Dead Reckoning Read Online Free PDF

you pop a pill.”
    Frank’s hands curled into fists, but he didn’t move. Rick was his best friend. They’d been rookies together some twelve years ago. It didn’t matter. Frank didn’t trust himself not to knock the other man flat, even though he knew everything the other man had said was true. And he would never reveal that there had been times in the last year when he’d thought coming home in a body bag would have been better than coming home alone and torn to pieces inside and out.
    Behind him he heard Rick walk to the door and yank it open. “Pull yourself together, Frank. I’m sick of watching you self-destruct.” He waited a beat, as if expecting a rebuff. But Frank didn’t have a rebuttal. There were no words left inside him. Nothing left to say. Nothing left to feel.
    Just a big black hole that had blown through him that day in Jerusalem.

TWO
    MONDAY, JANUARY 23, 8:35 A. M.
    A hundred questions descended on Kate in the span of a nanosecond, and for an instant she was overwhelmed. She was aware that the room had gone silent. That all eyes were upon her. That her heart was pounding. And that she was excited. Too excited. She needed to calm down. Logical decisions weren’t made when there were emotions or ego involved. In this case there was a good bit of both.
    When she could find her voice she pursed her lips and met her boss’s gaze. “What about the rest of my caseload? It’s extensive.”
    “I want your full focus on the Bruton Ellis case, so I’ll reassign most of your other cases to another ADA.”
    She was so flustered she couldn’t even remember her other cases at the moment, but it didn’t matter. She would give up all of them for the case she was being handed. She thought about her court date that afternoon. “I’m scheduled to give my opening argument on the Ricky Joe Paulsen case at two.”
    “You’ll need to see that one through to the end. Judge Reinhardt doesn’t like surprises, so we had better not switch prosecutors this late in the game.” He scribbled a note into the appointment book that lay open on his desk. “How long do you expect the trial to last?”
    “A week at most.”
    “Then it shouldn’t be a problem.”
    She looked around the room, her mind already jumping ahead and prioritizing all the things that needed to be done. “I want to handpick my team.”
    “I anticipated that.”
    “I want two paralegals. Two administrative assistants. And three investigators.”
    One side of his mouth twitched. “One paralegal. One admin. Two investigators.”
    This is too easy, she thought, and something began to niggle at the back of her mind. Mike Shelley had a reputation for being tough on crime. It was an election year; he would be running as incumbent. And it suddenly dawned on her how important this case was not only to her career but to his.
    Not sure how she felt about being used for political gain, she looked down at the legal pad and scribbled. Three investigators. If he wanted her to win, he was damn well going to give her the tools to do it.
    “What kind of evidence do we have?” she asked.
    Shelley motioned at the detective. “Detective Bates?”
    The detective slid a small cardboard box toward Kate. “We’ve got him cold. He had the two hundred dollars on him when he was pulled over for speeding ten minutes after he hit the store. We’ve got at least one witness who put him at the scene. We’ve got physical evidence. The murder weapon. We’ve got ballistics. Latent prints. DNA—”
    “DNA?” she asked. “You mean blood?”
    “Semen.”
    “That will help.”
    “We’ve also got the videotape from the security camera.” The detective motioned toward the box. “I can have a copy made for you. The documents in the box are copies, so they’re yours to keep. The Dallas PD has maintained the chain of evidence and will continue to do so. Everything we’ve got is in the evidence room. It can be signed out, but, as you well know, I highly recommend