Blind Justice Read Online Free PDF Page A

bill last month, so he’d set the bill aside, hoping the coming month would be more bountiful. He checked the envelope where Mrs. Marmelstein kept her petty cash. (Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, most of them illegal, her tenants preferred to pay in cash.) He found six bucks, hardly enough.
    He glanced over his shoulder. Mrs. Marmelstein was sitting in the La-Z-Boy recliner beside her bookshelves, lined with Readers’ Digest Condensed Books and every volume of the Warren Report. She was absorbed by the television, trying to come up with the name of a Fictional Character that fit SNO_ _HIT_. Ben withdrew his wallet, removed three twenties, and slid them into the envelope.
    He walked back to the living room. “I don’t know how I overlooked that electricity bill,” he told her, “but it’s hardly worth worrying about. You can pay it out of the petty cash envelope. Since this man is in such a hurry, why don’t you walk it over to the PSO office tomorrow?” He smiled. “You’ve been saying you need to get more exercise.”
    “I guess I have time to do that,” she said, as if mentally checking her calendar.
    “Good.”
    “Anything else in the mail of interest? A…party invitation perhaps?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “Oh.” Her hand fluttered against her cheek. She never quite understood that Tulsa high society had passed her by. Or perhaps she did.
    “It’s really too early in the year for the big social events,” Ben said. “Perhaps next month, when it’s cooler.”
    “Perhaps so.”
    “I’ll stop in and see you again tomorrow.”
    “Oh, Ben—”
    “Yes?”
    Mrs. Marmelstein took a small plastic vase from the table beside her door. The vase was filled with fresh-cut flowers, mostly peonies and daisies, obviously from her garden.
    “These are for you.” She put the vase in his hands. “Happy birthday.”
    “Thank you, Mrs. Marmelstein.” He brought the flowers to his face and inhaled deeply. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
    “Oh, well,” she said, patting her bodice. “I had some extras.”
    The last thing Christina remembered clearly was the scent of her mother’s perfume. How strange, she thought. It made her feel like a little girl again, watching her mother plant her begonias and hyacinth, listening to her hum “Annie Laurie” over and over, seeing her agonized expression when asked for the millionth time when Daddy was coming home. It was Mother’s perfume, all right. She never knew what it was called, but that’s definitely what it was; the aroma was unmistakable. And then she could smell…nothing.
    Then she was asleep. No, not asleep; she couldn’t be asleep because she could still see— blurred, sketchy images, bathed in the blue glow of the flickering television screen. Someone was there, but hard as she tried, she couldn’t focus, couldn’t tell who it was. Her eyelids closed, and she was back in her mother’s garden. They were smiling and laughing, planting tulip bulbs for the following spring, until suddenly, there was a tremendous explosion. Her eyelids struggled to open, to see what was happening.
    She had no idea how long it took. It was the whiteness that finally parted her eyelids a little. She tried to comprehend the indistinct figure before her. It was—Frosty the Snowman? It was, but it wasn’t, too. There was something wrong with him, something bitter, something malignant. Another violent explosion rocked the room, then another, again and again. His face began to melt, to change to something else, something horribly different. Christina closed her eyes and saw herself running, as far and as fast as she possibly could. And then she was swimming, drowning in his melted remains. The waves were crashing all around her, but then she remembered she couldn’t swim, and she was sinking.…
    She opened her eyes. Where was she now? She wasn’t sure, but at least she seemed to be on dry ground. The scent of perfume was fading; in its place, she detected a