All Mortal Flesh Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure, of course, because half the time when I come into the staff lounge, everybody else shuts up.”
    “It’ll be old news soon, Rache. Something else will come along and start the biddies clucking.”
    “It’s not just that.” She bent over her dresser and swiped it with the sleeve of her robe. “I’ve been offered another job.”
    He paused. “Same place as last time?”
    “No. With the Capital Medical Center trauma unit.” She straightened. “This is the third time I’ve gotten approached about a job with bigger responsibilities and better benefits. I’m getting tired of saying no just so you can grow up to be Russ Van Alstyne.”
    He opened his mouth to say something. He didn’t know what it would be, just that it would be bigger and nastier and would cut her like she’d just cut him.
    Then the phone rang.
    “This conversation is not over,” she said, pointing a shaking finger at the bedside table.
    “It might be the station.” He reached for the phone.
    “Probably the chief. I’m sure he’s got lots of time to devote to work now his wife’s thrown his sorry ass out—”
    “Hello,” he answered.
    “Mark? It’s Lyle MacAuley.”
    Mark frowned. Why would the deputy chief be calling him five hours before he was due in? “What’s up?”
    “I need you to do something. Can you get away from home?”
    Mark’s eyes flicked toward Rachel, who was hopping into a pair of jeans, swearing under her breath. “Yeah,” he said.
    “I need you to pick up the chief and bring him to the station.”
    “Pick him up? Is there something wrong with his truck?” Another oddity popped into his mind. “Hey, isn’t this his day off?”
    “He’s staying at his mother’s, up where Old Route 100 crosses the river and heads toward Lake Lucerne. You know the place?”
    “Yeah, but it’s gonna take me thirty minutes to drive there in this weather. Why—”
    MacAuley cut him off. “His mom said he’s gone to the market. It could be the local Kwik-mart, or he might have gone all the way to the IGA. I need you to find him, get him into your vehicle, and bring him in.”
    Mark stared out the window, where the snow was falling relentlessly out of a dark sky. Behind him, Rachel was still muttering baleful comments. “Lyle, what the hell is going on?”
    “I’ll tell you when you get to the station. And Mark—no lights. Keep radio silence. I mean that. Don’t even turn your damn radio on.”
    “But—”
    “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” There was a click, and Mark was left listening to the angry buzz of a dead line.
    He turned to Rachel. “I have to go.”
    “Of course you do,” she said. “What’s more important than you being satisfied in your work? Certainly not anything I might have to say.” Her words whipped past him like the winter wind, annoying, but not something he paid attention to when he was thinking hard. As he was now.
    What the hell was going on?
     
     
     
FIVE
     
     
    Noble Entwhistle was about as solid and unimaginative an officer as Lyle MacAuley had ever worked with. He was the guy who did the door to door, called everyone on the thirty-page phone list, worked the radar gun. If you wanted leaps of deduction or seat-of-the-pants interviewing, he was no good, but if you wanted methodical, if you wanted organized, if you wanted polite to old ladies, you wanted Noble Entwhistle.
    Lyle never in a million years could have pictured him hunched over in the snow, crying snot-faced, unable to speak.
    Noble had made it three steps out of the kitchen door of 398 Peekskill Road before collapsing, openmouthed and weeping. He had reholstered his flashlight but forgotten to turn it off, and now a beam of light jerked up and down as his tree-sized back shook with sobs. Fat snowflakes blazed for a moment in glory and then vanished into the deepening drifts on the ground.
    None of the three police vehicles parked in the drive had its lights on. Lyle had radioed them to go dark almost as soon as