The Disposable Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

to it. It remained the home a rich person would own, and within its embrace I always felt slightly like an intruder.
    I restarted the engine and pulled into the driveway, the night abruptly torn away by the blinding glare of two motion-detector spotlights. Walking from the car to the kitchen door, fumbling with the several keys I needed to gain entry, I squinted up in vain at the stars for a final farewell, defeated by the artificial brightness. Perhaps that was another cause for my uneasiness with this house: it had been purchased after the rape, which had occurred in Gail’s own home, where she’d been happily living alone. This substitute, while fancier by far, was like the memorial of an event that would never fade from memory.
    I found Gail in bed upstairs, surrounded by folders, legal briefs, and sheets of yellow notepaper. She didn’t usually work in bed, having an office down the hall, which prompted me to ask, “You okay?”
    She caught my meaning immediately, holding out her arms for an embrace. “Yeah. Just feeling lonely.”
    I kissed her and sat on the edge of the mattress. “Tough day? I noticed no one from your office showed up at the scene this morning.”
    She lay back against the pillows. “It was a zoo. Court appearances all day, one secretary out sick, Carol still on vacation. Once Jack heard it was probably a dumping, he didn’t see much value in sending anyone out for a drive in the countryside. What was it like?”
    I smiled appreciatively. Jack Derby was her boss, the Windham County State’s Attorney. A relative newcomer on our political landscape, he was a natural pragmatist. “He had it right—pretty day for it, though.”
    She began collecting her homework, dropping it on the floor. “Who was it?”
    I rose and removed my jacket and shoes. “Don’t know. That’s why I went up to Burlington. We don’t often come across bodies so totally stripped of identifiers—it was like he’d been dry-cleaned. Even his clothing labels were missing.”
    “Was Hillstrom any help?” Gail asked, settling back on a now-clean bed, killing the reading light beside her. She was wearing pajamas, and her hair was spread out on the pillows behind her. The only remaining light came from a small lamp on the dresser, which threw soft shadows on her face.
    “A friend of hers was. Pegged some tattoos the guy had on his toes as Russian.”
    “That’s pretty exotic.” I returned to her side, sat back down, and took her hand in mine.
    “That may be all it is. So far, none of it amounts to a nibble, and it might stay that way. Still, I asked them to keep the tattoos to themselves, just in case we need them later.”
    She closed her eyes and sighed. “Well, it’s good to have you back. I missed you all day for some reason. More than usual.”
    I let go of her hand, reached up and unbuttoned the top of her pajamas. A smile slowly spread across her face. Her leg pressed against mine and her hand slid onto my thigh. I went down to the next button, and the one below that, until I could peel back one-half of the top.
    “Welcome home,” she murmured.
    · · ·
    The shouted warning appeared from nowhere as soon as I touched the doorknob. “Don’t open that.”
    I froze in the police department’s short hall-like entranceway, and stared at the seated man signaling me from behind the bulletproof glass lining one wall. I leaned toward the speaking hole cut into its middle. “What’s going on?”
    Barry Givens, the graveyard-shift dispatcher, explained, “They put down a new floor last night. It’s still drying. You have to go around.”
    I waved and retreated to the public corridor splitting the Municipal Building in two—along with the police department’s offices—and walked farther up to an unmarked door generally used by the patrol division. We were undergoing yet another renovation, this one to accommodate an updated dispatch center to handle the town’s police, fire, and EMS simultaneously. A good