Snowbound Read Online Free PDF Page A

anything, even the prospect of prison and what would happen to someone like him on the inside, was the possibility that he wouldn’t be there for his daughter when the disease finally claimed her. The reality that Devlin would probably die within the next five years was something he looked square in the eye every day. But what he imagined as he sat in that interview room was a dismal morning several years in the future at the maximum-security facility in Florence. A guard would walk down the long corridor to his cell, rouse him, tell him through the bars that his daughter had passed away in the night. He couldn’t fathom anything worse than that.
Devi is not dying alone. You cannot let that happen. She is your purpose. Your heart.
    The door to the interview room opened. Swicegood sat down across from Will, set a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table.
    He said, “Before we continue, let me say this. This is my job. I operate on instinct. Go where it says go. That’s what I’m doing right now. If you didn’t have anything to do with this, I am so, so sorry. All right, back to business.”
    He started the recorder, seemed softer, calmer. Will straightened himself in the chair.
    “Look at me, Will.” Everything faded into a distorted darkness except for Swicegood’s eyes. They worked like magnets on Will’s, holding his gaze, his focus, with such intensity that it hurt him to blink. “Somewhere inside of you,” the detective said, “you want to tell me the truth. Been doing this a long time. I’ve seen it in many pairs of eyes, and I see it in yours.” His voice had dropped in pitch and evened out into a soothing monotone that might have lulled Will toward sleep were it not for those blue magnets. “Do you know how good it would feel to just say it, Will? The relief? You know how much easier it would make things for you and your daughter? You’re young. You talk to me now, we might have some wiggle room with the DA.” Will felt the gravitational force of the detective’s eyes trying to coax something out of him. The air buzzed with Swicegood’s desire to hear it, and Will suddenly understood how a person could make a false confession. Anything to make that buzzing stop. “But once I’ve got a body, Will, it’s over for you. Life. Or maybe they strap you to the execution table in Florence, put a needle in your arm. I hope you buried her deep, because the coyotes will find her. Sniff out the rot. Dig her up. And someone will stumble across the bones, and that’ll be that. But I don’t need the body. You know why? Because everyone knows she’s dead. And the little secret about juries? About society? They want closure. Wrongs righted. Threads tied up. People like you swept away into prison, out of sight, so they don’t have to think about depravity while they’re tucking their little ones into bed at night. You want to take a chance on a jury? You want to stand there on verdict day, your knees quaking, your life, your daughter’s, in the hands of twelve strangers who might be willing to trade reasonable doubt for closure? You up for that, Will?”
    Will stood up, trembling with rage. He didn’t know if his wife was alive or dead, and this man was accusing him of her murder.
    “I didn’t kill my wife, and I don’t know where any of this is coming from. You charging me, Teddy?”
    “Where’d you bury her?”
    “Are you charging me?”
    Swicegood cleared his throat. “I’ll be talking to the DA first thing in the—”
    “Then I’m done here. Am I free to go?”
    Swicegood chewed his bottom lip. “For the moment.”
    “Take me home right now. I don’t want my daughter waking up and not finding me there.”
    Swicegood stopped the recorder. When he pushed his chair back, the Styrofoam cup tipped over, black coffee spilling across the table, falling in a thin dark stream onto the floor.

9

    Will whispered into his daughter’s ear, “Wake up, Devi.” She stirred, turned away from him. He