from the bag and broke it open and bowed somewhat formally to hand her a chocolate ice cream bar on a stick. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
    â€œFudge Bars,” she said softly. “My hero. That’s Charlie sitting right there, in case you didn’t see him. Maybe you should offer him one,