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A
The only story she’d heard that was more tragic was the accidental death of a three-year-old who’d sneaked out and crawled behind his mother’s Camaro to surprise her when she left for the grocery store.
Paul Davidson was a Christian, an Episcopal priest, he believed in a loving God. Paul was also Sheriff of a poor county in Mississippi. He saw suffering of the worst kinds, cruelty and ignorance, predator and prey on the human scale, and it was far more vicious than anything between wolves and moose. A
He believed A
Spending all eternity with either incarnation didn’t appeal to her.
The next article she clicked on brought her upright in her seat. The headline read: “No Ring Found in Trap.” Beneath it was a quarter-page color photograph of a young Adam Johansen on the front steps of a brick fourplex, carrying a bloody, naked woman. The woman’s arms hung at her sides. Her hands were completely red, and blood trailed down the leg of Adam’s khaki shorts and painted the side of his calf and the top of his ru
“It’s a still from a videotape.”
The voice was no more than six inches from her ear. Years of not responding to the machinations of people whose day she was ruining for one reason or another, A
“Did I wake you up?” she asked.
Adam leaned down, looking at the photograph on the screen. He was shirtless. Heat radiated from his skin. Threads of long hair trailed across A
Fear on men smelled sour. Adam smelled of molten iron and metal ice-cube trays, red coals and rocks brittle with cold.
Adam reeked with a distillation of rage.
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A
“I can’t imagine anything worse than what you had to go through,” she said. She didn’t have to pretend to be sincere. If he had killed his wife, by the look of the young man in the picture it hadn’t been nearly as much fun as he’d hoped.
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Adam said.
“The coroner ruled it suicide,” A
“Why are you looking at that?” Adam sounded more worried than angry at the breach of his privacy, or such privacy as remained in the instant-information era.
“Getting to know you,” A
His breath puffed out on a dry cough. The closest thing to a laugh he was going to make.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” he said and, rather than leaving, pulled up another straight-backed chair to sit next to her, scooting it up till his knees were less than a foot from hers. He put his long forearms down on his long thighs and leaned in till their faces were close enough, A
His breath was hot, residual fire from the fury, and smelled sweet, as if he’d chewed a mint leaf. A
“Adam,” she said wearily. “You’re crowding me. People crowd to intimidate. Could you either back off or do it in a more interesting way?”
Another cough of laughter. A
“Sorry,” he said, sat up straight and smiled. It was a good smile, full of healthy teeth, and it went all the way to his eyes crinkling the corners. A
“Did you make Robin disappear?” she asked.
“Robin didn’t need to be here this winter. She should have stayed home or waited tables in St. Paul.” He rubbed his face. Both hands continued up until his fingers pushed his hair out in thick tresses. “We’ll start the search at first light?”
The question took A
He smiled again. This time, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Who knows?” He rose and walked from the common room. A second later, A
She couldn’t tell if she’d just had an up-close-and-personal conversation with a backwoods John Wayne Gacy or not.
“Ted Bundy,” she corrected herself.
In the minutes spent drinking the essence of Adam from the air as he stood over her half dressed and burning, she’d not tasted the sour warp of a psychopath. But, then, one didn’t. That was why they got away with it.
A
Everything was so ordinary, so expected, at first she didn’t realize what she was looking at. Modern conveniences had become as air; only when they weren’t there were they noticed.
Why would Katherine have a cell phone charger out and plugged in when there was no cell reception on the island? A