The Angel Maker - 2 Read Online Free PDF

they dispirited. The people of Seattle were a vibrant, red-cheeked, resilient bunch, whom Boldt counted as his own. The wet winter weather, extremely temperate considering the latitude, was essential-a few years of drought had taught the locals that much. This weather--or its reputation was what kept the masses away. It was the city's best defense in its increasing battle against Californication.
    Boldt entered wearing a baby carrier that supported his son Miles. He joined Daphne at one of the large reading tables on the second floor, as far away from others as possible. She steeled herself for what lay ahead. This was her chance to convince him they had a case-to win him over. That child hanging around his neck represented his other life. She couldn't allow herself to think of it in those terms. Boldt was a friend, certainly. But more importantly, he was a cop with the connections and talent to make this case happen. This was her focus. The image of Cindy Chapman's bleeding incision was lodged in her mind.
    On the table in front of her lay three Pendaflex folders and a pile of photocopies from her research at the library. She felt both exhausted and afraid, and the two sensations fed on each other, injecting her with an anxiety she found difficult to overcome. Without him, without some male to support her god, how she resented it-she had little or no chance of convincing Lieutenant Phil Shoswitz to open this investigation.
    She wore gray stirrup pants, a white blouse buttoned high, and a crimson scarf to hide her scar. She had her brown-red hair pulled back off her face, a pair of simple silver studs in her ears. Boldt was, as always, disheveled, wrinkled, worn. Khakis, a Tattersall shirt, brown walking shoes with thick rubber hiking tread. He looked tired-probably was-and older than he had last night at The Big Joke. "Meet my son, Miles," Boldt said proudly, speaking in a hushed voice, dropping into a chair and putting down the baby bag he carried with him.
    "Miles," he said to his sleeping six-month-old child in the carrier, "this is the 'other woman' I've told you so much about."
    "He's adorable."
    "I hope he gets his mother's hair." ,,And her brains," Daphne said. He glanced down at the folders and then up at her, disapprovingly. "You're not supposed to take these out of the office," he declared. "They aren't ours. Dixie gave them to me," she said, referring to the chief pathologist of the medical examiner's office. "He thought they might help convince you that we have something."
    "We?"
    "I need a partner, someone with whom Shoswitz will allow me to partner. As of this morning, Dixie is a believer, but I can't very well partner with a pathologist."
    "Wait a minute! I agreed to be a sounding board, that's all.
    There are a dozen guys who could run with this thing." His eyes strayed to the folders again, and she realized she was taking the wrong approach with him. For Lou Boldt, it was always the victims-the evidence-that did the talking.
    She said, "You take each one of these autopsies separately, and they don't say much. You add them up, and we've got a problem."
    Boldt leaned forward, his big hand shielding the boy's small head, and dragged the folders across the table. "Maybe I don't want to read these," he said, sensing the trap they represented. She willed him to open the top folder-just get him started, that was all it would take. "Sure you do," she argued.
    "Three of them? You're suggesting a pattern?" he said, thinking aloud. "Pathology reports-so they're dead. They're connected to what happened to Cindy Chapman, or I wouldn't be here, would I?"
    She leaned forward and nudged the files even closer. "If Dixie came up with these, then the pattern, the similarity between them, has to do with the way in which they were killed."
    "The way they died," she corrected. "And who they were or weren't. All three filed as unsolved cases. There may be more."
    "Runaways?"
    "They make such nice victims: No one knows they're here;