This Thing of Darkness by Barbara Fradkin Read Free Book Online

Green watched the jerky flashes of people scurrying past the shop.
    In the silence, he plunged ahead. “I have a probable ID , address, and next of kin on the victim.”
    Her finger jerked off the button, freezing the frame, and she swung around to gape at him. In terse, professional clips, he summarized his discoveries of the day. She had the discipline to listen without interruption, but her jaw grew tighter with each revelation. Beneath her dispassionate gaze, he knew she was fuming. Her blue eyes smoked.
    â€œSo I leave it in your very capable hands.” He flourished a grin he hoped would take the sting out. “Public records should turn up the son easily, and the B & E follow-up may give you some very useful information about motive.”
    â€œI appreciate all of this, Inspector,” she said, not bothering to fake sincerity. “We’ll get a warrant for that address as soon as possible, and I’ll have one of my detectives pull the B & E file. But I have a much more promising lead right here on the tape.” She tapped the play button, and within a few seconds a group of young black males slouched by the camera, their hoodies bagging and their shoelaces trailing. They jostled one another as they fought for space on the narrow sidewalk.
    â€œStreet gangs,” she said with a smug smile. “That’s what this is all about. It isn’t important who he was or what went on last week. It’s only important that at that moment of that night, he crossed their path.”

Four
    G reen’s late night walk around the block with Modo was a ritual he’d grown to love. His huge dog padded peacefully at his side, stopping to browse the scents in the bushes along the way, unhurried and unconcerned. Their street of modest old homes tucked behind overgrown maples and shrubs was never busy, and by ten o’clock it was a morgue. Not a single person passed him in the crisp autumn night. It was a time he could lose himself in thought, sort through the events of the day and ready himself for the next.
    Some nights when Hannah was home to babysit, Sharon would join him, and they would walk hand in hand. She’d talk about a difficult patient, or he’d talk about a heartbreaking case. It was a refuge in their busy lives, for which he was grateful.
    He hadn’t expected to like Modo. When he’d agreed under duress to take in the abandoned hundred-pound mutt—half Lab, half Rottweiler, as close as the vet could tell, but with the temperament of a dwarf rabbit—he’d sworn it was only for a month or two until a proper home could be found. Green had never had pets as a child. His home had been full of irrational fears and long, secretive silences that were oppressive to an only child. His mother had flinched at the mere sound of barking. Forever seared into her brain was the memory that dogs had terrifying magical powers to sniff out hiding places and hunt down fugitives. But Sharon had grown up with dogs in her happy suburban Mississauga home, and she’d taken to the traumatized animal instantly. Modo and Green had needed much longer to trust and value each other.
    That evening, Sharon was still doing laundry in preparation for the busy week ahead when he set off for his walk. Random threads of the homicide investigation drifted through his mind as he walked. He considered the theory he was constructing about the victim, once a respected psychiatrist but torn from his moorings by the death of his wife. Like a man of faith, he had questioned the very nature of his professional beliefs. He’d sold his gracious home and bought instead a rundown turreted mansion, where he had to tolerate garbage bins in his front yard and student parties overhead. A solitary man who went out for his daily walk dressed in a suit from his professional days. A creature of habit like Green’s own father, but proud, elegant, unafraid, and unlike Green’s father refusing to be