Presumption of Guilt Read Online Free PDF

your feet go out from under you, and your arm gets tangled up between the rungs. Twist and snap. Slam-bam. A Hill–Sachs and a fracture, combined.”
    â€œOuch,” Beverly sympathized.
    â€œHe definitely went to the hospital for this,” Stare confirmed. “Not that they did any surgery. But the way the humerus is healing, you can tell he must’ve been in a wrap-and-sling rig.”
    â€œCould this mean he was bound up when he died?” Joe asked.
    â€œThat’s what I’d guess,” Beverly confirmed as Stare nodded enthusiastically. “This bone fusion looks to be only two weeks old or so.”
    â€œMaking him all the easier to overpower,” Joe mused. He thought back to an observation Beverly had made, prior to Stare’s arrival. “You said earlier that the killer wasn’t accommodating enough to leave this man’s wallet in his pocket. Is that your way of saying it’s definitely a homicide?”
    In response, she led them both to the display table and pointed to a spot high and slightly off center of the skeleton’s chest. “This rib is positioned directly over the heart. See that small furrow? It’s a typical tool mark for a knife. I noticed it when we were laying this out. There’s another, right next to it, indicating at least two separate thrusts, both sharp-edged and perimortem. If there was any doubt about this being a homicide, those little scratches put an end to it.”
    *   *   *
    Sally Kravitz glanced at her father’s profile, just visible in the night. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she whispered.
    He took his eyes off the darkened house opposite the bushes concealing them to gaze at her with concern. “We can stop immediately,” he offered.
    She touched his forearm reassuringly. “No, no. That’s not what I meant. I’m really happy you invited me. It’s just that it’s so … you know … private. In all sorts of ways. You’re sure I’m not invading your space?”
    He chuckled. “Are you kidding? I feel like I’m handing you the keys to the family business.”
    She shook her head, beaming with pleasure. Her father was a certified nut. She knew that. But he was the smartest, kindest, most sensitive and devoted nut she’d ever known, and the center of her universe, which probably made her a bit odd, too.
    And she was in this with him, whatever the outcome. She wasn’t exactly sure what “this” was, of course. When it came to job descriptions, her father’s was hard to pin down. On the surface, he was a Brattleboro character—Dan Kravitz, the invisible everyman everyone seemed to know, if not necessarily by name. The man without a home; without a fixed job; who could do everything; who said nothing; who’d worked at more jobs—from washing dishes to cleaning gas station garages to unplugging culverts—than any twelve people she could think of. She’d seen a beer commercial featuring a bearded guy with two bimbos, claiming to be the most interesting man in the world.
    They had no clue.
    Because to her, Dan Kravitz would forever be his own alter ego: not the menial everyman with an eerie ability to keep clean, but rather what the papers had coined “the Tag Man” a couple of years ago. He was the never-identified burglar who for a while had committed a rash of illegal entries in which he’d deposited a Post-it note marked, “You’re it,” and made a point of eating a little of each upscale home’s fanciest tidbits before leaving—like a literate mouse, visiting in the night.
    At the time, it had caused a sensation—and a boost in the upper crust’s demands for better security systems.
    Of course, her father’s nocturnal visits had been more than that. And—she could admit on a purely disengaged intellectual level—a little creepy. But