Cold Winter Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

it’s a good time to meet Susan.  Come on back.”
    Kramer led me through the hall and into a large kitchen with a central island encircled by barstools.  In a nook at one end of the kitchen stood a massive leather and walnut booth worthy of a private club.
    A woman with ash blonde hair, her face as smooth and unlined as a ten-year-old’s, sat on one of the barstools.  She wore a black jogging suit with some sort of gold fabric belt.  A heavy gold crucifix hung between her breasts.  Her feet were bare except for black tennis footies.  I wondered if I should have taken off my shoes before entering the house, but I noticed that Kramer was wearing his wingtips.  Lawyers’ shoes.
    If Susan Kramer was her husband’s age, she had engaged the services of an excellent plastic surgeon.  Or maybe it was heredity.  Or good bones.
    “ Slate,” Kramer was saying.  “This is my wife.  Susan.  Susan, meet Mr. Slate.  Mr. Slate has agreed to help us find Kris.”
    “ I see,” Susan Kramer said.  She didn’t stand or offer her hand.
    “ Slate is here to help us, Susan.”
    “ I’m sorry.  I don’t mean to be rude.  But FBI agents are here in the house.  They have the resources of the government at their disposal.  I trust them.  I trust the police.  And I place my ultimate trust in the power of prayer and in the power of miracles and in the Blessed Virgin.  I just don’t see. . . .”
    “ No.”  Kramer cut her off.  “No, you don’t see.”
    “ Now who’s being rude?”
    “ Folks, maybe this is a bad time.  I can come back later.”
    “ No, Slate,” Kramer said.  “Susan, I’ve watched this man’s career.  He’s a smart lawyer, and now he takes on situations like ours.  I’ve seen the FBI screw up too many kidnapping cases.  The two members of my law school class who joined the FBI could not have gotten a job in the county DA’s office.  I’ve hired him, and he stays.”
    Susan Kramer stood and said, “I’ll be upstairs.  Father Kelly is waiting in the salon.  We will pray together.  It was nice to meet you, Mr. Slate.”
    “Whatever,” Kramer muttered to her retreating back.  “Sorry, Slate.  Susan handles stress with anger and sessions with the priest.  And I’m the one with high blood pressure.  Let’s go in the library.  Maybe the fibbies are finished interviewing Paul.”
    One room on the front of Kramer’s house jutted past the remainder of the house’s facade.  Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered one wall.  An antique writing desk of dark wood with painted Oriental figures sat under the double windows facing the street.  Paul Kramer sat near the bookshelves in a wing chair covered in solid red fabric.  Facing the boy, the two FBI agents, a man and a woman, occupied the ends of a couch covered in a red fabric that appeared to be silk.
    Kramer walked in and stood over the couch.  I hung back near the door. “Not finished yet?” Kramer asked the room in general.
    “ Almost.”  The female FBI agent glanced up at Kramer.  “Paul was just telling us about going with his mother to pick up Kris from school.”
    “ And that’s all I can remember,” the boy said.  “May I go now?”
    “ Yes,” Kramer and the female agent said simultaneously.  Paul got up, and the two agents both stood and shook the boy’s hand.  He nodded to me as he walked past.
    “ Agent William Alston, Agent Patricia Sanders, meet Mr. Slate.  Mr. Slate is a lawyer, and I’ve hired him to help with the effort to locate Kris.”
    The two FBI agents turned toward me as I followed Kramer to the center of the room.  Both had been issued straight from the twenty-first-century federal law enforcement handbook.  The man, Alston, about six-three, 205.  Dark thinning gray-blond hair, trim, cheap suit, black cap toe shoes with thick soles.  Probably an ex-jock.  The woman, Sanders, probably five-seven, 135, wore her brown hair shoulder-length and pulled back with a shell clasp.