The 56th Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

the ghost of a Christmas tree. He folded the
printout, stuck it into his pocket, and munched on some corn chips.
Each bite sent an inordinately loud echo through the room. Of
course, there was no furniture or carpeting to absorb the
sound--but it still didn't fit. The stairs leading up to the second
floor were scarcely ten feet away. He shook his head at the ghost
in the phantom chair.
    "You didn't do your job," he
admonished--although only a portion of his disgust was directed at
Jerry Riggins. His original assumption was discarded within the
same few minutes it had been formulated.
    "Not even with a silencer," he murmured. In a
confined space like this it would have made a loud and distinctive
'pop'.
    He went upstairs to the master bedroom.
Judging from the diagram, Mrs. Riggins had been sitting up in bed
when she died, her legs over the side. The headboard was against
the outside wall; the side of the bed was about a three feet from a
window. Ari stared out at the river. Whistling Jupiters? Could
Moria have mistaken the gunshot downstairs for a firecracker? It
didn't seem feasible. The small, tree-dotted island was halfway to
the north shore. On the other hand, coming out of a deep sleep, the
shot could have seemed like part of a dream.
    "Were you dreaming, Moria?" he asked, looking
at the phantom bed. "Or were you deaf?" He stared hard at the
invisible woman, then added, "Did you take a sleeping pill before
going to bed?"
    He stopped before each boy's room--rooms he
had freely roamed the day before, but which had become (now that he
had seen the diagram) tainted by history. This was the belly of the
crime, and his stomach knotted painfully. He would study the rooms
more closely, later. He had plenty of time.
    Downstairs, he went into the kitchen and
poked a wooden spoon through his soaking chick peas. Then he went
to the back door, set off in a small alcove adjacent to the
kitchen, across from the basement door. He stood outside on the
small stoup. To the right the yard sloped down to the patio. To the
left some boxwoods hid a central air unit and blocked the road from
view. Howie's house was barely visible through the trees. Turning,
he leaned in to study the frame. The wood was crisp, unmarked,
obviously new. He closed the door and tapped it with his knuckles.
Very solid. Of course, it too was new, but Ari thought the real
estate people would have replaced the damaged door with one similar
or identical to the old one. Again, the problem of noise. Breaking
through here would have created a tremendous racket.
    He tried to re-enter and found he had locked
himself out. None of keys on his ring worked. He drew back a
little, frowning at the door knob.
    Probably a minor slip-up on the real estate
agent's part. He had had the old keys hanging from his office
pegboard, perhaps, and had simply forgotten to slip the new one
onto the ring after the door was installed. Or....
    Ari smiled. He went down to the patio and let
himself in through the basement door.
    Once again at the computer, he returned to
the newspaper archives and pulled up a picture of the Riggins
family hiking in the mountains. Hunched under backpacks, they were
beaming at the camera as though the weight on their backs and the
high trail they had just ascended (a section of the Appalachian
Trail, the caption advised readers) were of no consequence to their
good spirits. Jerry appeared to be of average height, slender but
fit, glowing with health and optimism. Standing by his side was
Moria, her grin so broad it practically cracked her cheekbones. Her
short bangs were plastered by sweat to her forehead. Beneath them
her eyes glowed brilliantly, almost ecstatically, as though she was
a novitiate who had discovered the temple of Nature. Her olive
T-shirt was pinched by the backpack straps and sagged at the front,
exposing the sharp line of her collarbone. The boys, looking a
little blown from their hike up the hill, stood at the
forefront--displayed like trophies, each