Dead Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

She was weeping, too.
    “Serena, no,” the blond man wailed. “No!”
    Paul looked up at Anna, and she saw how embarrassed he looked. He knew he’d screwed up and that the mistake might cost him his job.
    “Shit,” muttered Frank, low enough so that only Anna could hear. “There goes our crime scene.”

CHAPTER 4

    T HE MAN WHO’D MURDERED THE COUPLE JUST MINUTES EARLIER GUNNED the engine of his black Mercury Cougar and accelerated onto Route 17. His large, dark eyes glistened. He was still high from the killings. He felt the power of God coursing through his veins.
    Lester Malik was pretty new to the contract killing game—this was only his third hit—but it was clear to him he’d been born to do it. I CAN DO ANYTHING, he thought, pumping his beefy fist on the steering wheel to the beat of an AC/DC song blasting on his CD player. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND GOD IS THAT I GET PAID BETTER.
    But in spite of the adrenaline rush, Lester had to admit things hadn’t gone as smoothly tonight as he planned. Normally an excellent marksman, his first mistake was not killing the woman with his first shot. But tonight was only the second time he’d ever fired the .22-caliber Ruger he’d purchased last month from a small arms dealer in Newark. It was the silencer that was the problem. He’d never used one before, and he hadn’t anticipated how heavy it would be, throwing him off his aim.
    Lester banged the steering wheel again with his fist. He should have tested it first. But it was a rush job, and there’d been little time to prepare.
    Mistake #2 was when the husband had walked into the kitchen and caught Lester killing his wife. Lester hadn’t expected that. The guy was supposed to be upstairs on the phone. Lester had seen the man through his binoculars from his perch in the jungle gym-cum-duck blind in the schoolyard behind the house. The way it should have happened—the way he’d seen it play out in his mind—was that the woman would get it first in the kitchen while the husband was busy upstairs. Then before the husband got wise and maybe called the police, Lester would head for the master bedroom and shoot him, too.
    All things considered, Lester had handled the husband’s surprise visit pretty well. He’d chased the man upstairs, kicked open his bedroom door and killed him with one clean shot to the back of the head. No muss, no fuss. And this time he’d been able to correct his aim.
    Then he’d grabbed the jewelry from the closet, which was so easy to find it was laughable. He snorted with contempt. Closets and dresser drawers. Most homeowners had no imagination when it came to stashing their valuables.
    But the real surprise happened when he came back down to the kitchen. The woman he thought was dead had somehow gotten hold of a cell phone.
    The sight of her with that thing in her hand had pissed him off so badly that he’d taken a kitchen chair and smashed it over her head again and again until she was still. Then he’d fired three bullets into her motionless body just to be safe.
    He’d checked the phone to see if she had called 9-1-1 while he was upstairs, but the last call on the log wasn’t to the police. It was to somebody named Web. No last name. He wondered who the guy was. A friend? A lover? Had the woman actually called him? Why him and not 9-1-1?
    Whoever Web was, it was possible he’d called the police. And yet it was eerily quiet in the neighborhood. If the cops had been alerted, he’d be hearing sirens any second.
    He wasn’t going to stick around for that. He had to high-tail it out of there. Fast.
    But being the careful professional he was, he’d quickly searched for the shell casings and then pocketed the woman’s cell phone, too. There was a chance that Web character would call back, and if he did Lester could figure out who he was and what he knew. If he didn’t, Lester would just dump it.
    Crossing the back yard, Lester had disappeared between the tall trees to the