A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,41

the warning sound.

This morning it was my uncle’s weight coming down from where his brother lay dead that creaked the stair. And like his brother, Uncle Keith’s broad build filled the kitchen door. My mother looked up, dry-eyed, into his face.

“You alright, Ann-Marie?”

“Yes,” she said and I felt her hands flex once under my own.

“Max boy. You wanna see him once upstairs before they take him out?”

“No,” I answered.

He didn’t react, knowing enough not to say more.

“Then I’ll take care of it, Ann-Marie,” he said, crossing the kitchen floor and laying a hand on her shoulder. She reached up to pat his back and he pressed a small brown apothecary bottle into her palm.

“So you take care of this. OK?”

I was up early. Billy had already started coffee and was practicing his morning ritual with the paper. We apologized for our respective hangovers and I went down to the beach for a run to purge my pores and memories.

When I got back, sweat-stained and vowing to do more than two miles next time, Billy was on his way out.

“There is f-fruit blend in the refrigerator and S-Sherry called,” he said. “T-Tell her I appreciate w-what she’s doing.”

I reached her on her cell and arranged to meet her at Lester’s Diner.

“Just trying to fatten you up, Freeman,” she said. She had some paperwork that she needed me to see. When I wondered out loud why we couldn’t just meet in her office, she knew I was needling her.

“Sure. Come right up and say hello to Hammonds. He’ll be thrilled to hear you’ve got your fingers in another one of our cases.”

When I pulled into Lester’s it was past noon. There were several pickups and a couple of truck tractors in the parking lot. Lester’s was built in the tradition of the old Northeast railcar diners. Long and rectangular, the outside was lined with windows. Inside, chrome swivel stools were lined up at the counter. There were three rows of booths upholstered in slick red vinyl. Richards was in the last booth in the corner, sitting on the bench facing the door. She was dressed in jeans and a buttoned blouse and she had left her hair down. Papers and what appeared to be a city street map were spread out on the table. As I slid into the seat opposite her she took a few stray strands of hair and tucked them behind her ear.

“Nice choice for a workplace,” I said.

“Might as well be an annex,” she said. “Sit here long enough and you’ll see nearly every patrol officer and detective on two shifts.”

The waitress came, dressed in a dingy, ’50s-style white uniform that looked like it might have been new when she was young.

“Can I get cha, hon?”

I couldn’t help smiling, waiting for the gum to crack.

Richards picked up on the grin.

“Julia Palamara. Max Freeman,” she said in introduction. “He’ll have coffee.”

“Pleasure,” the waitress said.

The coffee cup was heavy, ceramic and huge. Julia left a brown plastic pot for refills. I liked the place.

“So here’s the stack of rape and homicide files, all of them grouped in the same general area and going back ten years,” Richards started. “No fingerprints, a hodgepodge of DNA in only the recent cases, and statements by the rape victims that are sketchy, incomplete and pretty damn vague considering.”

“I mapped the locations all out on here,” she said, spinning the map to face me. “The cases we looked at are red, then I stuck your list of what were classified as naturals in green.”

The circle that enveloped twelve different spots from the high school press box to the concrete bunker to the Thompson house was way too tight. I just looked up at her and then took a long sip from the deep cup.

“It was spread over time,” she said, her voice sounding defensive. “They weren’t all linked together, and considering the neighborhood…”

I still said nothing. And then she quit, too. Julia came back and gave us both an excuse to stop staring at the map and avoiding each other’s eyes. We both ordered breakfast.

“OK,” I started. “Let’s assume the women fit in with the others, just for now. Do that and you’ve got three motives; sex, violence for the sake of violence, and money.”

“Wrong, Freeman,” she said, tightening up her voice. “You haven’t been out in that shack that long. Rape isn’t about sex. It’s all about violence and control.”

“OK, OK. Agreed,” I said. “If we’re going on the theory that your guy wasn’t