Prolonged Exposure Read Online Free PDF Page A

as she breaks free.”
    “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “She’s up to her ears. But if I get a chance, I’ll drive up on the mesa later this afternoon, if you haven’t found the youngster yet. Getting out would do me some good.”
    After I hung up, I stood for a long time, staring at the designs in the countertop.
    “It never lets up, does it?” Camille said. I looked over at her and she was smiling, her expression sympathetic.
    “No, it doesn’t,” I said.

Chapter 4
    My daughter’s sympathy did not extend to agreeing to a trip out to the wilds of Cat Mesa. “They don’t need you for that,” she said flatly, and instead, she suggested that it might be nice if we worked to put to rights the wreckage of my home. She was right, of course, but I didn’t have to like it. Every time I glanced at the mess, my anger returned. A trip to the mesa would have put it out of sight, out of mind.
    I plugged in the coffeemaker and watched it brew while she started on the books in the living room. She paused when she came to the picture of her younger brother kneeling in front of his jet airplane with his son. “Billy looks about eighteen years old in this,” she said, and grinned.
    “He almost was,” I said.
    She carefully placed the framed photo back on the shelf, a colorful break between the tomes of Grant’s memoirs on one side and Lee’s on the other. “You don’t have very many pictures, Dad.”
    “I’ve got lots of pictures.”
    “I mean out. Where you can see ’em.”
    I couldn’t have told her why that one photograph of my youngest son rested there by itself. “I rotate,” I said. “That way, I don’t get confused by too many faces.”
    She cast one of her famous withering glances my way. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” I asked.
    “No. And you shouldn’t be drinking that stuff, either.”
    I poured myself a mug and walked down into the living room. I had arranged my considerable collection of books in general categories by wars: a section on the French and Indian, then the Revolution, 1812, Civil, and so on. Military history wasn’t a passion, but it seemed a logical way to come to grips with a nation’s progress.
    I bent down to pick up one of my favorites, a book on Joshua Chamberlain that I had purchased not more than a year before.
    “Let me do this, Dad,” Camille said. Perhaps she had heard the grunt, or noticed that I concentrated on one title at a time. At that rate, the pickup would take a year. I handed her the book and she waved toward one of the leather chairs. “Sit and talk to me.”
    “I’d like to go out to the grave before it gets any wetter,” I said, doing as she instructed. She stopped with her hand still on the shelved book and turned to look at me.
    “The grave? You mean out back?”
    I nodded.
    “What on earth for?” She turned and held up a book. “This doesn’t belong with the Spanish-American War stuff on this shelf. Where do you want it?” She examined the spine critically. “It’s Baumgarner’s Guide to Injectable Drugs . Charming title.” She looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
    I waved a hand. “Two shelves down, with the other cop stuff.”
    “Cop stuff,” she said, stooping. “You don’t have very much of that.”
    “Too much,” I said. “And if someone buried his wife on your property, wouldn’t you be interested?”
    “I suppose so,” Camille said. “In our backyard, it would be an all-star attraction.” She glanced at another book spine. “Did Estelle say there was evidence that kids did this?”
    “There might be.”
    She looked over at me and grinned. “He said, evasively.”
    “I’m not being evasive. It’s just that you can never be sure. It looks like Estelle was able to lift one good shoe print in the den—where one of the little bastards stepped up on the desk to reach the rifle.”
    “How much did that filing cabinet that they took weigh?”
    “Probably a hundred pounds. Maybe more. It was one of those