The Cold Room Read Online Free PDF Page A

staring down at me. Nine months before, she’d been assaulted with an aluminium bat as she left her parked car. The blow had been meant to kill her, but had succeeded only in flattening the center of her rather prominent nose. Adele’s first instinct was to ignore the defect, no surprise as she was far too vain to admit to her own vanity. But then her breathing became impaired and she was more or less forced into an operating room. The result was a smaller, rounded nose that softened a thin face made thinner by sharp cheekbones and a pointed chin. Myself, I was indifferent to the change, but I remember catching Adele standing before the mirror in the bathroom one day, examining herself closely. Her dark eyes, when she finally acknowledged my existence, were filled with humor, her thin smile impish. Adele liked what she saw in the mirror, a guilt-free result that could only have come about through medical necessity.
    â€˜Do you think,’ Adele asked as she cut through a stuffed grape leaf with the edge of her fork, ‘that Kelly will make a credible witness?’
    â€˜Assuming I come up with somebody for him to ID, I think he will.’ Though Kelly had examined more than a thousand mug shots at the precinct, he’d failed to make even a tentative identification. ‘Especially if some defense lawyer is stupid enough to ask him why he didn’t report what he saw right away.’
    We were analysing the case, our discussion continuing through dinner and while we did the few dishes. I wasn’t dealing, we agreed, with a street criminal who acted on impulse, as street criminals so often do. The effort to prepare the victim for disposal had been thorough and systematic. Nevertheless, there were flies in this ointment. The head wound, for example; blunt force trauma is usually inflicted in a moment of passion. And the pink lividity was another problem. If she’d inhaled enough carbon monoxide or cyanide to alter her blood chemistry, why crack her skull?
    But the practical benefits of discussing the case with my former partner were beside the point. Nine months before, Adele had been my partner, working the case that put me on the outs with my peers. She’d taken a terrible beating, had come from an emergency ward to confront the man who’d beaten her. Detective Linus Potter had looked directly into Adele’s eyes, then surrendered peacefully, knowing that if he resisted, she would kill him.
    Now Adele toiled as an investigator for the Queens District Attorney, Kenneth Alessio, and she was bored out of her mind. Mostly, her work consisted of re-interviewing witnesses who’d been carefully prepped by the detectives who’d uncovered them in the first place. Either that or making sure those same witnesses arrived in court on time and sober.
    Though she was too proud to say so, Adele missed the streets. I understood this because, to a certain extent, I missed them as well. Literally the odd man out on a squad that was a detective short of full strength, I passed most of my working days without a partner, responding to burglary complaints, or comforting seniors who’d had their purses snatched.
    But now I had a mystery on my hands, for the first time in almost a year, and Adele had always been drawn to mysteries. If she wanted to experience this one through my eyes, I wasn’t about to deny her. As for me, I was cheered by her interest. For some weeks, I’d felt Adele drifting away from me. Not toward some third party, I didn’t fear infidelity. No, Adele had a capacity for solitude, not to mention isolation, and now she seemed to be folding into herself. Only occasionally was I able to draw her out and only for brief periods. Worse still, there didn’t seem to be any reason for her withdrawal.
    As for myself, I was in love with Adele Bentibi and my fear of losing her was compounded by the simple fact that there was nothing of Adele’s in the apartment we shared,