Fury Read Online Free PDF Page B

Corso Fan Club.”
    “Do you really have a fan club?” He’d forgotten how earnest she could be. Made a mental note to be careful about joking with her.
    “Here we are,” Corso said. “All of us.”
    She laughed again and used the Kleenex to dab at her eyes.
    “If you don’t mind me asking, Leanne, why me?”
    She shrugged but didn’t answer. She had an odd way of stepping back inside herself. Almost like she had a closet back there somewhere where she could go to hide.
    “Well, then, I’ll have to assume it’s my boyish charm and rugged good looks,” Corso said. “You probably didn’t know this, Leanne, but women regularly swoon at the very sight of me. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty amazing that you’re still conscious.”
    Leanne laughed behind her hand. Told him again to stop it. Then suddenly got serious. “You always treated me nice like this. Like I mattered. Always listened to me like I was somebody important. Not like I was a spaz, like the others do. So…will you, please?” she pleaded.
    “Will I what?”
    “Will you make them listen to me?”
    Corso thought about it. With the exception of Himes’s ACLU lawyer, nobody but nobody was going to want any part of this story. In six days, dozens of heartbroken souls were finally scheduled to be granted some small measure of relief. A flawed but final resolution to a three-year-old nightmare and…what? Somebody was going to come along and say, Oops…waitaminute…there’s been a minor glitch here. Back to square one. Feel free to return to your grieving.
    Corso’s insides suddenly had that sheet-metal feel. The feeling he’d first experienced in New York and had carried with him, on and off, ever since. A cold, dull ache in the pit of his stomach, as if he’d swallowed ball bearings. A pain that only subsided when he was floating alone on deep, green water.
    He got to his feet and looked to the windows on the far side of the room. Outside, the steel-wool sky engulfed Queen Anne Hill. A steady rain coated the streets, leaving the cars to hiss along inside silver canopies of mist.
    “Come on,” he said.
    Halfway down the hall to the elevator, Blaine Newton came across the red-tile floor toward Corso and Leanne, holding his oversize lunch bag by his side. Newton was about thirty and already lapping over his belt. Blaine Newton had been, for the past few years, Hawes’s pet-reporter project. Another fancy dresser from the University of Washington journalism department, where Hawes moonlighted as an assistant professor. He was a better writer than a reporter. Next in line for the metro-crime beat, whenever Nathan Hopkins could be persuaded to retire. Corso disliked him on principle. When he recognized Corso, his big pink cheeks very nearly squeezed his eyes shut.
    “Finally find yourself a date, Corso?”
    “I’m saving it for Judith. She’s all I can handle.”
    “Har-har,” Newton barked. “Very funny.”
    “Give us a chorus of ‘ Danke Schoen ,’” Corso said as they passed.
    Newton stopped in his tracks. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You always say that like it’s supposed to be a big joke or something.”
    Corso kept walking. “Ask Judith,” he said.
    “You’re so funny,” Newton said to his back.
    Leanne leaned in and whispered, “Who’s Judith?”
    “His wife,” Corso said in a loud voice. “She’s very demanding.”
    Leanne giggled and squeezed his arm. When the elevator opened, Corso stepped aside and allowed her to enter first.

Chapter 4
    Monday, September 17
3:25 P.M. Day 1 of 6
    The pictures on her desk made the facts of her life clear. Sons in college? Two. Husbands in residence? None. Violet Rogers was a sturdily built, no-nonsense woman of forty-five. Motherly, she wore her long hair braided and wound around her head like shiny black ropes.
    The sound of the elevator pulled her eyes from the computer screen to the sliding door. “Why, Mr. Corso,” she said with a smile. “It’s been far