Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and my mother split her time between a wheelchair and romancing her physical therapist. My father? We hadn’t spoken in a long time. He’d never forgiven me for joining the police force. My closest friend for my whole adult life had been Terry Becker, but he was a cop, and I’d burned that bridge with too many lies. Who did that leave?
    I stared at my phone for a long time before typing in a number I’d spent two years trying to forget. I called my ex-wife.
     

“Fuck you.”
    The first meeting in several months with my ex-wife did not get off to a great start. She stepped into the hallway of the third floor and straightened up. I watched as her cop instincts kicked in, and she guessed at what she was going to find. From there it was a short leap to work out why I’d called her.
    Laura had always been the ambitious one in our relationship, and since we’d split up she’d moved up the ranks at CID to Detective Chief Inspector. She’d gotten the promotion off the back of a large drug bust; the case had involved handing a multiple murderer over to the Crown Prosecution Service wrapped in a nice bow. Police do the legwork, but it’s the CPS who ultimately decides if there is enough of a case to take to court. Once they’d jumped at the chance to try the case, the force had needed a hero to defuse the media storm that followed. Laura had been young, talented, and photogenic enough to wear the cape. What didn’t make it into the news cycle was that Laura had worked the case from both sides by going onto the Gaines payroll. She had stayed there ever since. We all gained something from the case: Laura got a promotion, Gaines got a drug monopoly, and I got spliced intestines and a limp.
    She followed up on her greeting with a more polite version. “Please, fuck right off.”
    I put out both hands in a calming gesture and attempted to look helpless. I tried to think of what to say first. She was angry but she hadn’t turned and left at the sight of my face. If I just said the right things before showing her the mess, maybe she’d stay. I’d left it brief on the phone, said I needed help and that it was personal, then told her to come with a change of clothes and use my name at reception to get up to the third floor.
    While I’d waited, I’d made myself useful.
    I’d learned a lesson the hard way. I once discovered a dead body and let it distract me so much that I failed to notice the killer was still there, hiding in another room. This time I used the master key to go from room to room, checking for any trail left by Maria. I still had no idea whether she’d had help or acted alone. Both Tony and Jelly were physically bigger than her, but I knew that meant nothing. I checked the fire escape. The hotel kept the door alarms switched off so people could make a quiet exit if the police come in through the front.
    I was still checking the stairs on the other side of the door when I heard Laura’s greeting at the other end of the hallway.
    I tried my best smile, and walked toward her slowly as she looked from me to the door of Jellyfish’s room. I’d left it open, and the smell was drifting out.
    She looked great. Her hair was shorter and darker than I’d ever seen it, and she was wrapped up in sharp and expensive clothes, dark slacks and a black shirt under a fashionable leather jacket. She looked like the exact mid-point between a hot date and a casual business meeting, and she was carrying a small overnight bag to complete the image. Then the penny dropped. There could be lots of reasons why a woman’s ex-husband might call her to a secret meeting in a hotel after dark, with a change of clothes. Most of them relating to activities without corpses.
    I never ceased to be amazed at how much of an asshole I could be.
    “Look, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have called but I had nobody else to ask.”
    “You have plenty of people you can ask.”
    “None that I can trust right now.”
    “So I’m your last resort?”
    I