Blank Slate (A Kyle Jackle Thriller) Read Online Free PDF Page A

drained and lightheaded. Every bone in my body aches.
    A yellow cab cruising down the street trolling for late night fares hesitates as it passes me. I nod to him and get in when the squealing brakes finally bring the cab to a halt. “lleveme a un hote, por favor,” I ask the Cuban cab driver. Two minutes later we arrive at the Beach Plaza Hotel further down Collins.
    This is exactly what I was looking for. Small, funky, and ignored by the masses. And the cops. And apparently almost everyone else-the place is almost completely deserted. I walked in and headed straight to the De Carlos Bar. This place looks like it’s been here forever-old chipped marble from the 30’s and art deco columns that somehow escaped being ripped out by the interior designers during several rounds of remodeling over the decades. A few dusty glass hookahs indifferently scattered around apparently to try to give it a more exotic feel-someone wasted their time on that touch. The best part-a bartender who takes one glance at my battered face and silently sets a bottle of good single malt Scotch on the well-worn bar between us.

CHAPTER 7

    It was well after midnight when Rivera finally left the hospital. He was completely exhausted, and still concerned about leaving Jean alone. The doctors had run a CAT scan to check for head injuries, but she seemed to be just fine physically. Just as a precaution, they decided to keep her overnight for observation. The emotional damage was a different story.
    She seemed in a distant daze from the stress and trauma of the past few hours. Every time he tried to touch her, she tensed and pulled away from him-he tried to avoid reading anything into that. Any effort to talk to her was met with nothing more than monosyllabic responses. No eye contact. The detectives from the CIU had tried to interview her, but got nothing. They promised to return in the morning to take a complete statement.
    Rivera couldn’t put the facts together in any coherent framework. He expected his world to make sense most of the time. He might not like the senseless brutality that he saw all too often, but he usually could at least understand it. The John Doe had obviously been a victim of some crime. The murder of the woman in the dumpster had to be related in some way. And who was this guy to attract the attention of someone who was obviously a professional killer? Normal people were killed everyday in a number of tragically senseless ways, but nobody was targeted by a hitman without there being a damn good reason for it. And how did a guy who was in a coma suddenly wake up and not only defend himself, but manage to kill his attacker?
    Jeez, too much information for one night. He popped the top off a cold beer with his thumb and took a long slow swallow that half emptied the can. Tired of the late night TV offerings, he stripped down to his wrinkled boxers and laid on top of the sheets sweating in the humidity that the struggling window air conditioner couldn’t quite push aside.
    The mechanical drone of the air conditioner was finally overwhelmed by another sound as the first glimmers of the sun painted the Atlantic with pale golden streaks of color. Rivera groaned as the energetic flock of colorful Monk parrots began their noisy morning serenade to the dawning of a new day. He hated the filthy little beasts. There was a flock of around fifty birds that insisted on living in the tall palm tree just outside his condo, crapping on his car every day, and just raising holy hell every morning. He idly wondered how much trouble he would be in if he accidentally discharged his shotgun into the middle of the little feathered rats.
    After a couple of minutes of trying to ignore the racket, he gave up any hope of getting back to sleep. He tried to stretch out all the creaky parts of his body that had been abused over the past forty years, first in college football and then later by the normal wear and tear he faced every day in his job. Staggered into