If Looks Could Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

violence. As he tagged along behind Jimmy in his search for clues to Lainie’s killer, he had come to know that the victims of a crime were often those who were left behind to come to terms with a new life and the injustice of their loss. Nothing could bring back a loved one, but closure, knowing what had happened, helped put people on the healing road to sanity.
    Crimes of passion against loved ones, Jimmy had taught him, were often the easiest to solve. Science had come a long way; DNA samples could be used in a courtroom, along with fingerprints, hairs, fibers and more. A rapist could be convicted on a semen sample.
    Random crimes, on the other hand were hard to solve. Even if the cops could lift a dozen fingerprints, it wouldn’t help if those fingerprints weren’t on record somewhere. Random crimes kept the cops looking for needles in haystacks.
    Which was why he’d wound up going into the psychological business of profiling killers. It narrowed down that haystack for the cops.
    Closure. It was so damned important. Arresting and imprisoning a killer allowed those left behind a sense of justice—at least the killer had been stopped, and others wouldn’t have to feel their pain.
    His work was important. He was glad that it still broke his heart to study the victims of the killers he sought; pain for others let him know he was still living. Because though, it might have been his stepmother’s death that had influenced his life’s work, it was his wife’s death that continued to haunt his own life. He was grateful that she hadn’t been brutally killed, but she had suffered even so, and he couldn’t help but be bitter that someone so young, with everything to live for, had died. There was no justice in her death, no rhyme, no reason. No sense. Fallon had not just been young, beautiful and full of life. She’d been kind, caring and warm. She couldn’t pass a bum in the street without giving him a dollar; she couldn’t let a stray dog run by without setting out a bowl of food. Kids had loved her. She would have been a great mother to the daughter who never managed to draw breath. There was an emptiness inside him as well, a pain that remained for the child he would never hold.
    Kyle had been told that time could heal what reason could not. He’d been told that God would give him strength at a time when he couldn’t find it in his heart to believe in God. One thing he could say was that time did go on. He was a survivor, so he lived. He breathed, ate—and drank. Heavily, at first. moderately now. He slept with other women. Sometimes there was something of a relationship there, and sometimes he just hoped for good sex. Life went on, and he did his best with his work and with other people. True justice wasn’t coming in this lifetime, and he knew it; still, it somehow mattered more than ever now that he make his very best effort toward achieving whatever justice he could help achieve.
    â€œHello out there!” a husky masculine voice suddenly boomed over the sound system. A lanky, good-looking young man of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty had come to the microphone at the center of the stage, which was to the left of the bar. “Welcome, to our locals, our old friends…and to you out there enjoying a spell in our fantasyland. We’re the Storm Fronts, and we’re going to keep you entertained this afternoon while you kick back, eat, drink and catch some rays. My name is Joey King, and with me are David Hamel on bass, Sheila Ormsby on keyboards, Randy Fraser on drums and, I’m happy to say, Ms. Madison Adair herself is with us this afternoon on vocals. Ladies and gentlemen…enjoy.”
    Kyle was suddenly glad that he was in the shadows, because he certainly wasn’t prepared for Madison. Especially Madison as he saw her this afternoon.
    The band members filed casually out onto the rustic stage as their names were announced, Madison