Touch of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page B

closing.
    Ross charged past the dangling noose, knocking the chair onto its side as he raced into the kitchen. With his mind on the string of suicides, he thought of nothing but catching Laney before she had the chance to do herself harm, most likely after listening to recordings of her late band.
    His gut dropped like a stone when he heard her voice behind him.
    “What are you doing, Ross?”
    He wheeled around to see his cousin, who stood trembling as she stared wide-eyed at the noose. With her wavy, darkbrown hair sliding out of a long ponytail, her face splotchy, and her lashes clumped with tears, she wore sweatpants with a T-shirt—and clutched a wooden bat in her hands.
    “Is this some kind of sick joke?” Always a small woman, barely topping five feet, she sounded shaken-up, bewildered.
    “Someone was in here,” he said, gesturing toward the laundry room. “I saw that rope through the front window. When I came in, I heard the door shut.”
    He hurried to the laundry room as Laney flipped on lights. Though the screen door had closed, the inner door, normally left locked, stood ajar.
    As he started through it, his cousin gripped his arm. “Don’t go out there.”
    Taking the bat from her hands, he stepped out onto the back steps, where he scanned the yard for any movement. But without the aid of streetlights, it was even darker out here than in the front yard. And thick bushes, his aunt’s prized crape myrtles and oleanders, offered far too many hiding places for anyone who might be lurking.
    “I’m calling nine-one-one.” Laney spoke to him through the screen door, a cordless phone in her hand. “Please, Ross. Come inside. Anyone who would do this …” She glanced back toward the kitchen, her gaze fixed on the noose. “They wouldn’t hesitate to hurt you. And I couldn’t…I couldn’t stand to see you murdered. Like all the rest of them.”
    Tuesday, October 20
    “This is garbage, bullshit.” Justine’s chief deputy, Roger Savoy, stalked the hospital room as he spoke, walking back and forth through a shaft of morning sunlight and gripping a Styrofoam cup of coffee so hard, Justine half expected it to explode at any moment. “You wait. It’s going to turn out this is nothing but a hoax.”
    She had seen Roger this agitated on only one prior occasion,when the recount she’d demanded swung the election in her favor.
    “Stand still and explain. Please.” Though Justine’s doctor had cleared her to go home as soon as the paperwork was finished, her brain felt wrapped in woolen blankets, and pain shafted through her skull when she tried to follow Roger with her eyes. At least she was dressed to leave the hospital, in the jeans, chambray blouse, and Western boots her father had picked up from her home. A dark suit might have lent her more authority, but she felt a hell of a lot more in control than she had in the butt-baring cotton gown she’d worn overnight.
    Mercifully, Roger stopped his pacing. “I think that girl hung the noose up there herself, just so she could holler ‘hate crime.’”
    After moving from the bed to a chair, Justine skewered him with her most incredulous look. “Why would Laney Thibodeaux want to do a thing like that?”
    Savoy’s expression soured. “So she could get the FBI in here, tromping all over our investigation.”
    “Because…?” Justine prompted.
    “Because she claims there’s a conspiracy, of all the damned things. Says those suicides weren’t suicides at all, but some kind of elaborate scheme to shut down her group.”
    “I wasn’t aware the dance-hall and party-band circuit was so cutthroat,” Justine said wryly. “But what makes you think she set this up?”
    “Aside from the way she acted, there was no sign of forced entry,” Roger said, “even though she swears she had the doors locked.”
    “So why didn’t she hear this break-in?”
    “Back in her bedroom listening to music in the dark is what she told me. Listening to recordings of her