The Darker Side Read Online Free PDF

enemies, all high-profile people do, but is there anything specific, anything recent or in the recent past that stands out?”
    “I wish I could say so. Dillon gets the occasional crazy letter, and I read them all before passing them on to the Secret Service. The last one like that came in six or seven months ago. Some kook threatened to kill Dillon with his mind or some nonsense. We’re not straddling any contentious issues on the moral front at the moment. Rarely are, truth be told. Avoiding that type of confrontation is how Dillon’s managed to hold a Democratic seat in Texas.”
    I search for more to ask her, but can’t think of anything at the moment.
    I choose my next words with care. “Rosario, I want you to know that I’m going to do everything I can to find the person responsible for this. I can’t promise I’ll catch them—I learned not to make promises like that a long time ago—but my team and I are very, very good. We are going to need access in order to do our jobs. I’ll bow to a certain amount of political decorum, but in the end, I’m not working for you or for your husband, I’m working for Lisa.”
    “Lisa is all that matters.”
    “I’m not trying to be insensitive. I just want to ensure I make it clear what my priorities are.”
    “Your priorities are reassuring.” She reaches into her jacket pocket and hands me a slip of paper. “All of my numbers. Contact me any time of the day or night for the smallest thing.”
    I take the paper from her. She knocks on the partition again, a signal to return us to the morgue. The sun is setting and the blood in the sky mingles with the fire-trees of fall.
    Winter is coming. Winter here is still, like death.
    “Can I ask you a question, Smoky?” Rosario says.
    “You can ask me anything you want.”
    She looks at me, and I see, finally, the tears. Not a sobbing grief, no hysteria here, just a stream from the corner of each eye, evidence of the deepest ache.
    “Do you ever get over it?”
    Truth, truth, nothing but truth, that’s what this woman deserves. I give it to her.
    “Not ever.”

 
    3
    “CALLIE, ALAN, AND JAMES ARE ON THEIR WAY HERE,” AD Jones tells me. “They should arrive in a few hours.”
    We’re outside the autopsy room, watching through a pane of glass as the medical examiner disassembles the body of Lisa Reid in order to help us catch her killer. It’s the final outrage. There’s no soul to an autopsy, just the reduction of a human being to their lowest common denominator: meat.
    It’s now after seven o’clock and I am beginning to feel the disconnection from home.
    “Pretty weird to be here,” I remark.
    “Yeah,” AD Jones replies. He’s silent for a moment. “My second wife and I actually talked about moving out here once.”
    “Really?”
    “You saw those trees? They have four real seasons here. White Christmas, things coming to life in the spring.” He shrugs. “I was into it. Then the marriage went south and I forgot about it.”
    He goes quiet again. This is the story of our relationship. He doles out personal information at unexpected times in little dollops. They’re often bittersweet, as now. He’d loved a woman and they’d talked about moving someplace where they could rake fallen leaves and build snowmen. Now he is here because of a corpse. Dreams evolve, not always for the better.
    “Dr. Johnston is a strange one,” I mutter, changing the subject.
    “Yeah.”
    Dr. Johnston, the ME, is in his mid-forties and he is huge . Not fat—muscular. He’s got biceps it would take both of my hands to fit around. His legs are so big he probably has to get his pants tailored. His hair is bleach blond and shaved close to his head. His face is square jawed and brutal looking, with a big nose that’s bent from past breaks and a vein that throbs away in his forehead like a living metronome, mesmerizing. He could be a professional bodybuilder or a mob knee-breaker.
    He’s all business with Lisa, putting