A Criminal to Remember (A Monty Haaviko Thriller) Read Online Free PDF

make sense. I did understand. I was an ex-con, I’d seen up close the world cops complained about. And I’d seen it for years, better and more clearly than any cop I’d ever seen.
    “Good point. And that caller is absolutely right. Mr. Haaviko, a convicted criminal, has no right to comment on the behaviour of the fine men and women …”
    Right.
    I got up, gathered the kids together and started for home. When I got there I found a bundle of dark red, long-stemmed roses wrapped in a recent UK London Times newspaper leaning against the screen door. There was a note with the flowers that I opened, written in block letters: “To Claire, In Admiration! So wonderful seeing you at the Fair!”
    Nothing else.
    I took the flowers inside and put them in a pitcher with water. There were seven flowers and nothing else, none of the greenery or preservative powders that normally come with them. There hadn’t been any tissue paper around the flowers either. I got ready to tease Claire when she got home and started to make dinner after plugging the kids into a documentary about particle physics.
    Some parents for whom I babysat did not like that I showed their kids documentaries. They wanted me to show them Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer and other stuff like that. I told them that such programs were against my personal life philosophy and that if the kids wanted to learn about co-operation, a good documentary on lions eating an elephant was as good as anything Hollywood, Tokyo or Seoul could come up with.
    One mother told me I was depraved but she kept bringing her daughter back, so I figured I must be doing something right. Either that or she meant depraved in a good way. Or maybe she just couldn’t find another babysitter.

#5
    O ver dinner Claire asked Fred what he learned today. He thought about it and said, “’Article physics are cool!”
    She looked at me, “Particle physics? You’re teaching our son about particle physics?”
    “He’s going to have to learn sometime …”
    She forked a piece of lettuce into her mouth. “You don’t know anything about particle physics.”
    “I got the kids a DVD from that rental place across the Assiniboine River; the one about an hour’s walk away. The monsters seemed to enjoy it. I’m trying very hard to enhance my mind, I’ll have you know. Nice flowers, by the way.”
    “Thank you. They’re not from you?”
    “Sorry, no. They had that note. Strange delivery, if you ask me. I just figured it was from one of your many lovers.”
    Claire looked at the note and put it down. “None of mine. But it’s nice to get offers, you know? Weird, the note’s cut from a piece of strange paper; it’s not a real card at all.”
    “So who did you meet?”
    Claire shrugged. “No one. I talked to lots of people but actually met? No one. Maybe it’s a joke.”
    While we were still eating our doorbell rang and Renfield went nuts, barking ferociously until Claire put him in the guest bedroom. I went to the door and made sure the chains were in place. When I was sure, I pulled the crowbar from the umbrella stand and held it behind my back. Only then did I open the door to the limit of the chain. The door itself was solid core oak, an antique that had cost a mint and a half and which I’d ruined by painting it white and setting into a steel frame. A battering ram might get through it. Normal cop door-breaking shotgun ammunition would be useless.
    Claire used to tell people, “It’s not that Monty doesn’t trust people.” She’d pause for a measured two or three heartbeats and then go on, “ … it’s just that Monty doesn’t trust people.”
    Standing on our steps were a man and a woman, both wearing dark grey suits and carrying thin leather briefcases. The woman was white and the man was an olive-skinned Aboriginal. They were both fairly forgettable, wearing nondescript, expensive clothes and good quality watches and smelling very slightly of expensive colognes and perfumes. At