The Love Killings Read Online Free PDF Page A

being the first one to shoot. All about dominoes falling down one after the other.
    He checked the .45 holstered beneath his down vest and leather jacket and followed Brown out the door. The air was raw, and the hard wind burned his face. Ready or not, his arrival in the City of Brotherly Love felt like a wake-up call.

CHAPTER 5
    The drive to the murder house in Radnor would only take about twenty-five minutes. Brown gave Matt a manila envelope and spent most of the time briefing him on details unrelated to the case. The keys to the apartment he would be staying in were here, along with the password to the Internet, information about parking in the neighborhood, and the access card that would open the security gates and doors to the FBI’s field office at 600 Arch Street. When Matt asked about the password to the FBI’s website and the chronological record he had been given access to before he was shot, Brown told him that Doyle and Rogers would take care of everything tomorrow morning when they gave him a desk and the keys to a car.
    Matt checked the road behind them and saw only darkness. He had been keeping an eye out for the odd-looking man with pale skin ever since they left the airport. No one was following them, and he turned back and gazed through the windshield. They were passing a train station and gliding down a hill. Once they came out of the curve, Brown made a left at the light onto County Line Road.
    “It’s halfway up the next hill,” she said in a quiet voice that shook a little.
    Matt could feel his stomach beginning to churn. When he spotted the long line of patrol units parked before the stone wall and all the video cameras and reporters crowded onto a small patch of lawn on the other side of the street, the anticipation was almost overwhelming. Brown pulled into the drive and stopped as three cops dressed in black uniforms stepped forward with flashlights and rifles. They wanted to see Brown’s ID, and they asked to see Matt’s as well. Matt handed over his new badge and ID and thought he saw something change when the cop read his name. It was in his eyes as he passed the badge back.
    It was recognition. Knowledge. Baylor.
    They lifted the tarp and waved them through. Brown pulled past the carriage house, continuing down the drive until they reached the Strattons’ mansion on the left. She popped open the trunk, and they climbed out of the car. While she unlatched a kit and fished out a pair of vinyl gloves and a flashlight, Matt stopped to take in the building.
    “The cop that took your badge,” she said. “He knows you. He knows who you are.”
    It was the flaw in Doyle’s plan to hold back Baylor’s name in the murder of an entire family. Once they saw Matt’s face, once word got out that he was here, everyone would know exactly who they were looking for.
    Brown passed over the flashlight and gloves and seemed shaky.
    “You okay?” he asked.
    She nodded. “Just cold.”
    The exterior lights were lit up along the drive, yet all the windows in the death house were dark—the Strattons’ mansion more than just a bit eerie. Matt took in the property and remembered seeing two mailboxes on the street by the entrance. Guessing that the carriage house and the mansion were built sometime in the 1800s, both appeared to have been heavily remodeled in the last ten years. The carriage house would have been a horse stable and barn, while the mansion was divided into two sections with four entrances. The first door opened to a small wing and was probably meant for the live-in staff. The more grandiose entrance off the long porch would have been the main entrance just as it was today.
    “Where do these two doors in the middle go?” he asked.
    “The first opens to a hallway, the kitchen, and a second set of stairs.”
    “And this one?”
    “The house manager’s office.”
    Matt glanced at the carriage house, then turned back to the mansion and took a guess. Two families living in two separate