Blood Orange Read Online Free PDF

hadn’t stopped looking. They
expected a flake of skin or drop of blood to turn up eventually. They
would dismantle the cars down to the atomic level if they had to.

    Gracie said, “According to the police report Sandra Calhoun
called 911 a bit after nine, but before that she knocked on your
front door to see if Lolly was with you. Why did she do that?”
    “How should I know? We were neighbors. And Lolly was a
sweet kid. I liked her when she wasn’t whining.”
    “You didn’t answer the door.”
    “Well, no, I didn’t.”
    “Why was that?”
    He lifted his hands, showing his smooth pale palms. “My office
is on the other side of the house, Ms. Perez. I had the door closed,
and I listen to music with a headset when I’m working. Helps me
focus.”
    “Cops knocked on the door, too.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. If I had heard them … “
    “Do you love your wife?” Gracie asked.
    “Of course I love her. And I’d never do anything to hurt her, to
spoil what we have. She knows that.” Filmore’s large dark eyes filled
with tears. “She knows I never-“
    “Then in the late afternoon you went out,” David said.
“Where’d you go?”
    “Well, again, I’ve said this before, I try to run several times a
week. My time was good in the San Diego Marathon last year.”
    Big fucking deal.
    “Where did you run that day?”

    “Catalina Avenue, down the grade to the place where they train
the dolphins, and then back up.”
    “You live in University City and you drove all the way to Point
Loma?”
    “Obviously you’re not a runner or you’d know that variety keeps
the training fresh.”
    Filmore loved the sound of his own voice. He definitely could
not be trusted on the stand.
    “Anyone see you?”
    “If you mean that I talked to, no. No one.”
    Outside, a siren wailed up First Street headed for Harbor View
Hospital. In the wake of its passing, David heard the clang of the
trolley one block up. Four people in the tiny interview room, four
sets of lungs inhaling the air-conditioned oxygen, exhaling
lunchtime garlic and coffee: no wonder David had a headache.
Filmore appeared not to mind the crowd. He probably thought he
deserved Jesus Christ and the Twelve Apostles at his table after
writing a check for one hundred thousand dollars payable to Cabot
and Klinger. Their biggest retainer to date.
    Not for the first time, it occurred to David that for a man who
loved to be out of doors and who enjoyed the camaraderie of sport,
he’d chosen a strange, confined, and confining profession. Maybe
he should have been a coach. That’s what his uncle wanted for him.
Instead he was going to spend the next thirty years in jails and
courtrooms defending the Constitution. Which nobody seemed to
care about anymore.
    Gracie might hate Filmore or feel nothing at all; you’d never
know from her cool velvet voice, almost a monotone but with a hint
of challenge, like she dared Filmore to give her a hard time. She
asked, “What happened after your run?”

    “I’ve said this before.” He looked over at Allison. “Don’t you
read her notes?”
    “Tell us again,” David said.
    “I knew it was the night my wife was going to her book club …”
    But that night Marsha Filmore had stayed home, had gone next
door to give moral support and comfort to Lolly Calhoun’s mother
and father.
    “So I just pulled on my sweats and drove up to Carlsbad to see
Lord of the Rings. It was so good, I stayed to see it twice.”
    It was a lame alibi. Without proof no jury would buy it.
    “Why’d you go to Carlsbad?”
    “I wanted to stop at the outlet stores, but when I got there I didn’t
have my credit card so I just went to the movie.”
    The alibi wasn’t lame, it was paraplegic.
    At the theater no one remembered his good-looking face, and he
hadn’t kept the ticket stub. David wrote a note to send Allison out
to the theater with photos. A pretty blonde with blue eyes and