Deathblow Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bing in Broslin and Chief Gleason in Philadelphia.
    Harper looked skeptical, but he didn’t push. He knew that if Joe was evading the question, he had to have a good reason. He ducked under the yellow police tape flitting in the wind. “Dispatch said homicide.”
    “Philip Brogevich.” Joe updated him on what little they knew so far as he followed him in.
    Doris was still on the phone, crying quietly as they passed by her.
    The captain looked up inside the office. “Harper.” He paused for a second. “How is your caseload?”
    “Filed all the paperwork on the shoplifting teenagers.”
    “I want you to take lead here.”
    Joe cleared his throat. “I’d like to be assigned to the case. I can help Harper.”
    The captain raised an eyebrow. “The victim was your friend.”
    “It’s a small town. Everybody is everybody’s friend.”
    “How did the canvassing go?”
    “People are still getting in. Nobody has seen or heard anything unusual.”
    The captain stepped forward. “I need to get something from the car. Why don’t you walk with me?”
    Officer Mike McMorris, another one of Broslin’s finest, pulled up as they stepped outside. Joe and Mike had been hired at the same time, had learned the ropes together, become friends. Like Harper, he stared at Joe’s face as he got out of his cruiser, the morning sun glinting off his cropped, reddish hair.
    “Rough date? Hey, I got a joke for you.” When Mike grinned, his Irish freckles danced. “Guy comes home and finds his wife in bed with another man. He shoots the guy, turns to the wife, and asks, ‘What do you have to say about that?’ The wife says…” Mike paused a beat for effect. “’Keep it up and you won’t have any friends left.’”
    Joe groaned while the captain shook his head with resignation.
    “So who smacked you?” Mike wanted to know, his attention back on the scar. “Losing your touch with the ladies?”
    “Never gonna happen.” Joe offered a cocky lift of his chin. “Four-wheeler accident last night.”
    The captain popped the trunk of his cruiser. “Glad you’re here, Mike. Why don’t you secure the premises?”
    As Mike went to station himself at the door, Bing hauled out his crime-scene kit, a large black plastic container that had an orange handle and a million compartments inside to stash all the swabs and bottles of chemicals.
    He cast a sideways glance at Joe. “It’s not just about you and the victim being friends. I don’t want you to jump straight into a homicide after last night.”
    “I’m fine.”
    The captain let a couple of seconds pass as he set the crime-scene kit by his feet. “I didn’t come to your house this morning just to check on you. I came to ask a favor.” He paused. “I need you for protection detail. Woman and child. Nasty ex-boyfriend. She moved. He probably won’t find her. But to be on the safe side.”
    Joe thought of Lil’ Gomez. “I don’t think I’m a good bet in the protection-detail department.”
    “It’s a personal favor. She’s a friend of Sophie’s. Sophie said you might remember her. Wendy Belle.”
    The name hit Joe like a sledgehammer. Everything inside him stilled. Wendy.  
    “We’ve met.” He’d run into her at Sophie’s house a while ago when he’d been providing protection detail to Sophie, back before Sophie and Bing had gotten together.
    Wendy Belle was a professional model. She had the looks to twist a man into a lust pretzel, lips that begged to be tasted, and those mysterious gray eyes that Joe hadn’t been able to forget since he’d first looked into them.
    Being a small-town football hero, then a policeman, he’d had his share of dates. Uniforms were a chick magnet. He’d been raised to be a gentleman, took good care of his dates in and out of bed, kept in shape, put in more time at the police station’s gym than anybody else. He appreciated women, and they appreciated him right back.
    More often than not, women walked up to him with their phone