Blind Spot Read Online Free PDF Page B

slightly acerbic. He loved her. And now she was gone.
    He’d quit the force shortly after Melody’s death, though Drano had told him the job was open whenever he felt like stepping back in. Lang supposed he should have felt grateful, but all his energies were directed somewhere else and he didn’t honestly give a damn.
    Now when he walked into his house, he had the peculiar notion that Melody was there. Something in the air. A leftover scent. But it was an illusion. He’d identified her body in the morgue. There was no question it was her. No question she was dead. No question where the responsibility lay. It was just sometimes—rarely—Lang wanted her back so badly that he almost made himself believe it could happen.
    Nutty behavior. Grief taking over the sane part of his mind from time to time.
    Walking onto the small back deck outside the kitchen, he was impervious to the shivering drizzle that seemed to have gripped the area in a firm hand. The deck was about three feet off the ground and he’d been building steps to it from the backyard, more for something to do than any serious interest in home improvement. Now he tested the wooden rail and wondered if he should change them out to wrought iron. He could do the work himself.
    Trying to come up with something to fill your time?
    Back inside, he poured cold coffee from the pot into a mug and heated it in the microwave. He thought about Claire Norris some more. He’d seen her on television, mostly; in person he’d had to keep his distance and he didn’t want to be too near her anyway. Self-preservation. He didn’t want to do anything rash.
    So, he’d watched her on television with an intensity that was undoubtedly obsessive. He’d DVR’d her only interview with the press and kept it still. She was about five-eight with sexy legs and small feet encased in sensible black pumps. She wore a lab coat over a skirt or dress, mostly. Her hair was chin length, and she had a tendency to tuck it behind her ears when she was speaking, an unconscious focusing act. She was good-looking, her teeth white, her waist slim, her chin slightly pointy. She appeared…honest, he could admit. But then, that was Halo Valley’s prime disguise.
    Now Lang threw himself in a chair in front of the television. Clicking around, he found nothing but game shows, talk shows, and daytime dramas. He stared out the sliding glass door to the rain-soaked cedar boards of his deck. Then, like an addict, he accessed his DVR interview of Claire Norris. Dr. Claire Norris.
    She only said a few words, and Lang knew them by heart.
    Pauline Kirby: Would you have done things differently, knowing what you do now?
    Claire: Heyward Marsdon the Third is under continuing psychiatric care.
    Pauline: But shouldn’t he have been locked up? Shouldn’t you have known?
    Claire seemed to struggle a bit when a man with a goatee jumped forward and practically shoved her aside.
    Dr. Freeson: I’m Dr. James Freeson with Halo Valley Security Hospital. We always strive to give each of our patients individual care. Dr. Norris has been Mr. Marsdon’s primary psychiatric physician for several years and is highly competent.
    Blah, blah, blah.
    Lang rewound and watched it again. Funny, how Freeson initially sounded like he was defending Claire Norris, but after hearing his tone a thousand times and seeing his face, Lang suspected the man was trying to distance himself from the woman who’d brought this destruction to the hospital.
    He watched it again and then froze the picture on Claire Norris’s face.
    “You’re obsessed,” he said a few minutes later, never taking his eyes from the screen. “It’s dangerous.”
    I got a job for you. Something I want you to look into.
    Curtis was worried about him. Maybe he was right. Maybe Lang was starting down that nutty lane his sister had traversed most of her adult life.
    With a feeling of inevitability, he picked up the phone and asked for the Winslow County Sheriff’s