Daniel Read Online Free PDF Page B

to
finish the sides. And he continued to watch when she formed it with her hands,
curving out the sides to make the shape softer, using only a sponge and her
hands. She finished it and stood. He held his breath when she walked in front
of it. He could see flashes going off and knew she was getting her picture
taken with it. But she wasn’t finished.
    She walked over to a large easel and
pulled a sheet of paper about four foot square off a pad. She clipped it to the
easel with a cardboard as its board. She picked up a pencil and looked back at
the camera.
    “I don’t know what to draw. Does anyone
have a suggestion?” There were several shouts from the crowd, and when the
camera panned around, Daniel got his first glimpse of Doyle. The man flushed
and told him to pay attention.
    When the younger O’Reilly turned back to
the paper, he watched her hand slide effortlessly over the sheet. Even after
only a few minutes he could see the picture emerging. She was drawing a woman
standing next to a cameraman. Both he and Doyle watched as she drew them over
the large sheet until she turned back around. The camera was moved around to
the point of making him sick before it settled on a cameraman and his anchor. It
looked as if she’d drawn them perfectly. Even the microphone in her hand was
nearly perfect.
    “Mother fuck. She’s that good.” He
looked at Doyle. “Please tell me she won, after all. Someone that talented
should be teaching in Paris, not learning.”
    “She didn’t win. But….” Doyle held up
his hand when Daniel started to speak. “But she did get to go to Paris the
following year. The community that the company was trying so hard to win over
rallied behind the girl and put them out of business.”
    Daniel was thrilled. He smiled, thinking
about her getting to study there and doing it because she had truly won. He
looked at the next picture.
    “Her mom and step-father were killed
while she was away. She didn’t find out until they were both buried. Her
sister, Meagen, was driving when someone went left of center and took them all
out. Figured that the girl changed her life because of that night. Because the
sister, Meagen, became a first-class trouble maker afterwards.”
    Daniel nodded. He’d seen firsthand what
the death as tragic as the one in the picture could do to someone. He took the
next pictures and felt his belly lurch. These pictures showed an older woman,
perhaps in her late twenties, lying in what appeared to be a bed of blood.
    “Then one night, about ten years later,
the police called O’Reilly to tell her that her sister was hurt and that she
was asking for her. That’s the way Meagen ended up. We took the pictures of
everything when we finally got word from the locals. Good thing too, ‘cause of
what happened later. O’Reilly had already come and gone by the time I got
there, having come to her sister’s deathbed and been told that she wasn’t worth
anything, and that Meagen hated her. Or so O’Reilly told the cop before she
left.”
    “You don’t think that’s what happened. You
think something else was said and what? She knows who her killer was?” Doyle
shook his head. “Then what? What has you remember a case this old and keep
files on it?”
    He put another picture in his hand. “That
man. His name is Humberto Carver. He’s who we’ve been looking for, both then
and now. There’s a file on his known activities dating from before O’Reilly was
born.”
    His rap sheet was as long as two of his
arms and still some. Drugs, theft, embezzlement ,
attempted murder, homicide, assault, rape…he looked up at Doyle.
    “But no convictions. Why?” Daniel looked
over the papers, not really expecting Doyle to answer. Then he saw a name he’d
heard. He looked back at the former agent. “Meagen Harper was one of his?”
    “She wasn’t just one of his runners as
it says there, but she, for all we could find, was his mistress, too. That is
up until about the time of her death.