Death Through the Looking Glass Read Online Free PDF

third attempt he found one unlatched. He slid it open on its aluminum runners and stepped over the sill.
    He felt along the wall of the darkened interior until his hand passed over a switch that turned on two table lamps. He was in a long and comfortable room that ran the length of the house and was oriented toward the side of the building that fronted on the water. The furniture was old but serviceable. Built-in bookcases lined the far wall, and a cursory glance informed him that most of the volumes concerned colonial and Revolutionary War history.
    Another wall was lined with photographs arranged in chronological order, the later ones showing Giles beside the multicolored plane. Then there were a few conspicuously blank places on the wall. Lyon imagined the missing pictures were from Tom’s Washington years and had probably consisted of signed photographs of Nixon and Mitchell. Toward the end were the pictures from his Greenfield days, including the photograph of their senior lacrosse team—Tom in the center as captain and Lyon relegated to the rear of the group, which was reserved for the subs. Lyon paused beside the last photograph. It showed the steps of the Greenfield Library in their last year of school. Lyon’s butterfly collection, neatly mounted in cases, was aligned along the library steps. Lyon and Tom, arm in arm, were smiling in the foreground.
    In the far corner, next to the telephone table, a chair had been overturned next to a reddish-brown spot on the floor.
    The beds in the two empty bedrooms were neatly made. He picked up the phone to call Rocco and found the line dead. It took only minutes to discover the severed phone line dangling from an outside corner of the house.
    Martha Herbert held a novel across the front of her long housecoat and squinted up at Lyon from under a mass of oversize plastic hair curlers. “He’s asleep. The last thing he said was something about an early-morning speed trap on Route 90.”
    â€œIt’s important that I wake him, Martha.”
    She shrugged and stepped aside. “I only hope you two aren’t getting involved in something again.”
    As he walked through the living room, toward the rear hall, he felt surrounded by the dozens of porcelain figurines perched on every available surface. He wondered, as he often had, how the massive Rocco existed in this suburban china shop.
    The sleeping police chief’s arms were flung outward as he lightly snored. One eye opened as Lyon shook his shoulder. “Something has happened to Tom Giles.”
    â€œYou said that earlier.”
    â€œHe called me from his lake house and said his life was in danger.”
    â€œI hope you haven’t been into the sherry again.” The policeman’s eyes blinked open as he swung his legs from the bed and pulled pants over his pajamas. “Tell me about it on the way.”
    As they drove to the lake house, Lyon told Rocco about Giles’s phone call. Rocco looked pensive for a moment. “Then you didn’t see his plane go down?”
    â€œMaybe he wasn’t in it.”
    â€œAre you sure it was Giles who called?”
    â€œAbsolutely.”
    â€œThen what in hell’s going on?” Rocco lapsed into silence as Lyon thought back over their relationship. Although both he and Herbert were from Connecticut, they hadn’t met until Korea, where Lyon had served as a divisional intelligence officer and Rocco had been commander of the ranger company. The information obtained by Rocco’s probing reconnaissance patrols had brought them into continual contact, and their friendship had deepened after their discharge. The much-decorated Rocco had been offered the job of chief of the Murphysville police force, which sometimes numbered twelve men.
    As the car pulled into the cottage drive, Lyon pointed to the dangling phone line swaying before the car’s headlights. They entered through the front door, which Lyon had unlocked from