The Kill Riff Read Online Free PDF Page B

butcher knife?"
        They both knew how violent and unstable Cory had been toward the end. No apology needed to be made for Cory. Lucas tried anyway. "She changed, Burt. After she had Kristen, she changed. I really think motherhood doomed her. She watched herself get old while Kristen got young, and it was too much for her." She'd watched herself right up until the end. Her last sight had been herself in the hotel room mirror, dying.
        Burt cleared his throat.
        "So," Lucas said, to break away from the topic.
        "So what?"
        "So do I still have a job at Kroeger, or what?"
        "Oh." Burt jerked abruptly as though hit. "Oh! Of course! Jesus, Lucas, I thought that was a given." He looked em'oarrassedly before him and saw no plate, no beer, and nothing to fiddle with. He immediately signaled the waiter again.
        "Nothing is as it seems," said Lucas. "Venerable old ad-pub rule. And you're still looking at me as though you vaguely suspect I might suck babies' blood or something." His smile stole any sting his words might have imparted.
        Burt sent the grin right back. "Fuck you very much."
        The waiter looked nervously from man to man until Burt pointed at his empty Dos Equis bottle. Then he fled.
        "Thanks." Lucas nodded. "Now we move on."
        "As we get older," Burt grumbled. He pawed around in a coat pocket until he fished up a nicotine-colored prescription vial. It took him half the ice water in his glass to get the tiny pill down.
        "What the hell is that?" Lucas said. His eyes went stark at the thought of information not shared between friends.
        "Nothing. Blood pressure's too goddamned high, so the jerks at Cedars Sinai informed me. They cited studies on stress, as if those would change the way I do things. So here I am-not even fifty and putting down pills. Shit."
        Lucas's eyes stayed on the vial until it was stashed. The pills Cory was full of when she died were fat Seconals. Different pills, similar container. Autopsy noted she'd swallowed at least seventy-five of them.
        "I don't like the idea of taking any kind of medication," he said. "At least God created alcohol to wash it down with. These chalky little things remind me what pigeon shit must taste like." He put away a huge draft of the newly arrived beer, settled back, and eased out a belch. Except for two other couples, they were the only people left in the restaurant. The hazy color set above the bar burbled sports trivia.
        "What do I need to know?"
        "Hm. Well, I've converted your office into the executive powder room…" Burt laughed at his own joke. "Nah-it's just as you left it, dusty and encased in plastic until your return."
        "Divine," Lucas hummed. The beer was making him stupid. Beer wasn't on the menu at Olive Grove. He'd never exactly been a beer fan, just an occasional glassful of something dark and thick and imported. Now he had developed a positive lust for the taste. It was delicious. What the hell, his imp of conscience told him. If he wasn't entitled to get a bit saturated now, then when?
        Burt picked up the threads of update quickly. "Emma, the princess of the switchboard, you met. She's been in Monica's berth since… well, she was pregnant when you left, right?"
        "I swear, Burt, we were just good friends."
        "Not to worry. She had twins, and neither of them is as ugly as you. Then her husband got a job working on the space shuttle. Engineering. Trying to find a way to keep the damned thing from blowing up." Lucas watched a dozen space shuttle jokes of the gallows-humor variety flash through Burt's memory, behind his eyes. "But you know," he said, suddenly thoughtful, "if they gave me a chance to go up in the thing and do stuff in space, and told me it would blow up on the way back to Earth… who knows? I'd probably go anyway."
        Lucas did not ask him what that meant.
        "We overhauled the