Some sham – things that had never been alive. Toys which might, perhaps, almost have lived in their owners’ imaginations. Some all too real. A ginger cat in a coffin. More than one tiny coffin in the room. A white rat, too, nailed to a cork board. Numerous butterflies. And more. There was an old ...
“Will your boss agree to wear a bomb suit?” Tony Valdez asked Bobby Goldstein. “You have to be kidding.” Goldstein, who’d been persuaded to try on an American Body Armor suit, felt like a blimp or some kind of space age monster. “Dr Ash will not agr...
Jim Keenan, true to his word, had faxed not only the pathologist’s report on Joanne Patston’s death, but also the scene-of-crime report. ‘For your evening’s entertainment,’ Shipley muttered. She wiped her greasy hands and picked up the new report, h...
Not that she was hungry, but she owed it to the baby to eat, and anyway Lucia had called a little while back, apologetic for taking time out for an electrical problem at home. ‘I’ll bet you haven’t eaten anything,’ Lucia had said. ‘Not much,’ Grace ...
Evelyn knew right away that it was Frank speaking, but it didn’t really sound like him because usually Frank’s voice was nice and clear, and he never mumbled like so many other people, but now it was slurry and husky and he sounded almost drunk. Matter of fact, she felt that way too. Drunk and na...
Angie Carlino was an old pal, an outsize, sexy, kind-hearted Italian who’d worked in a series of clerical jobs down on Washington Street before falling in love with a Tampa-based cop and moving to the west coast where she now worked for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s office. Sam had gone to Angie’...
Quiet now, the baby, a nice enough little thing, cute too, as brown babies went, at least in the dark, and he hadn’t even screamed when the stranger had picked him up out of his crib – until Cal had put his hand over his little mouth, and then he’d tried to make plenty of noise, for sure, but no ...
Kate shook her head wearily. They didn’t do anything.’ ‘Not to you.’ Simon’s voice trembled. Pig got to his feet and peered at the papers in his hand because looking at the words through the black stocking was almost like reading in the dark. ‘After...
Later. Fire and Rescue had come first, then the Key Biscayne police, and other strangers, too, in and out of uniform, all of them behaving kindly to her, calmly, the way trained emergency personnel behaved with someone on the edge. She didn’t know how much time had elapsed between then and now. S...