The Triggerman Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

courting her at the Journal offices, where you both worked. You talked to her, you lunched with her, and later, you entertained her in your home on Sun Valley Drive in Laguna Canyon. You felt something for her that you believed you had never felt for a woman before. You did love her, didn't you? I don't see how you couldn't. It was the easiest thing I ever did in my whole life. It was easier than breathing. I'm not wrong, am I?"
When Dumars managed to look across to John Menden, his expression had not changed. She looked hard at him, but for all her training and perspicacity, for all of the reverberating context that she now understood, she could not read any reaction at all. It was almost unbelievable. Was he a sociopath? A psychotic? Was Joshua quite simply wrong?
"Don't answer," said Weinstein. "What you answer doesn't matter to me, because I know what happened and I know the truth. The truth, Mr. John Menden, is that Rebecca was in love with you, too. Surprised? Then certainly it's a pleasant surprise. Remember the picture they ran, of Rebecca in the rain by the planter? Of course you do. You were in it, though you weren't recognizable. Didn't you wonder why her left hand was naked, why the ring she'd worn for eight months was suddenly gone? I'll tell you. She took it off that morning and gave it back to me. She said she couldn't, there was someone else. She cried. She didn't just cry, she raged. She stormed. That night, the night after she died, I went to her apartment and found two letters she'd written. Here's yours."
Weinstein produced a smallish envelope, pink with a faint floral pattern, and set it on the table. It was sealed. On top of the envelope, he set something small that shined warmly even in the dim light of Olie's Saloon.
Joshua Weinstein's voice had taken on a profound bitterness. "Take the ring, too. Touch it. Smell it. Think of the perfect finger that used to wear it. Think of the times you spent together. Return it to me when you're finished. It's mine. It cost me a lot, and I'm not talking about money."

Again, Dumars's attention went to Menden. He looked for a long moment at the envelope and ring. He blinked twice, glanced at his empty shot glass, then lifted his eyes to Joshua Weinstein. They were just a fraction brighter than before.

Around the edges showed a moisture that had not been there just a second or two ago. And his ruddy face was even darker now, more deeply lined around the mouth and eyes. There it is, she thought, his confession!
    Then, Josh stood. "Rebecca loved you," he said. "They shot out her heart and she died alone in a fucking parking lot in the rain. That's why you want to listen to me. Thanks for your time."
    He tossed a few bills on the table and was already through the saloon door by the time Dumars slung her purse over her shoulder, took one look into the pained gray eyes of John Menden, and followed Weinstein out.

CHAPTER 4
In the fall of 1971, John's father and mother bought an airplane. John was nine and he sat with his parents in the Martin Aviation office at Orange County Airport while his father signed the papers. The salesman was a slender, tanned, soft-spoken gentleman who John felt was welcoming his father and mother, even himself, to an elite club of aviators. The office had pictures of the salesman in various airplanes, some featuring a celebrity with him. From outside, the roar of passenger jets rattled the picture frames against the wall, and the buzzing tenors of the private planes cut through the air as they took off and landed. The salesman gave John a styrofoam glider with a weighted nose and short, sharp futuristic wings, which sat on his lap as he listened.
John understood that it was a small plane, a rather old one, but in superb condition and reasonably priced—the perfect starter craft for a middle-aged aerospace engineer bitten by the fly bug early in life and now able to assume the debt of curing what some people called "the disease."
"The only good