The Innocent Read Online Free PDF

smile that followed, the way her chin tilted up, the way she crossed her legs.
    He did not move.
    From across the room he heard Rolanda's voice, softer now: "Matt?"
    He ignored her. The camera was put down now, probably on a bureau. It was still aiming at the bed. A man walked toward the platinum blonde. Matt could only see the man's back. He was wearing a red shirt and had blue-black hair. His approach blocked the view of the woman. And the bed.
    Matt's eyes started to blur. He blinked them back into focus. The LCD screen on the camera started to darken. The images flickered and disappeared and Matt was left sitting there, Rolanda staring at him curiously, the photographs on his brother's side of the desk still in place, and he was sure- well, pretty sure, the screen was only an inch or two, right?- that the woman in the strange hotel room, the woman in the slinky dress on the bed, that she was wearing a platinum-blonde wig and that she was really a brunette and that her name was Olivia and she was his wife.

Chapter 3
    NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
    JUNE 22
     
    ESSEX COUNTY HOMICIDE INVESTIGATOR Loren Muse sat in her boss's office.
    "Wait a second," she said. "Are you telling me that the nun had breast implants?"
    Ed Steinberg, the Essex County prosecutor, sat behind his desk rubbing his bowling-ball gut. He had that kind of build that from the back you wouldn't even know he was heavy, just that he had a flat ass. He leaned back and put his hands behind his head. The shirt was yellow under the armpits. "So it appears, yeah."
    "But she died of natural causes?" Loren said.
    "That's what we thought."
    "You don't think that anymore?"
    "I don't think anything anymore," Steinberg said.
    "I could make a crack here, boss."
    "But you won't." Steinberg sighed and put on his reading glasses. "Sister Mary Rose, a tenth-grade social studies teacher, was found dead in her room at the convent. No signs of struggle, no wounds, she's sixty-two years old. Apparently a standard death- heart, stroke, something like that. Nothing suspicious."
    "But?" Loren added.
    "But there's been a new development."
    "I think the word is 'augmentation.' "
    "Stop it, you're killing me."
    Loren turned both palms up. "I still don't see why I'm here."
    "How about that you're the greatest homicide investigator in the naked, uh, county?"
    Loren made a face.
    "Yeah, didn't think that'd fly. This nun"- Steinberg lowered the reading glasses again-"taught at St. Margaret's High." He looked at her.
    "So?"
    "So you were a student there, right?"
    "And again I say: So?"
    "So the Mother Superior has some juice with the brass. She requested you."
    "Mother Katherine?"
    He checked the sheet. "That's her name."
    "You're kidding, right?"
    "Nope. She called in a favor. Requested you by name."
    Loren shook her head.
    "You know her, I assume?"
    "Mother Katherine? Only because I was constantly being sent to her office."
    "Wait, you weren't an easy kid?" Steinberg put his hand to his heart. "Tattoo me shocked."
    "I still don't see why she'd want me."
    "Maybe she thought you'd be discreet."
    "I hated that place."
    "Why?"
    "You didn't go to Catholic school, did you?"
    He lifted his nameplate on his desk and pointed to the letters one at a time. "Steinberg," he read to her slowly. "Note the Stein. Note the Berg. See those names much in church?"
    Loren nodded. "Right, then it'd be like explaining music to the deaf. What prosecutor will I be reporting to?"
    "Me."
    That surprised her. "Directly?"
    "Directly and only. Nobody else is on this, understood?"
    She nodded. "Understood."
    "You ready then?"
    "Ready for what?"
    "Mother Katherine."
    "What about her?"
    Steinberg stood and sauntered around his desk. "She's in the next room. She wants to talk to you privately."
     
    When Loren Muse was a student at St. Margaret's School for Girls, Mother Katherine was twelve feet tall and approximately one hundred years old. The years had shrunk her down and reversed the aging process- but not by a lot. Mother