Cross Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

hewas freaked over the thing.”

    Ryan studied the photo for a ful minute. Then he looked up and said, “Did you buy the tap pants?”

    My cheeks flamed. “No.”

    “Red satin. Sexy as hel .”

    I narrowed my eyes in a “not here” warning look. “I’m cal ing it a day.”

    Crossing to the closet, I hung up my lab coat and emptied the pockets. Emptied my libido.

    When I returned, Ryan was on his feet, but again staring at Kessler’s photo.

    “Think any of your paleo pals might recognize this?”

    “I can make a few cal s.”

    “Couldn’t hurt.”

    At the door Ryan turned and flashed his brows.

    “See you later?”

    “Wednesday’s my tai chi night.”

    “Tomorrow?”

    “You’re on.”

    Ryan pointed one finger and winked. “Tap pants.”

    My Montreal condo is on the ground floor of a U-shaped low-rise. One bedroom, one study, two baths, living-dining room, a walk-through kitchen narrow enough to stand at the sink and pivot to reach the fridge behind you.

    Through one kitchen archway, I cross a hal to French doors opening onto a central courtyard. Through the other kitchen archway, I cross through a living room to French doors opening onto a tiny enclosed yard.

    Stone fireplace. Nice woodwork. Ample closets. Underground parking.

    Nothing fancy. The building’s sel ing point is that it’s smack downtown. Centre-vil e. Everything I need is within two blocks of my bed.

    Birdie didn’t appear at the sound of my key.

    “Hey, Bird.”

    No cat.

    “Chirp.”

    “Hey, Charlie.”

    “Chirp. Chirp.”

    “Birdie?”

    “Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.” Wolf whistle.

    Stuffing my coat into the closet, I dropped my laptop in the study, deposited my take-out lasagna in the kitchen, and continued through the far archway.

    Birdie was in his sphinx pose, legs tucked, head up, front paws curled inward. When I joined him on the love seat, he glanced up, then refocused on the cage to his right.

    Charlie tipped his head and eyed me through the bars.

    “How are my boys?” I asked.

    Birdie ignored me.

    Charlie hopped to his seed dish and gave another wolf whistle fol owed by a chirp.

    “My day? Tiring, but disaster-free.” I didn’t mention Kessler.

    Charlie cocked his head and viewed me with his left eye.

    Nothing from the cat.

    “Glad you two are getting along.”

    And they were.

    The cockatiel was this year’s Christmas present from Ryan. Though I’d been less than enthused, given my cross-border lifestyle, Birdie had been smitten at first sight.

    Upon my rejection of his bid for cohabitation, Ryan had proposed joint custody. When I was in Montreal, Charlie would be mine. When I was in Charlotte, Charlie and Ryan would batch it. Birdie usual y traveled with me.

    This arrangement was working, and cat and cockatiel were firmly bonded.

    I moved to the kitchen.

    “Road trip,” Charlie squawked. “Don’t forget the bird.”

    I was lousy at tai chi that night, but afterward I slept like a rock. Okay, lasagna isn’t great for “Grasp Sparrow’s Tail” or “White Crane Spreads Its Wings,”
    but it kicks ass for “Internal Stil ness.”

    I was up at seven the next morning, in the lab by eight.

    I spent my first hour identifying, marking, and inventorying the fragments from Avram Ferris’s head. I wasn’t yet undertaking an in-depth examination, but I was noticing details, and a picture was emerging. A baffling picture.

    That morning’s staff meeting ran the usual roster of the brainless, the brutal, and the sadly banal.

    A twenty-seven-year-old male electrocuted himself by urinating in the track bed at the Lucien-L’Al ier metro.

    A Boisbriand carpenter bludgeoned his wife of thirty years during an argument over who would go out for logs.

    A fifty-nine-year-old crackhead overdosed in a pay-by-the-night flophouse near the Chinatown gate.

    Nothing for the anthropologist.

    At nine-twenty, I returned to my office and phoned Jacob Drum, a col eague at