Extenuating Circumstances Read Online Free PDF

the police cruiser to pull up in front of the Lessing house.
    "The whole family must be here," Trumaine said, staring out the window at the Mercs and BMW's lining the curbs.
    "It's hard to keep a murder secret."
    "Murder," he said, trying the word out for the first time. "You think Ira's dead, then?"
    "I think there's a strong possibility."
    "I just can't believe it. I don't think I'll be able to believe it until they find a body."
    The cop let us off at the head of the drive and we walked the short block to the stairway. The mist of the river had begun to climb the cut-stone retaining walls along the Ohio's bank, trailing up the narrow cobbled street like a thin, damp fog.
    "What a day for it," Trumaine said miserably. He looked at the stairway. "It's going to be awful in there."
    "I'm sure Janey will take it hard."
 
    "She'll be crazy," he said flatly. "Thank God for Meg. She'll help her through this." He turned toward me, wiping the sweat from his face with a trembling hand. "You've been a help, Stoner. I . . . I don't think I could have done this without you."
    "You did the hard part," I said.
    "Thanks anyway."
    "You need me anymore tonight?" I said to him, hoping that he would say no.
    "I think you better come up. Meg may want to talk to you about what to do. And Janey."
    He hitched up his pants and started for the stairs. Reluctantly, I fell in behind him.
    As we neared the top steps we began to hear the tumult inside the house. I thought of the sound of the stadium crowd that afternoon, the steady grumbling noise from across the river, rising and falling with the wind. From the terrace this sound would have been just as ambiguous if we hadn't already known its meaning.
    Trumaine hesitated by the door, then pushed it open.
    As he stepped inside, Janey Lessing came tearing up the hall, her beautiful face wildly anguished. She came to a stop in front of Trumaine and stared at him for a moment, with a flicker of hope in her eyes. When he ducked his chin, her eyes went dead.
    "It's true, then?" she said. "What they said about Ira's car?"
    Trumaine took a deep breath and nodded.
    Janey started to whine -a muffled siren sound, like the noise of an electric alarm going off. She collapsed against Trumaine, burying her head in his chest and pounding on his shoulders with clenched fists, and all the time making that little electric noise. Trumaine stared at her piteously, his hands hovering above her shoulders as if he couldn't quite bring himself to touch.
    The hall had filled up with people. A smart-looking woman with closely cropped white hair and a tear-stained face came forward and lifted Janey away from Trumaine, as if she were pulling off a frightened cat. Her fists still clenched, the girl stared at the older woman in horror. For a second Janey's mouth hung open noiselessly, then it filled with an awful moan. The woman clasped Janey to her immediately, stifling the scream with her body and leading the girl back down the hall.
Trumaine sobbed.
    "Oh, my God," he said.
    I put a hand on his shoulder and guided him toward the living room, where the fifteen or twenty friends and relatives were gathered. Somewhere on the upper floor Janey Lessing began to scream like a baby in the night. The sound of her voice sent a thrill of visible terror through the room, making the others shift nervously where they stood or sip at drinks or begin to cry out loud themselves. As soon as he heard Janey shriek, Len Trumaine bolted toward a staircase on the far side of the room and disappeared up it.
    Within a matter of minutes the screaming died away. I settled in a corner chair, feeling desperately out of place, and waited for Trumaine or someone else to tell me to go.
    More people came to the door. Cousins, nephews, aunts, uncles, friends. Most of them had heard the news on TV -that Lessing's bloodstained car had been found in Queensgate. Nobody wanted to believe it. "Ira, of all people!" they said in stunned voices, as if crime should