Nobody Lives Forever Read Online Free PDF Page A

pale and shaken. “Our kids were asleep in their rooms, Rick. It coulda been one of them, or us. We never heard a thing. We lost some jewelry, a little cash and a cameo that belonged to Sandy’s mother.”
    â€œNo gun? You’re not missing a gun?”
    â€œNever owned one, Rick. I may get one now. I never dreamed this could happen here on the island.”
    â€œBosco didn’t bark his brains out?”
    â€œThat’s the hell of it,” Larry said, shaking his head. “You know Bosco. Our kids grew up with him. He was harmless. Nobody had to kill that dog to keep him quiet. We never heard a whimper, not a thing.”
    â€œWe should have got rid of that damn mutt a long time ago,” Sandra announced, sipping noisily from a coffee mug. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What did he do when we needed a watchdog?”
    â€œHe watched,” Larry said. There was no humor in his smile.
    â€œI think that’s right,” Rick said grimly. “It looks like it wasn’t done to keep him quiet. There was a lot of blood…”
    â€œTell me about it,” Sandra snapped. “Did you see my floor?”
    â€œBut we didn’t find a trace anywhere else in the house. Whoever did it apparently did the dog on the way out, just for the hell of it.”
    â€œThat’s it!” Her voice was raspy. I want a Doberman named Killer—today.”
    â€œHow old is Lacey now?”
    â€œThirteen.” The father and Rick exchanged wary glances.
    â€œBoyfriends?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œYou sure?”
    â€œChrist, Rick, she’s in the eighth grade.”
    â€œAnybody bothering her, following her, calling?”
    Sandra’s eyes looked frightened instead of angry for the first time. “She’s going to her grandmother’s in Vermont—tomorrow, if we can’t arrange to send her today.”
    â€œYou think some psycho is…” the father’s voice trailed off.
    â€œDoubtful,” Rick said. “We just have to cover all the bases. Problems with anybody lately? On the job, in the neighborhood, in the family?” They shook their heads.
    The weeping children, Lacey and her eight-year-old brother, mourning their dog, were little help.
    Despite a high crime rate in the city, there had been a few problems on the island. A knife had been used at one scene, a gun at the other. Yet what were the odds of two violent criminals choosing to roam the same peaceful island on the same night? The other recent prowler complaints had been minor, nuisance-type calls, reports of sounds and shadows in the night. These two cases have to be part of one isolated incident involving one offender, Rick thought. A prowler, pursued and panicky, pulling the trigger in the dark. Murder among strangers, the most difficult homicide to solve.
    Back at the command post, Rick was surprised to see Laurel bustling around the kitchen, pouring steaming coffee brewed from beans she had ground herself, fixing sandwiches and sliding ashtrays beneath the cigarettes of preoccupied smokers as they filled out their paperwork and completed diagrams. Good girl, he thought fondly, relieved by her show of resilience. He regretted her exposure to this, the ugly side of his job. Part of the charm that had initially attracted him was her naïveté about his work. Investigating violent death is so consuming a task that the lines between personal and professional life become blurred. The two comingle until no private place is left untouched. Unlike Dusty and the other women in and out of his life in recent years, Laurel understood little about police work, even less about death. He liked that. Her innocence touched him, stirring emotions he thought were long lost to the cruel brutality of the streets. She thrilled to the crackling excitement of the seventeen-channel police scanner he kept at home, and the job-related war stories she continually coaxed