Mortal Sins Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sheriff. That was a joke. I’m not eager to complicate your life or mine. I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
    “Yeah? I don’t see Disneyworld nearby.”
    “Personal leave, actually. Family stuff.” And that’s all she planned to say about it. Rule had given up a lot to protect his son from his own notoriety, and though the secret couldn’t be kept much longer—not with Toby moving to San Diego to live with them—Lily wouldn’t be the one to reveal it.
    And she could not, of course, refer to the other reason they were in North Carolina. Rule’s new tie to Leidolf was secret. “I understand the perp you’ve locked up—Meacham, right?—hasn’t admitted anything.”
    “Claims he doesn’t remember. Shit, half the time he refuses to believe his family’s dead, says we’re lying’ to him. The DA thinks Roy Don’s hopin’ to cop an insanity plea.”
    “What do you think?”
    “Oh, Roy Don’s nuts, all right. I don’t know if he matches up with the legal definition, but he’s crazy as hell.”
    He sounded deeply sad, as if Meacham’s insanity robbed him of something important. “Did you know him? Or the victims?”
    “I met Roy Don a few times. Went to high school with his wife, Becky. Rebecca Nordstrom, back then. Didn’t know her well—around here, kids mostly hang with their own in high school. Some of it’s prejudice, but a lot is just social hang-ups. You know how, at a middle school dance, the boys bunch up together along one wall, the girls across from them? No one’s sure what to say to the folks on the other side. That’s how it is. Loosens up some if you go on to college, but Becky didn’t—married Roy Don right out of high school.” He was silent a moment. “Their youngest daughter was friends with my little girl. Pretty thing. Real sweet.”
    And now decaying under a tree. Lily thought she understood why he’d been such an ass about holding on to his case. “I used to work Homicide. It’s hard when the victims are kids. And it’s hell if you knew them.”
    “I don’t let it interfere.”
    “I’m sure you don’t.” Lily didn’t believe that, but he needed to. She knew how it was when the professional and the personal trampled all over each other. Most of the time, you could hold professionalism up like a shield to keep the horror at bay. Not entirely, maybe, but enough to do the job. When an investigation turned personal, you worked harder than ever at the shield. Knowing it wasn’t enough.
    She helped by turning the subject back to the job. “The killings happened quite recently, I understand.”
    “Four days. Four days,” he repeated, his voice heavy with skepticism. “You can be sure after so long that there was magic involved?”
    “I’m sure. The traces are faint, but unmistakable.” She didn’t blame him for asking. Suspicion was a natural attitude for a cop—doubt edged sword-sharp by the knowledge that people lied. For big reasons, for small ones, for convenience, for the hell of it—people lied to cops all the time.
    But, dammit, she was a cop, too. He might try to remember that. “I heard Meacham turned himself in, then denied he’d done it.”
    “Not exactly.” He was silent a moment. “It was noon on Monday. I was fixing to head out for a bite to eat when Roy Don pulled up in his truck. Parked in a handicapped spot, which folks around here don’t do, not right in front of my office, so I waited. Figured either he was drunk or somethin’ was bad wrong. He got out.” Another pause. “I never saw so much blood on a living person before.”
    “Did he have the bat?”
    “No. No, he climbed out and just stood there, not talking, not moving, not seeing anything at all, from the look in his eyes. His eyes . . . I asked him, was he hurt. Where was he hurt. That’s when he turned and got the bat from his front seat. He handed it to me. Didn’t say a word, just handed it to me. It was another two hours before he spoke. He seemed to wake up all of