Five Minutes Alone Read Online Free PDF Page B

led me there. It was the following day that I had the glass jar crashed into the side of my head.
    “Listen, Detectives,” he says, lowering his voice. “It’s important we dot all the i’s on this one. I’m sure Dwight Smith found some reason to lay on the tracks to end his life, but . . . you remember that case Schroder caught a few years back?” he asks, looking at me. “The one with the train?”
    “I remember it,” I tell him, and suspect that’s not just why we’re dotting our i’s, but also crossing our t’s too.
    “What case was that?” Kent asks.
    I let Hutton tell the story. A guy had been run over by accident. The guy who did the running over had been drunk, and he figured the way to hide what he had done would be to throw his victim under a train, hoping it would be viewed as a suicide. It almost worked.
    “The impact of the train hid all the existing cuts and bruises. The train couldn’t hide the fact the killer had been seen doing it,” he says, “but this . . . you know what I said before about the time line?”
    We both nod.
    “Well, it’s odd to kill yourself when you’re out of jail, but why kill yourself at the end of the working day? Why not at the beginning?”
    “Maybe the news he got that made him want to kill himself didn’t arrive until late,” Kent says.
    Hutton nods. “Could be.”
    Just then one of the officers whistles out. We all turn in his direction. He’s a hundred yards up the track and twenty yards out tothe side of it, and about twenty yards from all the other pieces. He’s waving an arm. His own arm.
    “That’ll be the final piece,” Hutton says. Then he puts his hand to his face, rests his chin on his palm, and uses his forefinger to start tapping his teeth. He does this for a few seconds. “Look,” he says, and that word alone reminds me of Schroder, the way he used to open some of his conversations with me, a Look, Tate, we don’t want your help on this one, and thinking of Schroder makes me realize I miss working with him. Hell, I even miss working at cross-purposes with him . “Truth be told,” he says, but then he doesn’t say, so the truth doesn’t get told. He taps his teeth a few more times. “How do I say this,” he says.
    “You don’t need to,” Kent says.
    And he doesn’t need to. If it was a suicide, then fine—we can all sigh in relief that a really bad guy decided to hurt himself rather than somebody else. Case closed. Let’s get back to the weekend we all had planned. But if it wasn’t a suicide then we’re still all feeling relief, because Dwight Smith seems like the kind of guy happy to take those bad things from his past and use them to build an even worse future. So the only difference between a suicide and a murder in Smith’s case is who we have to thank.
    That’s what Hutton is thinking.
    That’s what Kent is thinking.
    That’s what I’m thinking.
    Of course none of us say it.
    “Hopefully you won’t have to interview Kelly Summers. Hopefully she has nothing to do with it, but if this is more than a suicide then that will make her a suspect.” He stares hard at me as he talks. “You can’t go easy on her.”
    “Because of the i’s and t’s,” I say.
    “Exactly. I know you’re thinking if Kelly Summers was a part of this, then society should let it slide. And truthfully, I’d agree. I think society owes her one. But it doesn’t matter what we think—we have to follow this through. We’re not judges. Are we on the same page here?” he asks.
    “We are,” I tell him.
    “Good,” he says, and nods. “We’ll know more once the medical examiner has looked at him. Hopefully she’s not going to give us some weird shit about him being dead already when the train hit, or find a bullet wound, but my gut instinct tells me it’s not going to be that easy,” he says, and I wonder if his gut instinct is smaller now that he’s lost all that weight. “Go talk to those people. Hopefully they’ll all