DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery Read Online Free PDF

your pessimism isn't healthy. If we both think we're going to fail, it kind of becomes self-fulfilling.”
     
    * * *
     
    Faith Hobbes carried herself with an unusual air of confidence, considering the circumstances. Though no longer the doting wife, she came into the precinct inexorably tied to her ex-husband, a fact that should have led her to show sympathy, either real or imagined. That she didn't try to hide the lack of emotion she felt was telling, at least to Detective Knox. It might not have been an indicator of guilt, but it revealed the sort of woman she was, and what she could be capable of.
    Sitting across the table from him, she gave off the same air of burden he did, as though neither one of them wanted to be in the room together. His reticence stemmed from his displeasure at having to talk with people who would offer little in the way of insight, while hers was forged from an attitude of nonchalance. It appeared, looking at her, that she didn't care that her former spouse was dead, or that she was one of the likely suspects.
    “Mrs. Hobbes, you understand we have to ask you some questions about your husband, don't you?”
    “Ex-husband. Please get that right.”
    Knox had left the qualifier off intentionally, digging for whatever feeling there was beneath her polished surface. She was skilled at not showing her hand, at keeping up appearances at all costs. Prying information from her would either be futile, or she would give it without a second thought. Sociopaths were hard to predict, even for a trained detective.
    “My apologies. Let's begin with your relationship with your ex-husband. How would you characterize it?”
    “Necessary.”
    Knox almost laughed at her answer, which caught him off-guard. Few people were able to be so blunt with him, and to do it with no pretense of apology was startling. This woman, he thought, was something entirely different from the person he expected.
    “That's not a very descriptive answer.”
    “How are you supposed to put complex things into simple words?”
    “With one word after another.”
    She did not appreciate Knox's levity, nor the assumption it contained that she was holding back from him. Her reply was brusque, but honest. A lie, constructed to give him what she thought he wanted to hear, would have been far more complicated.
    “We had a relationship typical of people who are no longer together. Some days we didn’t get along, and other days we talked.”
    “And what happened on those days?”
    “We would fight, as is customary in such cases. Love and hate are not opposites, nor are they mutually exclusive.”
    “So it's fair to say you might have wanted him dead.”
    “Of course.”
    Again, she caught Detective Knox by surprise. Only grand-standers and attention seekers tended to openly admit to such feelings, so her confession struck well outside the bounds of normalcy. Knox wasn't sure what to make of her; whether she was putting on a defiant act, or whether she was incapable of understanding how her words would be construed.
    “Really?”
    “There were many times I wished for him to be dead, but we know wishes don't come true.”
    “But this time they did.”
    “Perhaps yes, perhaps no. We don't always know what we wish for until it’s been granted.”
    “Did you want your ex-husband dead yesterday?”
    She hesitated as she gathered her thoughts. Knox sensed genuine contemplation, having spent enough time lost in his own mind to recognize the signs. It was an open question for her, one whose answer was a matter of fact, not one with an obvious choice if ever asked.
    “I can't say for sure. It's possible my subconscious was thinking it.”
    “And what exactly was the conscious part of your brain doing instead?”
    “Oh, you mean you want to know what my alibi is, don't you?”
    “If you would be so kind.”
    “But of course. I'm afraid to inform you that, regardless of my intentions towards my dear ex-husband, I couldn't have killed him, if