The Killing Kind by John Connolly Read Free Book Online Page B

sense of charity but I quickly realized that if I kept doing things for charity, then pretty soon charities would be doing things for me. Now Jack Mercier was offering me good money to look into Grace Peltier's death, but something told me that the money would be hard earned. I had seen it in Mercier's eyes.
    I drove into the center of Portland and parked in the garage at Cumberland and Preble, then headed into the Portland Public Market. The Port City Jazz Band was playing in one corner and the smells of baking and spices mingled in the air. I bought some skim milk from Smiling Hill Farm and venison from Bayley Hill, then added fresh vegetables and a loaf of bread from the Big Sky Bread Company. I sat for a time by the fireplace, watching the people go by and listening to the music. Rachel and I would come here next weekend, I thought, browsing among the stalls, holding hands, and the scent of her would linger on my fingers and palms for the rest of the day.
    With the arrival of the lunchtime crowds I headed back toward Congress, then cut down Exchange Street toward Java Joe's in the Old Port. As I reached the junction of Exchange and Middle, I saw a small boy seated on the ground at Tommy's Park on the opposite side of the street. He was wearing only a check shirt and short pants, despite the fact that it was a cool day. A woman leaned over him, obviously talking to him, and he stared up at her intently. Like the boy, the woman was dressed for very different weather. She wore a pale summer dress decorated with small pink flowers, the sunlight shining through the material to reveal the shape of her legs, and her blond hair was tied back with an aquamarine bow. I couldn't see her face, but something tightened in my stomach as I drew nearer.
    Susan had worn just such a dress and had tied her blond hair back with an aquamarine bow. The memory made me stop short as the woman straightened and began to walk away from the boy in the direction of Spring Street. As she walked, the boy looked up at me and I saw that he was wearing old black-rimmed eyeglasses, one lens of which was obscured by black masking tape. Through the clear lens his single visible eye stared unblinkingly at me. Around his neck hung a wooden board of some sort, held in place by a length of thick rope. There was something carved into the wood, but it was too faint to see from where I stood. I smiled at him and he smiled back as I stepped from the sidewalk and straight into the path of a delivery truck. The driver slammed on the brakes and blew his horn, and I was forced to jump back quickly as the truck shot past. By the time the driver had finished giving me the finger and proceeded on his way, both the woman and the boy were gone. I could find no trace of them on Spring Street, or Middle, or Exchange. Despite that, I could not shake off the sense that they were near, and were watching.
    It was almost four o'clock when I returned to the Scarborough house, after depositing my check at the bank and completing various errands. I padded around in my bare feet as some Jim White played on my stereo. It was “Still Waters” and Jim was singing about how there were projects for the dead and projects for the living, but sometimes he got confused by that distinction. On the kitchen table lay Jack Mercier's check, and once again that unease returned. There was something about the way he looked at me when he offered me the money in return for talking to Curtis Peltier. The more I thought about it, the more I believed that Mercier was paying for my services out of guilt.
    I wondered too what Curtis Peltier might have on Mercier that would cause him to hire an investigator to look into the death of a girl he barely knew. There were a lot of people who said that the collapse of their business partnership had been an acrimonious one, bringing to an end not only a long-established professional association but also more than a decade of friendship. If Peltier was looking for