Death of an Immortal Read Online Free PDF Page B

then hung up.
    Time to pack up and go home? Use his contacts back in Bend?
    There was one more guy he could try, but he hesitated. It was his emergency escape valve, the guy he planned to turn to when all else failed. But he was out of options.
    “Hey, Funkadelic!”
    “What do you want, Carlan?” John Funk’s voice was so cold, Carlan almost backed off.
    “I need a favor.”
    “No.”
    “I still have it, Funker. I still have the evidence. The statute of limitations on manslaughter is the same as murder. Hell, they might just charge you with murder. After all, the only witness who could testify that it was a crime of passion is me.” He started singing: “Who’s got the Funk? Bop… bop… bop. I got the Funk. Who’s got the Funk? Bop… bop…”
    “Shut up,” his former partner said. “I’m thinking about turning myself in. I never did like the way that went down. I didn’t mean to kill him.”
    Carlan felt the fish slipping off the hook. “I know that! If it ever goes down, I could totally testify to that. The guy deserved it––raping a five-year-old girl. Hell, if you hadn’t killed him, I probably would have!”
    There was a long silence. A sigh. “What do you want, Carlan?”
    “I need the evidence on a current case. A girl found dead this morning in a motel room on the east side. Name of Jamie Lee Howe.”
    “Who’s the lead?”
    “Guy named Brosterhouse.”
    Another long silence. “Maybe I should just turn myself in now,” John Funk said. “Get it over with.”
    “No, no! Don’t do anything that will get you in trouble. Just… you know, help me out.”
    “All right. This one time. But don’t ever ask me to help you again, Carlan. I’ll fucking turn myself in.”
    Well, maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But Carlan certainly intended to test his former partner’s resolve if he ever needed him again. “I promise,” he said.
    “Remember, you asshole, if I go down, you go down for withholding evidence.”
    “Sure, sure.” Not the way Carlan had it planned, but if it made Funk feel secure to think so, than so be it.
    “I’ll call you back,” Funk said, and hung up.
    Carlan stayed in Portland for another day, hanging out near the phone, watching Judge Judy and the other judges and Law and Order marathons all day. He had enough time to think, to wonder why he was trying so hard. Jamie was gone. There was nothing he could do about it.
    Truth was, he wasn’t as crushed by it as he thought he would be. Still, he hated that he hadn’t been able to change her mind. He’d been thinking about her for so long that something else needed to take her place. Revenge fit quite nicely.
    The Portland police weren’t moving very fast. Prostitute killings were notoriously difficult to solve, especially if it was stranger-on-stranger violence. If the killer used a condom and was careful, he could almost always get away with it unless they found him weaving down the road with a body in the back of the car.
    It was going to be up to Carlan, not the self-righteous Brosterhouse, to solve this case.
    “What do you care?” Funk asked later that evening. “From what I saw in the files, you were on the verge of killing her yourself.”
    “I loved her.”
    “You don’t love anyone. I remember how you treated women, Carlan.”
    “Yeah, but I never killed anyone, Funky. Remember that.”
    “Only because you’ve been lucky.” There was a rustle of papers over the line. “The DNA tests came back early. Kind of weird. The lab says not only can’t they identify the perpetrator, they’re not sure it’s even human DNA. The sample was probably contaminated.”
    The two puncture wounds in Jamie’s neck passed through Carlan’s mind, but he dismissed the wild speculation instantly. Humans killed humans. Always had, always would.
    Only one day and the case was already going cold. Carlan could sense that the Portland police were on the verge of giving up, putting it on the back burner. As a last