Ungrateful Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

stray dog with ribs showing through his patchy fur shivered in a doorway, watching me with huge, wet eyes. I paused to dig in my pockets and found half a candy bar I’d started eating on my way here. I tossed it to the dog, which snapped it up and swallowed it duck-like, straight down the gullet, no chewing.
    Fuck, this place felt depressing. How the hell had Rhian Ellis ended up here, slaughtered in another woman’s bathtub? Everything I knew about her – and I knew a lot, thanks to the very thorough man who’d hired me to find her – said she shouldn’t have ended up this way. She’d been a straight A student from a good family, most likely to succeed, destined for stardom, blah, blah... A good girl. A nice girl.
    A nice girl who’d turned to stripping and prostitution somewhere between the cheerleading squad and Harvard University? Go figure.
    I got to my car, a battered green Hyundai that had seen me through many adventures, before I realized I had a stalker. The skinny mutt trotted along behind me, wagging his thin tail hopefully. I leaned against the car and considered him. He was a real looker, big and scrawny, black-and-gray fur wiry and patchy. God knows how long he’d been out on the street begging for candy, but I guessed he wouldn’t be doing it much longer. Open sores on his legs and flanks wept, and his eyes were rheumy.
    “ Kill it ,” the Voice said. “ Put a bullet right in its stupid, doggy brains. It’s dying anyway. ”
    I slid my hand inside my jacket, fingering the barrel of my gun. It’d be a mercy killing, that was for sure. The poor mutt was on his last legs.
    “ And the pain will be delicious, ” the Voice added, like it dangled some tempting treat before me. “ Think of that .”
    I thought of it and gripped the gun. The dog whined, like he was asking me to finish him off.
    Then the rain started, slick and warm and hard. In the second it took me to release the gun and push the Voice to back of my head, the mutt and I were soaked to the skin. I sighed and shoved my hair back from my face. “Fine. Get in,” I told the mutt, opening the Hyundai’s back door. He wagged his tail and hopped onto the back seat, settling down there like he’d always been there. I considered him for a second. I’d had a dog when I was a kid, a big stupid Labrador called Rufus.
    Mutt looked like he might be part Labrador. He had the same goofy grin on his face as he watched me watch him. I sighed again and climbed into the car.
    The storm continued all the way home, doing nothing to break the humidity. My car’s air conditioning had packed up weeks ago, and by the time we arrived home, Mutt and I were damp, sticky with heat, and miserable. I parked outside my place and let Mutt out. He ran straight to the front door like he’d always lived here and waited for me to haul my ass over and let him in.
    I wasn’t into housekeeping or DIY, or fixer-uppers, or any kind of handy-home maintenance. So my house was a brand-new, one bedroom place, identical to every other brand-new, one bedroom place on the estate. It was rented, so any time anything broke, went moldy, exploded or caught fire or whatever, I rang the landlord and he fixed it. I guess the downside was that that the place was completely without character or soul, but after my time in Shoregrave, where there were about two ghosts for every living person apparently, I appreciated a soulless dwelling a lot more.
    I let Mutt inside, and he ran over to my couch and shook his wet fur off all over it, then sat looking at me with that hopeful, big-eyed doggy gaze. I shrugged off my jacket, dropped it onto an armchair, and looked back at him. “So what’s the deal, Mutt?” I asked him. “What am I going to do with you?”
    “ Kill it ,” the Voice suggested. I ignored it.
    “You need a vet and a few good meals.” I decided. Mutt wagged his tail in agreement and wandered through to the kitchen. I fixed him a bowl of water, and after some mental