The Pardon Read Online Free PDF Page A

dog dig in.
    Fortunately, the blood - or whatever it was - washed off easily in the shower. As he toweled himself dry, Jack could hear Thursday pushing his empty bowl across the kitchen floor with his nose. Jack smiled and pulled on his boxer shorts. Then he went to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the king-size bed. His eyes scanned the room, finally coming to rest on a framed photograph of Cindy that stood on the nightstand. In it she was standing on a rock along some mountain trail they'd hiked together in Utah. She had a big, happy smile on her face, and the summer wind was tossing her honey-blond hair. It was his favorite picture of her, because it captured so many of the qualities that made her special. At first glance, anyone would be struck by her beautiful face and great body. But for Jack, it was Cindy's eyes and her smile that told the whole story.
    On impulse, he reached for the phone. He frowned when Gina Terisi's machine picked up: I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now said the recorded message.
    Cindy, call me, he said. Miss you, he added, and put the receiver down. He fell back on the bed, closed his eyes, and began to relax for the first time in more than a day. But he was disturbed as he realized that Gina would get the message first and convince Cindy he was pining away for her. Well, he was, wasn't he?
    Idly, he flipped on the TV and began channel-surfing, searching for any station that didn't have something to say about the acquittal of Eddy Goss. He fixed on MTV. Two mangy-looking rockers were banging on their guitars while getting their faces licked by a Cindy Crawford look-alike.
    He switched off the set, nestled his head in the pillow, and lay in the darkness. But he couldn't sleep. He looked straight ahead, over the tops of his toes, staring at the television on the dresser. There was nothing he wanted to watch. But as the day's ugly events played out in his mind, there was one thing he suddenly had to watch.
    He rolled out of bed, grabbed his briefcase, and popped it open, quickly finding what he was looking for even in the darkness. He switched on the television and VCR, shoved in the cassette, and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. There was a screen full of snow, a few rolling blips, and then
    My name is Eddy Goss, said the man on the screen, speaking stiffly into a police video camera. Goss's normally flat and stringy hair was a tangled, greasy mess. He looked and undoubtedly smelled as if he'd been sleeping under a bridge all week, dressed in dirty Levi's, unlaced tennis shoes, and a yellow-white undershirt, torn at the V and stained with underarm sweat. He sat smugly in the metal folding chair, exuding a punk's confidence, his arms folded tightly. Four long and fresh red scratches ran along his neck. The date and time, 11:04 P. M., March 12 - four and a half months ago - flashed in the corner of the screen.
    I live at four-oh-nine East Adams Street, Goss continued, apartment two-seventeen.
    The camera drew back to show the suspect, seated at the end of the long conference table, and an older man seated on the side, to Goss's right. The man appeared to be in his late sixties, gray-haired, with a hawk nose that supported his black-rimmed glasses.
    Mr. Goss, said the man, I'm Detective Lonzo Stafford. With me, behind the camera, is Detective Jamahl Bradley. You understand, son, that you have the right to remain silent. You have the right -
    Jack hit the remote, fast-forwarding to the part he'd seen at least a hundred times before. Visible in the frame now was a different Goss, more animated, boasting like a proud father.
    aEU| I killed the little prick tease, Goss said with a carefree shrug.
    Jack stopped the tape, rewound, and listened again, as if flogging himself.
    aEU| I killed the little prick tease, he heard one more time. Just the way thousands of other people had heard it - with expletive deleted - and were probably hearing it again tonight, on the television news. The tape