Dead Wrong Read Online Free PDF Page A

laughing softly in spite of himself.
    Good thing I don’t work in law enforcement. Sloppy investigative work like this would’ve gotten me canned. And better still that I wasn’t getting paid for the job.
    Not that he’d ever done work for hire, of course, but even so . . .
    What was I thinking?
    He picked at his teeth with a wooden toothpick and considered his next move. He really needed to make this right.
    He folded the paper and set it to one side of the desk. He’d have to think about this a little more. And he would. He’d think about it all day. But right now he had to get dressed and get to work.
    He’d been lucky to find a job on his second day here, even if it was only washing dishes in a small diner on the highway. It was working out just fine. He got his meals for free on the shifts he worked and he made enough to pay for a rented room in a big old twin house in a rundown but relatively safe neighborhood in a small town close enough to his targets that he could come and go as he pleased.
    Of course, he’d had only three targets in mind when he arrived.
    The fact that he’d missed the mark—not once, but twice, he reminded himself yet again—would prolong his stay a little longer than he’d intended. His real target was still out there somewhere, and he had to find her—do it right this time—before he could move on.
    And he’d have to be a little more cautious this time around, he knew. Surely the other M. Douglases—there had been several more listed in the local telephone book—might understandably be a bit edgy right about now. It was his own fault, of course. He’d gotten uncharacteristically lazy, first in assuming that the only Mary Douglas listed by full name, the kindly woman who lived alone on Fourth Avenue in Lyndon, was the right Mary Douglas. Then, to his great chagrin, hadn’t he gone and repeated the same damned mistake? He’d gone to the first M. Douglas listed, and in spite of his having confirmed that she was in fact a Mary, she was still not the right woman.
    Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself with either of them—the second Mary had been especially feisty—but still, it wasn’t like him to be so careless.
    He was just going to have to do better, that was all. Take the remaining M. Douglases in order and see what’s what. Check them out thoroughly until he was certain that he had the right one. The next victim would have to be the right victim, else he’d look like an even greater fool than he already did.
    He shuddered to think what a panic a third mistake could set off among the other M. Douglases, and though that could be amusing in its own way, well, he didn’t really need the publicity, what with the inevitable horde of reporters who would flock to the area. After all, this wasn’t supposed to be about him . This was all about someone else’s fantasy.
    Oh, he’d fully understood that it had all been a lark as far as the others—he thought of them as his buddies, blood brothers of a sort—were concerned. It was supposed to have been just a game, just a means of whiling away a few hours on a stormy winter day, locked in a forgotten room with two other strangers. But then the idea had just taken hold of him and clung on for dear life, and damn, but it had caught his imagination. What if he went through with it? What if he played it out? What would be the reaction of his buddies? Would they, each in their turn, pick up the challenge and continue the game? Would they not feel obligated to reciprocate? To continue on with the game, whether they wanted to or not?
    And wasn’t it a matter of principle? Sort of a new twist on the old saying, “an eye for an eye.”
    His fingers stretched and flexed as he remembered his Marys.
    He smiled to himself, trying to imagine what the reaction of his buddies would be when they realized what he’d done. Shock? Horror? Pleasure? Gratitude? Amusement?
    It sure would be interesting to see how it all played out in the end.
    As for