Bad Moon Rising Read Online Free PDF

“the man” was to J.D. The
simple thought of Tyron Johnson encouraged fresh pain to coil in his gut, along
with hatred, not to mention suspicion that made his heart slam against his
ribs.
    Tyron controlled girls in three states, but made his
home in New Orleans. He lived in the penthouse suite of the Lucky Lady
Casino—ten thousand a month including all the champagne he could drink and all
the caviar he could eat. He had a nuclear temper and his girls paid the price
big-time for crossing him.
    During his four years with the District Attorney’s office,
J.D. had attempted to bury him in prison several times for assault with deadly
intent and drug-related charges. In each case, the girl he had carved up during
one of his tantrums had refused to testify, or he’d gotten off on some
technicality. Case closed. Again and again and again. The last time they had
met, that being on the courthouse steps on a beautiful June morning, 1999, Tyron
had declared in front of eight witnesses that J.D. was going to live to regret
his harassment. Two months later, his wife and children had been murdered.
    Tyron had had an alibi for the time of the murders.
Marcus DiAngelo.
    “It’s starting again,” Honey said. “Just like before.
They were wrong, weren’t they? About that Gonzalez creep. He wasn’t the killer
at all.”
    “It’s too early to jump to those conclusions.” Christ,
old habits were hard to break. He was sounding like Mallory, but no point in
exacerbating the woman’s panic. Not yet. “Could be some freak copycat. One
murder is a long way from a serial killing.”
    She stopped pacing and turned to face him. “She’s not
the first.”
    “What the hell are you saying?”
    “You wouldn’t have heard about it. The state don’t
want the public to know it put an innocent man to death.”
    *     *     *
    Patrick Damascus, sixteen and a half, going on thirty, or so his mother
declared, sat at his desk crowded with schoolbooks and assignment sheets that
he had not so much as glanced at, though the hour was growing late. He hated
the “alternative school year” that came with the private school his mother had
insisted he attend. It was supposed to provide him a better education, because
he was “gifted” and public schools couldn’t afford him the opportunity to
utilize his genius.
    That was a lot of crappola. She simply didn’t want him
hanging with normal kids because, according to her, they were a bad influence.
That, too, was a lot of crappola. The kids attending St. Elizabeth’s Boys’
School were the worst. Those who weren’t geeks were freaks, but there wasn’t
any reasoning with her. Once she set her mind to something, there was no
changing it.
    Opening the bottom drawer of his desk, he dug deep
beneath several spiral notebooks labeled geometry sucks the big one and english lit is for fags , withdrew a magazine, and
carefully, as if it would detonate at any moment, placed it on his desk. He
arranged the lamp closer, adjusting the shade so it cast a spotlight on the
glossy, colored photographs of naked couples.
    Certainly, he was well aware of the facts of life,
birds and bees and all those cliched stupidities adults termed “fucking.” But
the photos presented here were highly enlightening, in short, leaving nothing
to the imagination. His curiosity of the female anatomy had been assuaged
within the covers of this encyclopedia of smut. Couples, threesomes, men and
women, women and women, men and men emblazoned the photos with a boldness that
made a knot form in his stomach and a heat center in his groin that flushed his
entire body, not just with the stirrings of his awakening hormones, but with
an anger that made him grit his teeth so hard his jaw hurt.
    So engrossed was he at the moment, he didn’t hear his
bedroom door open. It wasn’t until he heard his mother’s horrified gasp that he
realized he had been caught with the goods.
    “Oh my God.”
    He stiffened.
    As his mother snatched