Bloodfire Read Online Free PDF

might indeed have been what it sounded like: gunfire. He drew the drapes closed.
    Carver made his way across the rough carpet to the phone. The effort was hard on his good knee, of which he took exceptional care. He pulled the desk-model white phone down to him; it dinged when it struck the floor. Leaning his back against the wall, he depressed the cradle button a few times to make sure he had a dial tone. Then he made two phone calls.
    The first was to the Holiday Inn on Collins in Miami.
    He was told there was no convention of medical suppliers there, nor was one scheduled. No Robert or Bob Ghostly was registered there, either.
    So much for loyalty to the client.
    Carver’s second call was to Lieutenant Alfonso Desoto of the Orlando police department.
    Carver sat on the low white leather sofa with the stainless-steel arms, comfortable as a cat on a fence top. Someone had thought to turn the air conditioning on and the condo wasn’t so warm, but he was still sweating.
    The ME was finished with the body, but the evidence team was still bustling about in its murmuring, controlled way. Vacuuming, photographing, dusting for prints. Establishing facts if not some sort of logic that might explain the carnage. The hope was that logic and pattern would emerge later, spawned by meticulous attention to minutiae.
    Desoto finished talking to the departing ME, then he walked over to stand near Carver. A tall man with broad shoulders and a waspish waist, he was as darkly handsome as a Hollywood bullfighter. Tailored cream-colored suit, white shirt, mauve tie, oxblood shoes that looked made for dancing. He smiled down at Carver, teeth carnivorous white perfection against his smooth tan complexion. His wavy black hair, impeccably combed as always, shone in the shaft of light beaming through the crack left by the drapes that didn’t quite meet. Dust motes swirled in the slanted golden ray, stirred up by police activity.
    Irritated by Desoto’s smile, Carver said, “Not a fucking thing I can think’s funny about this.”
    Desoto shrugged, but his dashing smile lost candlepower. “I was just considering all the shit you get yourself into, amigo. It’s amazing.”
    Carver took that kind of observation from Desoto without rancor or firing back a smartass answer. They’d been friends for years, since Carver’s days in the department. They knew each other layers deep. Desoto had goaded Carver to stay in police work, become a private investigator instead of a self-pitying beach bum. There were no hard feelings except from time to time, when it wasn’t lost on Carver that, on average, beach bums outlived private cops.
    Neither man said anything as two white-uniformed attendants fitted the corpse into a black rubber body bag. Zipped the bag noisily with a ratchety sound that sawed through Carver, then eased it onto a gurney that was raised with a lot of metallic clicking as its mechanism locked it into place. The gurney had large, chrome-spoked rubber wheels. One of them made a faint, rhythmic squeaking noise as the attendants rolled their grisly burden across the carpet and out the door. Out in the hall, the attendants began discussing where they’d have lunch. This was all a normal day’s work for everyone involved. Well, not everyone. The day hadn’t been normal for the woman in the bag.
    Desoto waited till the last of the evidence team had left. The door to the hall remained open. A tan-uniformed elbow was visible, and a black-holstered revolver with a checkered butt. A uniform was standing guard in the hall but was well beyond earshot of Carver and Desoto.
    Desoto carefully unbuttoned his suit coat, revealing a thick gold tie clasp. He was wearing a gold watch, a gold-link bracelet on his other wrist, a gold ring on each hand. He liked gold almost as much as he liked clothes. Sitting down carefully on the opposite end of the sofa, he crossed his legs slowly and without much pressure, so he wouldn’t mash the creases in his pants.